For any Dopers who don’t know, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving is celebrated in America. It’s the official start of the Christmas Shopping Season, and stores will do just about anything to lure the shoppers. I was at a toy store the other day, and they had a sign up to the effect that they will open on 5AM on Nov. 28th!! Also, selected toys will be half off.
I just won’t do it. Whatever money I save will be paid for with my sanity. So, what about you? Are you a “no freakin’ way you’re getting me into a store on Black Friday” Or are you a “Save money? Crowds of people? Sales? Count me in!” kind of a person?
The crowds are bad enough during the whole Christmas “shopping season” - I hate going to the stores any time between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I do a lot of my Christmas shopping online.
On Black Friday, the stores are swarming with people, desperately hot to shop, shop, shop. Hell, I don’t even like going to the mall on weekends. I’m too old for the mosh pit.
Exactly what are they selling, and at what prices, that I will be unable to get a week later? Jeez.
I did this once. years ago. Never again. Lately, I’m way more inclined to shop on line. I hate shopping anyway; at least on line, I can shop in my bathrobe.
Most years I make it to the mall at some point during that day - my mother likes too go. There’s only been one year since I graduated from college that we were out at the butt crack of dawn to shop. That was torture.
Now, every year we plan to go out early, but never seem to make it. Usually if we make it to the stores, it’s around 10AM, then we gripe about the crowds and how stupid we are to go out there on the day after Thanksgiving.
Yep, we do it every damn year. Unintentionally, of course. I don’t want to be out, it just happens.
After working nights and retarded schedules for so many years, I have no real concept of what day is what anymore. So we always end up needing something at the mall or some other consumer crush-o-rama on Black Friday.
Every year I’m suprised at the hoards of people out shopping, then I get a clue. I can’t wait to see what makes me go out this year. It’s always something.
As someone who spent many years working in retail, and having to face the insane hordes on Black Friday from the other side of the cash register, I am firmly in the camp of “no freakin’ way you’re getting me in a store on Black Friday.”
The day after Thanksgiving is when we get out the Christmas decorations and put up the tree and decorate it (it’s fake) and put up the lights outside.
Hubby and I have made a sort of tradition of it. Yeah, the crowds are Hell. We leave the house KNOWING it will be like that and just take it in stride. We usually start with breakfast at IHOP (not necessarily at 5 am, either. We likes our sleep.) and then cruise the mall and do most of our Christmas shopping that day. We don’t freak out about having to be htere when the stores open, we just chill out and spend the time together. It’s fun.
I avoid the Black Friday shopping crush, too. Just not my idea of a good time. I also try to avoid going to malls on school holidays and on weekends whenever possible.
It’s especially bad now that even mid-range department stores have eliminated sales people and gone to more centralized cashier stations. I’m not very good at waiting in line.
The year I was pregnant with my youngest, I did most of my shopping online. She was scheduled for deliver on Dec. 29th, and I was on “partial bedrest”, which meant that for every hour I was up, the doc wanted me in bed for an hour (and that didn’t count night time sleep). Shopping online was pretty great, for the most part. I’d have done more of that this year, but we had to wait for hubby to get paid for a contract he just started working on. Prior to that, we were so broke we couldn’t even pay attention! As if all that weren’t enough (don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful as hell that the contract came through), his work is going to keep him out of town weekdays. That means we’ll have to do our shopping on weekends. I would do it myself during the week, but to do any good shopping, we have to go to either Altoona or Hagerstown, both about an hour away, and my car just isn’t that reliable.
Nope. The problem I have is that I hate, hate, hate crowds of people. I can’t - I don’t mean won’t - I mean I CAN’T - go to Woodfield Mall and shop, even when it isn’t the holidays. Keeps me from doing lots of stuff.
Ah, Black Friday, from Blackie The Cheap. Some say that its because retailers are going to be in the black that day.
What you need to get you going are some BF ads so you can see what’s being sold & the store opening times, so you can have a plan of attack. fatwallet.com Deal Forum has lists if you want to see. $399 for an envision 19" LCD monitor seems nice.
Also, some stores are having a sale on Thanksgiving, so if you think the sale is on BF, they could be out of stock.
Typically, no. But last year I had hosted Thanksgiving at my house, and I was trying to make stock from the turkey carcass. My husband was a bit nervous at coming into the kitchen, finding me ripping apart the carcass by hand - and chopping through some of the bones - and grumbling about how I was going out the next day to find a bigger stockpot because this one was too small. So I went out early and took advantage of the sales to get a nice Calphalon stockpot with steamer basket inserts. It wasn’t that much of a hassle, but if I’d stayed out later or gone to a larger mall I bet it would have been a real headache.
