What sorts of people do so? Are you?
Obviously, a lot of people must do so, or stores wouldn’t pay their employees and extra power bills to open up that early. I just wonder who…?
It’s not that they stay open for business, but more like the stockers are already there so there’s tons of employees in the store. It doesn’t hurt to hire a cashier or two to check people out as well.
I like going food shopping when no one is there, personally. I can wander the aisles without waiting for old people and oblivious housefrau’s to move.
I refuse to shop on thanksgiving and on black friday. Other than I hate crowds, jackasses who keep pushing for earlier and earlier openings are directly to blame for fucking up peoples chance to stay at home and spend holidays with their families.
Those same jackasses who start camping out the night before just to be the first ones into the store should be shot. Stop being so fucking greedy and fucking up the schedule.
if I owned a store, I would NOT open on any major holiday, holidays are for people to spend with their families. I would also refuse to modify my schedule for black friday, or boxing day or any other shopping holiday. I would chase away people camping on my doorstep if at all possible.
The customer is NEVER always right. This is false. That attitude has started a culture of sucky customers lying cheating and outright stealing which makes the costs for products rise. If you cater to customers pitching a fit you simply treat them that rudeness and screaming will get them anything they want whether or not there is an issue that needs correction.
I have been wondering this myself, with all these Black Friday commercials advertising that places are opening as early as 4 am. I don’t get it.
Myself, I am a night owl and would probably still be up at 4 am, and if a place had an incredible deal on something I really wanted I suppose I might go, then go home and go to bed.
is there a website out there that compiles some of the most outrageous early-morning deals? The only thing I saw that made sense were some commercials (for like Walmart, Sears, whatever) selling TVs for a certain low price from 4-6 am.
Wow I totally misread the OP. I thought it was a question about shopping in general, not on Black Friday. Oops.
My daughter and I saw an Old Navy commercial last night advertising that they open at midnight on Friday. I figure they’d realized they were missing out on the ‘profligate drunk’ market.
It’s just hype - doesn’t cost the stores much to keep open, but impresses on people the need to get there as early as possible to nab a “bargain”.
The worst part is the pressure on other stores in a mall to open early if the anchor is having early-bird doorbusters. We don’t have any early special prices, but several of our stores are opening at midnight in hopes of catching some overflow. But last year, we got no business until much later in the day.
For some people, Black Friday is the ONLY day they do their Christmas shopping. They may have the day off work, relatives in visiting and they make it the social event of their weekend, the whole family heading out together to score deals. They love the hustle and bustle and the sense of urgency.
My wife goes out Black Friday at about 4:00AM, and she makes it back by 10:00AM. She likes to say that she’s out with the insane people, but not the stupid people.
Oh hell no, not me. I hate shopping on a quiet day.
Lots of folks here where I live love to do this, though. I gather that it’s kind of a tradition that family and friends do together, like watching the Super Bowl or something.
For some reason it reminds me of “tailgating”.
Issues much? :rolleyes:
Except he’s not wrong. If you give it a moment’s thought, it’s pretty seriously fucked up to camp outside a store for hours in the cold to buy stuff that will continue to be on sale for the next month. And it totally sucks that people who make $8 an hour have to be at work on Thanksgiving night to make it possible for these twits to run frothing through the store as though the world has a limited supply of sweaters and ipods.
Except those people are not camping out for items that will be on sale for the next month. They are waiting on the chance to purchase an item or two that is steeply marked down, sometimes over 50%, but is stocked in a limited quantity and will be at the sale price for only a few hours if not sold out before then.
That the products in these sales are close to but not exactly the same as the really good thing that people actually want, or that the really good thing the people are trying to get is only guaranteed to be in the store in quantities of 10 to 50 when a hundred or more people are waiting is besides the point. There is nothing in this world that compel me to try for one of these sales.
But, you mis-characterize the nature of the event by calling it a rush for sweaters and ipods. These are people who are trying to find a bargain during hard times to provide some happiness for their families, some are morons too. Direct your ire at the store that must do this at midnight or 4:00 am, as though that will dramatically add to the sales figures for the day.
The guy said that people who camp out before stores open should be shot. Sorry, but in the world of that which is “fucked up”, making such a comment (while bravely sheltered in internet anonymity) is far more so than hanging around Best Buy so you can save $400 on your Christmas shopping.
And many of the items that people camp out for is not “on sale for the next month”. They’re on sale for an hour, maybe two, and the items are usually of limited quantities.
As somebody who has done both (i.e., camped out, and had to have been at work T’giving night) I can assure you that neither is a hardship. Anecdotes are not data, but the general gist of scheduling people on holidays is that you first ask your employees who is available and schedule accordingly. As thread after thread on this very board shows, being with one’s family isn’t the universal joy that you and aruvqan make it out to be.
I don’t understand it, either. I have a friend who does it and she’s yet to explain it to me in a way I can actually fathom why she does it. Oh, well - to each his/her own.
Sometimes I wonder if the ridiculously early openings started because of overzealous parents camping out in front of toy stores waiting to get the latest and greatest new gadget or toy for little Payton and precious Johnny. I seem to remember a stampede or two over things like cabbage patch dolls and video games.
I love my children, but standing outside a store in the cold so they can have the “perfect” gift on Christmas when I can just order it online from the comfort of my home seems well worth whatever I would’ve saved by going to a Black Friday sale.
I did it once. My mother was over for Thanksgiving, and my (now ex) wife wanted to show her the craziness, so I agreed to go with them to the mall,a nd stood in line outside Best Buy for about 45 minutes before it opened.
It then took well over an hour to check out, and I realized that the $50 or so I had “saved” was so not worth the 6 hours of sleep lost. Screw that. Never again.
I think the whole thing started somewhat gradually. Friday after Thanksgiving is a natural time to do some Christmas shopping, because most people are off work that day anyway and you’re starting to think seriously about Christmas now. I can remember when I was a kid, sometimes being dragged out to the stores the day after Thanksgiving so we could buy gift wrap and check out the sales and whatnot. I don’t remember it being as much of an “event” back then, but I think stores started to realize that it was a heavy shopping day anyway, so they designed sales around it, and then people started lining up outside the door to get first crack at the really good sales, and well, here we are.
I’ll admit, I’m usually out there at 5 am with my mom and sister. Sometimes I have a hot item I want to buy (last year I got a pretty decent laptop for about $400) and sometimes I’m just there keeping them company. I get an overpriced drink from Starbucks and enjoy the festivities. Contrary to popular belief, most of the time people are in a good mood and there is a sense of camaraderie. The only time I’ve really encountered the whole “angry shoppers shoving you out of the way” thing is at Wal-Mart, where I don’t shop anymore.
Tempers do seem to start to fray by around lunchtime or so, but we usually knock off for the day by that point.
<sigh> Fine, Captain Killjoy, they should be shot with bean bag rounds.
As someone who’s been expected to work at less unreasonable (but still unreasonable) times than Thanksgiving night, I can assure you that it was absolutely a hardship, and I somehow doubt that things have changed so drastically for the better since I was in retail, when the gist was “Are you available? No? Oh, well, you’d best fix that then.”
Hey, you don’t like your family, you’re free to not spend time with them. But fuck the people, both employers and customers, who think that somebody should have to leave their family on the holiday in order to hold on to their crappy retail job, just so that they can be grabby at midnight on Thanksgiving.
OK, I can’t see getting excited about shopping at Old Navy on Black Friday, as their merchandise is crappy any time of year. But last year, I went out on the Saturday the day after Black Friday and was in Best Buy for no particular reason. They had a bunch of Blu-Ray titles for eight bucks. So I purchased the second, fourth and sixth Star Trek films, V for Vendetta, Dark City, 2001: A Space Odyssey and I think a couple of other SF titles for eight dollars each. I was happy. So since I don’t have to work tomorrow, I’m going to see if they have anything really good for cheap.