Every year the craze surrounding Black Friday manages to get even more frenzied and insane.
Bigger deals. Longer lines. Crazier people.
And this year with an introduced game changer – stores opening on Thursday night – Black Friday seems to have reached a new level of manic, attack-driven shopping.
I decided that this year I needed to see first hand what Black Friday (or Thursday) was all about. Fueled more by curiosity than purchasing, I staked out the shopping plaza that houses both a Best Buy and Wal-Mart on Dale Mabry and 275.
Parking was limited, more like non-existent, and people were already lined up around Best Buy in lawn chairs and tents. Harry Potter played on a the side of a solid white semi-truck entertaining the shoppers – who sat on cement, playing cards and eating snacks – lined up the length of a football field.
It was 9:30 pm and another 2 and half hours before the doors to Best Buy would open.
Wal-Mart planned their Black Friday in a different fashion and allowed shoppers to enter the store early and wait inside for the deals – which would be released in two intervals at 10pm and 12pm. It was packed.
Inside people waded through the crowd assessing plastic wrapped pallets of holiday gems – cheap tupperware sets, children’s holiday pajamas, and newly released DVD’s – picking out their object of desire as they waited for the clock to strike 10 pm. Other, more competitive and serious shoppers stood intimidatingly around piles of electronic gold – complete computer sets, 26 inch flat screens, and Xbox Kinects – staking their claim on a product by resting a hand on their object and offering solemn glances to the competition around them.
This Black Friday shopping was some serious business.
And at 10pm sharp, I got what I came for. No, not a $200 46″ flat screen or $10 DVD player. I got to see a frenzied feeding on $30 video games.
The video speaks for itself – a sea of shoppers ripping apart a pallet of Xbox and PS3 games, scurrying around frantically grabbing at video games, much of which ended up being tossed to the side by people who simply grabbed the wrong game.
It takes more than strategy to get what you want at Black Friday.
It take courage and a might to fight through the masses – something I myself don’t have.
I spent my Black Friday just wandering through the herds of shoppers – some joyfully amused by the chaos and others eerily intense and focused – just enjoying the biggest deal of the year, free entertainment.