Black Friday: Stories from the Trenches

If shopping was a sport then Black Friday would be the Olympics. The real question then, is what feat would be worthy of a gold medal: Camping out hours before the store opens? Scoring that limited quantity doorbuster? Waiting in a 2-hour line just to pay? Read on for some first-hand tales!

Black Friday is a day some could care less about, but for others it’s a day they anticipate all year long. They check online sites for the ads in advance and get up before the sun to head out into the epic battle for the parking space. (Never mind what happens when they actually get inside the store.) I’m pretty sure the characters in RPG’s do less planning before they tackle the final boss. But I am one of those people who ventures out on the day we’ve come to know as Black Friday. Some call those like me insane, others call us warriors. …Okay, nobody calls us that. I just thought it sounded cool. The thing about Black Friday for me is, you may not remember what you bought, but you remember the drug-like rush you got from getting there. It’s an experience that changes every year. And although I’ve never done any of the “gold medal” worthy events I mentioned earlier – I am not that crazy, thankyouverymuch – I do have stories from the trenches.

2006: The Search for Wii

2006 was a big year for gamers. Both the PS3 and Wii were out right in time for the holiday rush. As a loyal Nintendo fan, I was very excited to get my hands on their latest system. Unfortunately, due to a series of misunderstandings I had missed out nabbing a preorder. So I had to try and hunt one down. And I was devoted to my mission – ask anybody who’s played me in Mario Party – I’m competitive.

Getting one on launch day was a big failure, so I next set my sights on Black Friday. My parents always used to take my sister and I out shopping on Black Friday, but they weren’t the kind of nutcases to get up at the crack of dawn, so this was my first experience of setting my alarm clock for a time my body didn’t approve of just to go shopping. My target store was a Gamestop located in an out of the way, kind of sleepy shopping plaza I thought would be overlooked by the throngs of bargin shoppers. My fiancé (at the time, we’ve since sealed the deal.) and I peeled ourselves out of bed, stumbled blindly into the car and headed over to the store. I had hope that in a few hours I would have my Wii and all would finally be put right with the universe. Also, bowling looked really fun.

I'll never have to blow into it to get the games to play!

Well, I soon learned my first Black Friday lesson. If you really want something, arrive earlier than you think you should arrive. By the time we showed up at that “sleepy out of the way” shopping plaza, the line outside the Gamestop was already over a dozen people deep. And guess how many Wii’s they had? Ten. And guess how many people in front of us were standing in the freezing cold New York morning air to buy a freaking Wii? Ten? No. Thirteen. So even if somebody’s credit card was bad, there was somebody else ready to step into place. The odds of three credit cards failing? Well…I don’t even think C-3P0 would want to calculate that.

Sad and dejected (and too stubborn to give up), we waited in the line anyway, hoping the video game gods would simple upon us. And I just kept bitterly thinking that since I was probably playing Nintendo longer than any of the kids on the receiving end of those Wii’s had been alive, I should be the one getting a damn Wii. Now that’s the holiday spirit!

Of course, everyone in front of us paid for their precious Wii’s without a problem. It was painful. Like watching someone scarf down some Coldstone when you’re on a diet. I did end up making a purchase that morning – a case for my DS that I only remember buying because I still use it. We then returned to our car, dejected and discouraged, but vowing to fight again for our darling Wii another day. My first Black Friday experience have been a disappointment, but a tradition had been born.

And in case you’re wondering, I did end up getting a Wii that holiday season. That story, which involves an early morning train, an Upper West Side family, a mistaken plastic bag, and a race to Times Square is a story for another time.

2007: Little Outlets of Horror

I don’t remember whose bright idea it was to head to the outlet center this Black Friday, but I’m not going to take the blame for it. This outlet center wasn’t too far from the apartment my new husband and I were renting, so my sister and a few friends piled into our Jeep and headed over there on Thanksgiving night.

Yes, I said Thanksgiving night.

The outlets were scheduled to open at midnight and this being the type of outlet center that bussed in tourists on a normal weekend – we were prepared for crowds. We arrived shortly after nine and scored a fantastic parking spot right in front of the Ugg outlet. Then we sat and laughed and talked and waited. And waited. And waited. The parking lot slowly started to fill. The Ugg store started to grow a line. Just before eleven the men were sent out on a scouting mission and came back reporting that some of the stores were already open. Oh, and the Coach store had a line that practically stretched back to the parking lot, like they were giving away free bags just for breathing.

Now I was getting a little nervous.

We got out of the car and started to look around. Not all of the shops were open, and many of those that did had lines just to get in. That night it was bitterly cold – so cold I would not have been surprised to find penguins shuffling by me clutching Northface bags. It didn’t take long before my only criteria for entering a store was that it was open and had no line. I would have ducked into any store to get out of that biting wind – even the Big Brutal House of Torture Devices, should that curiously exist. Most of the stores weren’t even having special deals, and yet here I was making a death march across what was quickly feeling like the surface of Hoth. Shivering with my gloved hands shoved into my pockets as far as they could go, I was quickly starting to think coming here was a huge mistake worthy of Gob Bluth.

Emerging bagless from Nordstrom Rack, where the only thing worthwhile was functioning heat, I noticed some teenagers thought it would be funny to use a dollar’s worth of fake Halloween blood and dress up as “retail zombies” – making fun of the people who showed up in the middle of the night hoping to score some deals on designer brands. All I could think was how dumb they were to be out in this horrid weather for absolutely no reason at all. It was barely worth it if you actually were shopping! So they were just making themselves look bad. (Also, shopping is good for the economy, which was about to collapse, so maybe a year from now those kids would have been changing their tune.)

Anyway, we had some minor success at a few stores and then we wound up stumbling into the modest food court to warm up with some hot beverages. Despite my heavy coat, gloves, hat and scarf I was still freezing and miserable. (Even in spite of the reasonably priced LeSportsac bag I scored.) Everyone else was also feeling a bit discouraged, so we decided to hit up one more store – The Gap. It was a larger store, so we had hopes that we’d be in and out fairly quickly.

Getting to The Gap outlet meant finding a break in the Coach line, which seemed to be stretching back to Connecticut by this point. Still clutching my warm tea we reached the miniscule line outside The Gap outlet – where I discovered beverages would not be permitted inside.

They don't give out gold or anything. They're bags! They're nice, but they're bags! Calm yourself!

I was not about to part with my tea. Not only because buying it from the Au Bon Pain in the food court of the luxury outlet wasn’t exactly cheap, not because I had hardly drank any of it because I drink slower than a snail slinks up a hill, but because it was freaking freezing outside! And that water was clinging to what felt like the only warmth left in the world! The thought of getting rid of it felt like missing the last lifeboat off the Titanic. I decided to find a way to sneak it inside.

Well, my brain must have been frozen along with my extremities because my brilliant idea was to put it in my pocket. I know, my brain should be studied for future generations, right? I figured, since there was a lid on it, it would be fine nestled in there. Granted, it was a flimsy lid composed of whatever plastic half a penny can buy, but a lid was a lid. The liquid would be secure. The cup went in my pocket and I filed into the store with my contraband heading up my jacket.

The Gap was having amazing sales, so I got right to work snatching up whatever caught my eye. I was reaching for a stack of long sleeved T’s when I felt the first drips of the wet warmth seeping through my sweater. The impenetrable fortress that was that stupid flimsy plastic lid had been breached and the damn cup had tipped over in my pocket. Physics: 1. Brain: 0.

Did that stop me from shopping? Heck no. It was warm water, not lava. Momentarily stunned and cursing this most recent display of stupidity, I fished the cup out of my pocket and finished my shopping in my soggy coat. This is the big time, after all. There’s no time to dawdle!

The Gap had their act together and check out went quickly despite the sizeable line. But as I walk/ran back to the car in my damp jacket I did not feel the night was at all worth it, and loudly declared I was never coming back to the outlets on Black Friday ever again.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, there were several lines of cars backed up onto the highway waiting just to get in to the parking lot. At almost one o’clock on a frigid morning. Those people were in for a surprise when they saw the Coach line. As much as I love Black Friday…there is plenty about it I’ll never understand.

2008: The Perfect Shop

After less than stellar experiences at strip malls and outlet malls we decided to tackle a new challenge come 2008: the regular mall.

…Also free standing stores in the general vicinity. But that doesn’t sound as good.

Besides wanting to buy gifts and the usual stuff for ourselves we were always able to justify, my husband and I had recently closed on a house. And we genuinely needed stuff. So I spent a good part of Thanksgiving circling what I wanted in flyers and, bolstered by the info I had gained online, set the alarm for five a.m. Although it seemed to go off only five minutes later, as insanely early times like that are known to do, we peeled ourselves out of bed and headed off into the night.

I don’t think the kind of morning we had that Black Friday can ever be replicated again. It was a magical morning. Unicorns should have been frolicking out of the bushes – that’s how out of the ordinary it was.

"Follow me to the gold at the end of the rainbow!"

After experiencing two chaotic Black Friday’s, I was expecting to see Viking-like mob scenes, with fists flying over the last discounted Lego set and multiple old people being sacrificed to the stampede. What I got…what I got was serenity. Well, for Black Friday anyway. There were still people around but I never felt crushed or crowded. I never got pushed or rammed by a wayward stroller. No shopping carts ran over my feet. We even had no trouble finding a parking space. Lines were manageable everywhere – even at Target, where I swear I waited no more than two minutes to check out. And nothing I wanted had its “limited quantities” snatched within seconds of opening. Not one single thing that I had my eye on that morning had sold out before I got there. Lego set from Target? Check. Rug from Kmart? Check. Bargain priced printer from a dying Circuit City? Check. Of course it was the last printer, so there was that extra feeling of accomplishment there. Whenever you get the last of something you feel like Indiana Jones, don’t you? Like you’re now in the possession of this extremely valuable and rare artifact. That costs 29.99.

That morning was a dream. After my final stop at JC Penney I got back into the car and wondered what all the fuss was about over the supposed Black Friday madness. I felt like my previous experiences had been freak occurrences – hunting for the season’s hottest toy and venturing to the crazy outlet mall where the nutcases apparently gather like ants on sugar.  This was the first time I came away from Black Friday positive I would do it all over again the next year.

After the experience I had last year… I’m really starting to believe 2008 was some kind of Inception-like dream…

2009: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Mall

When I set my alarm wrong, and we got up late, that should have been a sign. A little voice in my head should have piped up and said ‘Noooo! Don’t do it! Go back to bed!’ But instead I just cursed my failure to operate my own iPhone correctly and woke everybody up. We weren’t running that late, after all. I’d set it for 5, it was like 5:17. We had a plan of attack. We were organized. My husband, sister and I left the house in the hands of my slumbering brother-in-law and headed off to the same mall that had been calm and orderly the year before.

The ghost of Black Friday present.

I don’t know if last year was the Twilight Zone, or some kind of bizarro experience, but as soon as we pulled into the parking lot I knew this year was going to be the polar opposite of last year’s pleasant experience.

There was not a spot to be found in that parking lot. We had to go all the way to the back to finally find a space we could nab. Best Buy had a line wrapping around the store. All we wanted was a Bluray player – we already had one that we had bought last Black Friday, but we decided that one sucked and we needed a new one. (Yes, we also bought one at a pre-Black Friday sale this year. It’s become some kind of ridiculous tradition. I think we’re good this time though. For real.) My husband grabbed it quickly enough and joined the hoard, but I soon realized that I had already made my second stupid mistake of the day by forgetting our Best Buy gift certificates at home. Two dumb mistakes at and it’s not even 6 in the morning yet? I was on a roll…

My sister grabbed some DVD’s – I told her she was crazy to wait on line for stuff I knew she could nab on the web when we got home, so we high tailed it out of there and went into Old Navy, which was another swarm of people. Together we gathered a pile of merchandise and guess who got to wait in the line? Not me! Hell no! I don’t wait in hour long lines for sweat pants. My saint-like sister stood there with the pushy moms while I decided to scout out the rest of the stores I was interested in.

Target – forget it. I don’t know where the store I had enjoyed shopping in last year had gone, but its nasty cousin with a line wrapping around the store and police peppered about appeared in its place. I backed out immediately.

I was already frustrated at how things were going. Where was last year’s calm and orderly Black Friday? How could things change this much in a year? My mom was actually on her way up to shop with us – I told her not to bother and go to my house instead. I wouldn’t have told my worst enemy to brave what I was dealing with. I felt like I needed protective gear to be heading into these stores.

Leaving the craziness of Target in my dust, I hustled over to Bath and Body Works and JC Penney, both of which were far calmer. I was able to make purchases without putting up large chunks of my lifespan as collateral. While waiting in the miniscule line at JC Penney I chatted with a fellow shopper who told me of a fight at Target over a TV. That explained the cops! My brain still was trying to process how one year could be so starkly different from another. The deals weren’t that fantastic. And if you fight over a TV, I’m sorry, but you need therapy. There must be some gaping hole in your life that you thought a discounted TV would fill.

After shopping and checking out at two stores I returned to Old Navy where my sister was still waiting in line. My husband had joined her. Clearly we were all losing our minds. After waiting in line for over an hour we finally had a bag of purchases from Old Navy. And then we freaking left, went home, and shopped on the internet, where many of the deals were available. And I swore up and down that I was never, ever, ever, EVER going to go out on Black Friday ever again. Plenty of the deals are available online anyway, and don’t involve getting up at the crack of ‘omg WHAT time is it?!’ – it’s just not worth it.

But…

My husband brought it up a few weeks ago.

“We going out on Black Friday?” he asked.

I hesitated. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to wait in a 45 minute line at Best Buy?”

“I don’t mind.”

I’ve mentioned that strange allure to Black Friday. The call of battle. Of competition. Of seeing what you can accomplish. It’s messed up, but at least I’m aware of that, so I manage to feel a teeny bit better about it.

“Okay, let’s do it,” I said.

I’ll let you know how it goes.