Taking part in the Black Friday madness this year?

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Thu, Nov 19 2009 | 0 Comments

Sometimes people do things that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense. Sometimes we put ourselves in the way of large crowds that will likely crush us or screaming teenagers that will make our ears bleed (New Moon is coming out tomorrow and for some reason or another I really want to go see it TOMORROW instead of waiting). Why do we do it?

Of course, this time of year has people thinking about Black Friday specials and sales. Because I am in the market for a laptop this year, I will likely be found camped outside one of the Best Buys within 2 hours of my house for the Sony Vaio that is going to be on sale that day. I have never camped outside a store for hours and hours for one of the big ticket items like this.

However, the crowds will form every single year regardless of what is on sale or what kind of tragedies happen the year before (last year the crowd of people at a Wal-Mart in New York trampled one of the employees to death and injured others). I have been in line before two years ago waiting for a Nintendo Wii and had a man walk into the store just because there was a crowd. He didn’t know what was on sale or why the people were there, but he stood in line as well.

There are going to be some measures that stores like Wal-Mart will be taking this year to try to hopefully make sure that people aren’t killing each other this year, but I’m just not looking forward to the fight for the laptops.

Then again, I know exactly why people will be camped outside some Best Buy stores DAYS before Black Friday…To save money. There are plenty of people out there with loads of time and little money who still want to buy Christmas gifts. The laptop I am after is selling for $399 or $479 with a blu-ray player. Anywhere around the internet, just with a brief search the NW series from Sony often costs around $700. I think I can stand in line for a few hours to save that much money, but I think the one thing that I’m worried about is that I’ll miss out on it.

I have, in the past, always gone to Wal-Mart on Black Friday to “people watch”. There is something strangely entertaining about watching people rip open plastic and push and shove people out of the way to get some towels, sheets, or a Barbie doll. Last year, I saw madness for EVERYTHING that the store had on sale. I didn’t ever think I would see people hurt each other over fake Christmas Trees, but it happened.

Overall, I believe that Black Friday is more about the frenzy than sales. If you follow some of the “deal” websites on the internet, then you can see that there are places throughout the year when you can find GREAT deals on things that are offered on Black Friday.

Related posts:
Retail stores want you to shop…now!
Wal-Mart is trying to get all the business this holiday season
What are retailers discounting right now?

Tags: nintendo wii, crowd of people, large crowds