Every year as the temperatures start to dip and a frosty, holiday tang creeps into the air, my loving family gathers around the dinner table to begin our heart-warming, age-old tradition: planning for the after-Thanksgiving sales.
This is not something done lightly. My wife Teresa is an experienced, battle-hardened shopper, veteran of a thousand garage sales, merciless wielder of coupons and walking encyclopedia of comparison prices. No sales escape her eye, no markdowns evade her grasp. And this, this is her finest hour.
Every Thanksgiving, as we sit around the table and groan in a celebratory manner, Teresa and her brother Rodger spread out the ads and begin making their plans.
“Best Buy’s always a rough one. Anything worth it this year?” she’ll ask.
Rodger will look up from where he’s marking out troop deployments on a map of the Volusia Mall. “DVD player,” he’ll mutter. “We’re taking it, and taking it hard.”
Neither one will have eaten much, despite the fine meal. Too encumbering. On the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — the slow and the weak get left behind and an extra slice of turkey could mean you don’t get the last half-price digital camera.
Black Friday is the retailer’s day of reckoning, when they reckon people will sudden wake up from their turkey-induced comas and realize there’s less than a month left until Christmas. It seems to work. Last year we spent over $7 billion dollars on Black Friday. That’s we-the-country, not we-my-family. My family accounted for less than half of that.
Retailers, delighted that they have their own national holiday, have jacked up the excitement by offering incredible deals for just that day, sometimes for just the first few hours of business. Of course this results in shoppers politely helping each other find the best deals in a spirit of wholesome togetherness.
Just kidding! It’s a consumer bloodfest, more exciting, more graphic, and more dangerous than any video game on the market. Which isn’t a bad idea… Coming soon: “Medal of Honor: Wal-Mart.”
Most savvy shoppers, wary from previous years, pick up some basic maneuvers. They learn to get to the stores early, possibly hours before they open, because every store gets maybe 10 units of one insanely priced item and grappling for position starts long before the pimply-faced guy opens the front door. You come in pairs or teams so that you can spread out over the store and snag more bargains at once, often coordinating by cell phone or walkie-talkie. Sneakier shoppers might even buy the desired item a day early so they can refund and re-purchase it the morning of the sale to get the lower price without hassle.
Amateurs.
Teresa and Rodger chuckle at such feeble antics as they move through the store like figure skaters on a SEAL team. They work in effortless tandem, although both have their own individual styles.
Rodger favors distractions, such as yelling “Hey! $20 iPods in the children’s clothing section! Wow!” and then avoiding the stampede by doing a shoulder-roll into the electronics department where he can shop at leisure.
Teresa, the retail Mata Hari, prefers the covert approach, cultivating moles inside the stores to hide choice items in obscure places for her to casually pick up while the ignorant crowds skirmish around the floor stacks. For tricky purchases she has a variety of colored vests so she can browse the warehouse stock without arousing suspicion. Waiting in line is for beginners.
Lately there’s been an upswing in online Black Friday sales, which somehow takes all the fun out of it. How can you say you’ve truly acquired something if you didn’t have to defeat a rampaging mob to get it?
Online shopping is not for us, not this day. Already the cars have been gassed, the phones have been charged, the water bottles have been readied, and the credit card holsters have been oiled. Brace yourselves, shoppers. My wife is coming for you.
She loves the sound of Muzak in the morning. It sounds like… victory.