Black Friday

My husband just dropped my daughter off at the mall to meet her cousins for a day of shopping. It has become sort of a family tradition for them. They shop, have breakfast, lunch, dinner, see a movie and do some more shopping. My daughter usually finishes hers. I have a friend who has been sitting outside of her local Target since midnight waiting for the doors to open.
As for me, I will do very little today. I'll have that wonderful turkey sandwich I have been looking forward to and watch a couple of movies, enjoying an extra day off.
Anyone out there do the shopping thing?

I stay away as far as possible!

Ham sandwiches here, and we stay home too.
 
Especially with snow on the ground.

Any shopping I do today will be of the "point and click" variety.

No shopping here but I feel sorry for all those people who work retail and have had to keep crazy hours the last few days. In order to lessen the impact of Black Friday, many stores were open Thanksgiving Day with reduced prices, some even started with early openings and sales starting Wednesday.

After exhaustive research, I've concluded that Black Friday is best spent with a beer, a turkey sandwich and the remote in hand.

All my shopping will be done via the internets this year.  Most places offer free shipping and you usually save on the sales tax(just don't tell any money grubbing politicos)
 
My wife has been out since 3:00AM

For the last 4 or 5 years, I have always stayed up on Thanksgiving night (since I am somewhat of a night person) in order to get in line at least an hour early for the Black Friday bargains. (I found out that getting in line only an hour early would always guarantee I would be able to get whatever items I wanted.) 
 
However, this year I didn't even bother.  Even though our newspaper yesterday had a section of Black Friday ads about 2 inches thick, I found absolutely nothing that I needed (or wanted) at a price I wanted to pay!  Any real bargain prices on computer products seemed to be on bottom-of-line makes and models, and most of the other electronic products didn't look to me like they had low enough prices to be bargains.  (I think I am getting a little old, and my grandson at an age of 10 months is still a little young, for zhu zhu hamsters.)

 I never have done the "Black Friday" thing. I prefer to shop online or go to the mall in the middle of the following week. I can usually find the same deals if I am willing to look around and do a little comparison shopping.
JMHO
 
David O.

I guess anyone is lucky to have a job these days but like someone else said the people in retail really get hammered. I do some merchandising work in Toyrus and the employees were none too happy to open at 10pm on Thanksgiving night and work a minimum of a 12 hour and up to 16 hour shift. Of course except in those rare states where overtime has to be paid for over an 8 hour shift these companies will make sure the employees get no overtime. Another place used to have a big spread in the back for it's employees as they rarely got to take a proper lunch or dinner break but that's gone the way of the horse and buggy.

Never did shop Black Friday, and feel sorry for those store employees who had to work Thanksgiving Day.  The weather here changed overnight, we went from high 70's to rainy, and cold, it's now about 52  - the perfect day for napping, and a good movie or book.

The idea of camping out for days so you can be at the front of the line in order to get trampeled in the ensueing stampede, when the doors open at Best Buy, is laughable!

I don't understand spending a lot of money and calling it saving.
 
I never buy anything on a Friday that I didn't need on the previous Thursday.  I save a lot of money that way.
 
I also don't like the pushing and shoving of the rabid shoppers. 

mar52


I also don't like the pushing and shoving of the rabid shoppers. 

This is probably the main reason I do almost all of my Christmas shopping online. My daughter did finish her shopping. She had a nice time bonding with her cousins and arrived home about 11:30pm. I was sound asleep!

My wife works at Kohl's and yesterday her shift went from 2:45am to 2:45pm.  The store opened at 3am and there was a large crowd of people waiting for the doors to open.
 
I went to 2 Target stores in Madison after lunch to find an external hard drive for my PC but they were both sold out.  Fortunately Target's having a 2-day sale and I was able to pick up a drive this morning at the Janesville store.
 
We do a lot of our Christmas shopping at Kohl's because of the employee discount, and try to buy locally as well.  Target and Shopko are headquartered here in the Midwest so they're our "big box" stores of choice.
 
Brad

I went to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg IL around 10:30 Fri morning. Took 15 minutes to park. Mall was shoulder to shoulder with people and baby cribs. I bought some jeans at the Gap and bailed!

The only time we shop on Black Friday is if there's an appliance or large electronic item we need.  Then we check the ads to see if anything fits the bill.  If so, we go about an hour before the store opens, go in and buy that item, leave and go have breakfast at a local diner.
 
The last time I went was two years ago to get one of our daughters a sewing machine.  It works out to shopping on BF about once every three or four years.

I never shop on black friday.  They say you can save a lot by buying that day but I can save even more if I dont buy it at all.  If I have the day off I spend it with my wife.