Black Friday Shopping Hell Trip

[toss]

Black friday is named as such since all the Big Retailers spend all year in the Red until today. Thats what I heard. Scroll down to the end to see what I got for cheap.

So me and my bros head over to Best Buys at 4am an hour before the store is to open. I'm not expecting to see many people there so I'm unpleasantly surprised to see a huge line zig-zagging across the parking lot and heading across the block. These people really enjoy their sales. I grab a flyer to see what kinda deals they have. Kodak 5MP Camera for $130, Panasonic MiniDV Camcorder for $250, Insignia Portable 7" DVD Player for $70, Seinfield and 24 Season Box Sets for $20. Some good stuff. I get in line way back in the end while my brother headed over to Staples. I later found out that these poeple have been waiting for 4 hours since CompUSA nextdoor had a midnight sale. I'm in the store by 5:10am and find myself in total chaos. Everyone had a crazed panicked look on their face as they rushed from aisle to aisle. All the hot items were already gone. A massive line to the cash registers had already formed. I swam through the crowds looking for anything, but I find nothing. I gave up and headed to Staples.

Its now 6am and the doors had just opened. Its funny how those 7 people in line in front of you somehow swells up into 70. We quietly shuffle into the store and until someone makes a move at which point the whole line broke into a mad dash for the doorbuster items. People pushed from all sides trying to get ahead and claim the vouchers for the most popular deals. I grabbed a hand cart and ran my ass off dodging all the other guys like it was football. Pure pandemonium. I tossed myself into the crowd. I didn't know what I was getting. All I knew was that everyone wanted one. I manage to grab a couple of vouchers for who knows what and box that everyone seem to want. People were trampled, tempers were lost, blood was shed. Inevitably a fight broke out between 5 or 6 people. Staples didn't know what hit them.

Heres what I ended up with:

Paper Shredder for free.

Sandisk 512MB for $13.

Proton 7" DVD Player for $90.

200GB Internal Hard Drive for $30.

Final thoughts: Never again.

[IggyWH]

After going to Best Buy one morning for BF and having worked 3 (1 at Toys R Us and 2 at Dick's Sporting Goods), I now don't leave my house on BF.

There are some good deals that you can get, but in the end, it isn't worth all the hassle.

[Dominic]

I drove to Circuit City this morning at 5am and found the parking lot full, a line snaking around the whole goddamned building, and another line of cars running down the street waiting to get in.

People are nuts.

I went home.

[daryn]

Best Buys

"LOL"

oopsies

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
I drove to Circuit City this morning at 5am and...


People are nuts.


[/ QUOTE ]

These two things made me giggle like a drunk teenage girl sitting on a feather.

[youtalkfunny]

I went to Walgreens for some milk about 6:00 this morning. As I walked in, a group of women walked in just ahead of me, and asked a clerk where the DVD players were. I figured it must be a BF thing. "In the corner, near the camera area," pointing toward the big Drop Off Your Film counter.

I had to walk past there to get my milk. As I tried to pass these three women, THEIR ELBOWS CAME UP. They weren't swinging them--they may not have even been conscious of what their arms were doing. But those elbows definitely came up, and they definitely relaxed when I passed the cameras and headed for the dairy case.

Read a great post elsewhere about a guy's fight to get one of 15 cheap laptops at WalMart. 150 people surrounding a single pallet; NONE of them leaving when the manager reminded them there were only 15 available; WalMart lady employee screaming for her life as pandemonium breaks out as soon as she cuts the tape on the pallet; our hero gets the first laptop, then has to fight his way through the crowd to get away from the pallet, as two different people tried to jerk the laptop from his hands.

His post also ended with the words, "Never again."

I also found it funny that he was up at that hour, in the middle of that fight, and putting down everyone else involved as "nuts".

[Dominic]

I posted in another thread how I got up at 5am to be at Circuit city to buy an HDTV I wanted. I got there only to be met by literally a thousand or so people who had been waiting on line for the whole damn night!

I shrugged, turned around and went to bed.

I went back to Circuit City at 3:00pm and got exactly what I wanted, with no hassle or wait involved.

People are stupid.

[Russ McGinley]

I used to work at CompUSA and on Black Friday two years ago (my first BF in a retail store), I vowed never to work at any retail store on BF again. Holy poop on a stick, I got to work at like 5am (store opened at 6) and there were already a hundred people standing outside. I was afraid for my life when I manually pried the doors open because I thought not only would I be trampled upon by morans thinking I'm opening the store, but now said morans now know that the doors were not locked and they can just come on in. Thankfully they didn't, but we got bumrushed at 6:00:01 when the store manager opened up. People swarmed the store like there was a nuclear war outside and our building was the only safe haven. I worked at the tech shop counter where I normally only got dumb computer questions and the obvious repair work. I had a line of people at my counter of at least 20 within seconds. Someone asked me to go get some hard drives from a top shelf that was about 15 feet away from the counter. I didn't make it back to the counter for another 20 minutes. Every time I took a step, I got hassled by somebody looking for something. I've never wanted to commit mass murder more than on that day. I literally could not see any part of the floor for about 3 hours as it was totally covered by people.

Good deal on the HDD though.

[radar5]

[ QUOTE ]
After going to Best Buy one morning for BF and having worked 3 (1 at Toys R Us and 2 at Dick's Sporting Goods), I now don't leave my house on BF.

There are some good deals that you can get, but in the end, it isn't worth all the hassle.

[/ QUOTE ]

I did a double take here, but I figuured it out.....slowly

Bad Iggy...