Black Thursday Shopping

[Jeepers]

Thursday (Thanksgiving evening) son and I were feeling antsy to go somewhere. So we went to fill up his gas tank on my rewards card. It was coming to the 'use it or lose it' time and I had about $1.50 per gallon off. We wondered if anything was open so to kill time we buzzed by Super Wal-Mart. OMG!

 

At about 7:30pm we decided to go in just for the experience. I needed a new porch rug anyway. We parked in the Home Depot parking lot next door and walked over to WM. Realize, we weren't one of those harried shoppers. We were just out messing around and wanted to see what it was all about. I've never seen so many people in one place in my life. They did have a lot of extra help. You could recognize the employees because they all had on yellow/green paper type vests. And the police were EVERYWHERE in the store. People were gathered around 'special buy' displays waiting for them to go on sale. I assume different items went on sale at different times. I didn't get the memo. And these were not big ticket items either. I overheard one clerk tell a customer the item didn't go on sale until 10:00pm and the customer told her buddy they needed to find a place to sit and wait...for over 2 1/2 hours! It was crazy. People were standing around items just waiting. We saw a lot of people sitting around on the floor waiting. We were in there for about 20-30 minutes people watching. There was even a huge line at the deli/bakery counter. I have no idea why. I heard one clerk say they had already sold out of one kind of TV. About the time we were getting ready to leave, my son said this is a real fire hazard. On the way out of the door we saw the fire company arrive!

 

We went by Super K-mart and stopped in. It wasn’t quite as bad but when we went in, there was a line from the registers all the way to the back of the store. As I cut through one part of the line (still hopeful of a porch rug) I asked a woman if that was the line to check out and she said yes. I thought it might be for lay-a-way or something. Nope.

 

The weather was warm outside in the high 50’s and we were bored so it was a fun spur of the moment experience with son…once. I can’t imagine planning to go in there shopping though. There is nothing I’ve ever been that desperate to buy.

 

A couple of things we noticed was there was a lot of sales help, a lot of police security, people were polite and they left the little kids safely at home. The closer to Christmas panic gift buying may not be so nice though. And here I thought everything except gas stations was closed on Thanksgiving.

 

 

Edited:

to change the little bitty font size to the mediun bitty font size. I have no idea why some of my font size changes.

Edited November 24, 2012 by Jeepers

[lumabean]

My husband and son went to the nearby Super Wal-Mart last night, my son wanted to see what it was like,and he saw a couple games in the flier that he wanted to try to get. He didn't get the games, because he thought they were the new ones but they were the old ones, but he did get a couple of things. I don't think he will be venturing out again though, just wanted to see what the hype was all about.

 

Today he went to a couple places with my mother, not early in the am though.

 

Thursday morning my mother and aunt went to KMart, thinking they'd hit a 6am sale and then get home, well they left with nothing they thought they'd get -- by the time they got there, they ended up being toward the end of the line. Apparently the people at the front of the line got there at 8:30 pm the previous night So of course my mother and aunt thinking they'd swing by at quarter to 6 that morning didn't work out when there were far more dedicated shoppers. I think those folks had to maybe be out for the 'fun' of it, because I don't recall seeing any fantastic, stay up all night deals advertised. (but then again, i am not a power shopper, so I would be hard pressed to find anything I would be looking to stay in line all night for ... )

[Jeepers]

I wasn't out Christmas shopping so it was just a fun adventure for us. I did scope out a couple of things that weren't on sale that I'll go back and get Monday. I found a porch rug I'll go back to get. I wasn't standing in those lines for 1 rug.

 

And, it isn't a porch rug. It's a door mat! I swear, I can't think of the names for anything any more.

[Andrea]

I didn't hit a single sale or even look through any of the sales flyers. I stayed home and worked. It was nice to actually earn money instead of spend it.

[out_of_the_ordinary]

We did our regular weekly grocery shopping this morning (Sat morning) and it was GREAT--no crowds at all! Walmart, Sam's, the local grocery store all seemed dead--barely anyone there at all. It was nice because usually we've been standing in lines quite awhile even with getting up early to shop on the weekends.

 

I like looking through the Black Friday ads, but don't shop it. This year, there were very few things I would have been interested in if we did shop it. DH decided to venture out yesterday afternoon (with a 50% off coupon for Joanne fabrics) to do some shopping. I don't know where all he went. He thought the crowds would be all gone. He was wrong and came home a bit stressed.

 

 

I did some looking-at-things-online-then-calling-a-catalog-orders in today. Puritian Pride's vitamins has free shipping this weekend and some extra sales. This was the first time I've ever called Cabela's where I've gotten a busy signal! Took over 20 minutes to get through and then was on hold awhile. (I didn't mind. I'd rather be on hold than standing in line. Plus, the people that take their calls are always so nice. ) They're running a free shipping with their Visa card, so I took advantage of that, too.