Both of Us .org

The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. Store after store offers "amazing low prices" on a variety of items. This spurs people to line up hours before the store opens. Most stores open at 6 AM, some at 4 AM and some at midnight.

What follows is a description of my trip to Rosedale Mall for a Black Friday shopping experience. (Full disclosure: Herbergers had a great sale price on 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton bed sheets; Both JayBee and I are sheet whores.) I left home for the mall at about 10 AM, well after the frenzy of store openings many hours earlier.

My drive to the mall was uneventful. Little traffic could be found on the streets of NE Minneapolis. As I entered Roseville and approached the entrance to the mall, that changed.

Immediately I realized that this would not be an ordinary shopping trip. The mall parking lot seemed completely full. I wisely chose to look for a spot as far away from the mall entrance as possible to avoid the frustration of endless circling. People honked horns from their cars and drove recklessly, ignoring pedestrians trying to cross the parking lot. I entered the mall through the Macy's entrance.

Although the stores had opened many hours before, there remained a sense of urgency in the wild eyed shoppers. The store was packed with a diverse throng of people. Some shoppers wandered aimlessly, stopping without notice in the middle of a busy aisle, noticing some trinket or changing direction, oblivious to those they would bump into. This inhibited my progress, but I eventually made it from Macy's into the belly of the mall.

Rosedale Mall itself was easier to navigate. It seemed the main draw was not boutiques or specialty stores in the mall, but the larger department stores. I found this to be true when I reached Herbergers, packed just as full as Macy's. I made my way to the home section and found a few remaining sets of sheets which I quickly snatched up. I went toward the checkout and found that each line contained dozens of people. I began my wait.

The line I choose to stand in was headed by a woman who somehow caused the line to stall for at least ten minutes, but eventually the line did move. While waiting in line I was privy to several vapid conversations. "Has this line moved at all?" "Do you think we can use all these coupons on the door buster prices?" There was an elderly woman in line who made a purchase of two hand towels and some trinket for the grand total of $5.79. I marveled that this woman endured the throngs of people and stood in line for more than twenty minutes just to buy two towels, saving perhaps two dollars.

After spending twenty or more minutes in line, I was able to check out. I was surprised at the friendliness of the store clerks, who had certainly endured many hours of crazy customers. The whole trip from start to finish was slightly over an hour, not terribly painful, and somewhat instructive on a societal level in regards to who we are as Americans.

It strikes me most during times like Black Friday that sometimes we Americans are little more than sheep. We are easily rounded up and told what to do. We obey. There were good deals on items, but were those deals really worth waking up early, spending time in line waiting for a store to open, and eventually rushing into the store like a stampede of cattle? Have we considered that the hours of time spent in lines and in traffic today may be worth more than the 10-50% they saved on some items? Time is money.

The process of waiting in line, rushing into the store, and hoarding items struck me as bizarre. After my shopping experience was complete, I saw news reports showing throngs of people rushing into stores. To someone from another culture, this might appear to be people rushing to obtain something in dire need, perhaps food or water in very short supply. The opposite is true. People rushed into the store for items which are always there and are almost never in short supply.

Maybe a foreign person viewing this scene would think the rush into these buildings was an attempt to attend some rare event. Perhaps a highly respected person was speaking or a talented artist was performing. This also was not the case. Most of the people rushing into these stores had shopped at this mall days earlier and shop there many times per month. The act of shopping at any particular store is widely accessible.

On Black Friday, Americans wake up in the middle of the night, travel miles and navigate a tangle of traffic, spending hours waiting in line for stores to open. We push, bump, and seemingly trample fellow shoppers to wait in lines for hours to realize some percent decrease in the price of some items.

Why does this happen? The week before Thanksgiving mas media pounds into our collective heads endless advertisements suggesting these sales are a golden opportunity. We dutifully obey the marketing people.

According to the figures on the nightly news, we spent upwards of $20 billion dollars on unneeded items which were for the most part made in China.

Labels: perspective