Yep, you read that right, the clock does say 3:24 AM. In the four years that we’ve participated in this insanity, this year has been the earliest so far. Oh, the good ol’ days when we got up at the late hour of 5 AM. Pshaw, we were such amateurs back then. We are now seasoned shoppers and we’re not afraid of throwing some bows to get what we want.
Again, Bob and I had no specific items so we followed Kenny to Walmart. That’s right, we stare at danger in the face! While standing outside, we met some guy who had gone to Toys-R-Us at midnight. It only took him 45 minutes to shop but 3 hours to check out. By the time he got out of there, he looked at his watch and said, “What the hell, might as well go to Walmart.” He must really love his kids.
Because of last year’s trampling, Walmart implemented a new system: this year’s doorbusters would be scattered around the store and you would have to stand in line, once you got inside, to be eligible for one of the doorbusters. I guess it was to eliminate the heavy crush of people rushing to get to the items. Yeah, that didn’t seem to work very well because they had blocked some of the aisles so that it funneled everyone through the main aisle passing the electronics section. Not. Efficient. At. All. I was able to get shampoo and body wash with no problems, though. For some reason, that area wasn’t busy.
After surviving the mass of humanity, we went over to the relatively quiet Best Buy and were able to grab some TVs and DVDs. We didn’t stay in the Valley after that but headed over to the mall to try and break the bank. No such luck there, we got a couple of things but nothing spectacular.
To sum it up, I was a bit disappointed with this year’s Black Friday. There wasn’t much that I wanted and there didn’t seem to be many crazy deals. Maybe it was the economy or maybe it was me being more careful with my spending, who knows. Hopefully, next year will be better.