I just wanted to say thank you to you all for your contributions with your Black Friday experiences. I had never attempted to purchase anything at any store on Black Friday when they first opened until this year. The last four years, including this one, I have held a seasonal retail position at an outlet mall in Texas. Luckily I work at a watch store as a sales associate where we don't open until 7am, and we don't have any of the problems these other stores have experienced. We almost always have the same sale throughout the entire holiday season, before and after Black Friday with very little variation.
Well, this year I decided I wanted to get the Circuit City Toshiba laptop, seeing as it was the best laptop deal, and there is a CC about 5 min from my house. I went to a couple friends' houses for Thanksgiving, and ended up heading home at about 9:45pm. On my way home I decided to go by CC to see if there was anyone already in line. I thought there might be a couple of people. The earliest I had heard of people getting in line was about 10pm, on this site. I figured that 12am would probably be early enough time to get one of the coveted CC laptops. Apparently I was very wrong! I was shocked when at about 10:40pm I drove into the CC parking lot to find about 30-35 people already in line! They had little children in line to! That is way too cruel! Luckily in Central Texas the temperatures are rather mild, and we are experiencing a warm front. The low for Black Friday was 58F. These folks were quite serious in line. Most of them had lawn chairs, blankets, thermoses, and I saw a few of them with portable DVD players! My word, that is crazy! No grills though... How could anyone take their children though? I guess more hands to do the grabbing once the doors opened? After taking a look around, seeing a couple more cars pull into the parking lot, I decided to rethink my earlier plan. I stopped the car and made a general survey, asking the folks in line if they were all there for the laptop, with just about all of them nodding yes. I knew that CC had only guaranteed about 15 laptops per store, and that I probably stood no chance of getting one. I am no math wiz, but 15 computers minus-30 people = at least 15 people without a laptop... most probably...
Rather than risk my chance and stay up till 5am, just for a slim chance of getting a laptop, I opted to head home and actually get a little sleep since I had to beat work the next morning at 11am. (Not to terribly bad) I was rather disappointed, but at least the first two groups in line seemed like families, and the rest of the folks were a mixture of teenagers and a few older folks, mainly the parents. I hope there were no eBay squatters... b/c I think that is pretty shiesty...
My hats off to those who were probably in line around 9pm. You are some motivated and inspired people to go through that... I am not sure if I would have got in line that early, but I never thought it necessary...
I went to sleep that night a bite disappointed and with a feeling of despair... but after reading some of these stories, I am almost glad I did go home when I did. I awoke at 6am on Friday, and did manage to go to Best Buy, Target, and Circuit City to discover most of the sale items were history. While both Circuit City and Best Buy had most the real good deals gone, they did fail to clearly mark all the discounts in the store, so that there were still some good deals. I managed a few items, including an all in one 4 function printer, scanner, copier and fax for $99. I also got a computer game for $24.95 opposed to $49.99. So not all was lost...
This was quite a learning experience… If I really want to get a hot ticket item next year, I will certainly know to be there at 6pm! Ha! I hope everybody had a good black Friday experience as a whole… Till next year…
