So I was in bed last night, and at work all day today, but all I've heard for the last 2 days is reports about "Black Friday." For those that don't know, Black Friday started as an American tradition where on the Friday after Thanksgiving (which is always the 4th Thursday in November), major retailers start their big winter sales in order to drive Christmas sales. They often drop prices to ridiculous amounts in order to drive as many sales as possible. Of course, with such sales happening, this can and has caused chaos, leading to people fighting over items and people getting hurt. This tradition is now a thing here in Britain too. The results have not been pretty. Just local to me alone, our big 24-hour Tesco supermarket was forced to close after several people were put into the hospital due to disputes that happened as a result of this day. I heard reports of a young man, roughly in his 20s, punching an elderly woman in the stomach so that she would let go of the television that she had got a hold of, just so he could get the deal himself instead. I got to work at 6am this morning, and by 8am, I saw 7 ambulances fly past. It's an absolute disgrace. By all means, try and get a hold of the best deals you can, but do you not see that it is NOT worth harming your fellow man just for an extra £20 off of a widescreen tv? Whilst pre-Christmas sales are a thing that have always existed, especially in major developed countries, Black Friday being hyped up seems to just cause nothing but harm. But nothing will be done about it. The sheer amount of money made on this day will keep companies hyping it up, and make them push this as a thing every single year. Yet the thing is that most items in the sales are often actually not the best deal you can get throughout the year - in fact, stores tend to slowly raise the prices of their products in order to then claim a larger price drop on Black Friday itself. It infuriates me. Have you had any experiences with Black Friday at all, especially this year? Did you get any good deals? Do you wish to share your thoughts on the event overall?
I didn't go, have been watching videos of it on facebook though, and yh people are crafty and aggressive, the only people they seem to have somewhat respect for is the staff, other customers they couldn't give 2 fucks about. So yh it's a shame we have one less thing to hold over the americans! I just wait for cyber monday and get deals from the safety of my home! https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=998529420170117 https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1583576528532927
Got Pokémon Alpha Sapphire at a reduced price, and got a Kyogre figurine included. It actually looks pretty good. There were massive queues in my local shopping centre, but overall people seemed to be acting normally. I didn't see any riots or other incidents.
This year Black Friday was basically Thanksgiving Day and the normal friday. Stores started opening at like 5 pm and stayed open til 1 am, and then regular hours today. Went to try and get a panasonic 50" TV from best buy, but alas they ran out of tickets, and I couldn't go try to get one today. I lost out on people who were literally waiting since 5 AM yesterday, on THANKSGIVING, for a fucking new TV. 12 hours in like 20 degree weather people waited. Oh well, I got to see some old friends from high school who were waiting too that I haven't seen for 2 years. When they ran out of tickets, I basically said fuck this and went over to Wal-Mart to get a 3DS special they had on sale, and got OR/AS, X/Y, and smash for my new 3DS Spoiler Some special mario edition on, that's what it looks like, so I call it a win. Also got a new 32" samsung smart TV b/c wal-mart was having a 30% off sale today on all samsung products. Not a 50", but hell I'll take what I can get. Surprisingly enough, Wal-Mart was organized as hell this year, and despite them being overcrowded, there weren't many instances around here of violence or anything. Maybe I haven't heard too many yet, or there hasn't been much, but stores here this year were pretty sound and on the ball handling stuff. The only problem I encountered was trying to leave the parking lot, as there was literally hundreds of people trying to leave at once or so, and there were people trying to load stuff up in the middle of the road instead of parking off to the side and loading stuff. Combine that with the new lenovo computer I got about 2 months back, and I've had a pretty good year for getting new stuff.
Last year a woman got trampled in one of the Wal-Mart's in my City as soon as the doors opened for the customer's (luckily security guard's and Officer's on duty were able to save her and calm the crowd) and a couple of fights broke out at my job (K-Mart) before we let people inside. Black Friday brings out an evil side in people that they are willing to hurt other's to get the best deal no matter the age.
Not really happy to see this come to our country like this but eventually people will probably realise that violence in their store will keep people away and the stores will make more of an effort to prevent it, as will the police force I should hope. Someone will die one year and people might then realise how ridiculous this all is when like 60% of the deals are beaten online on a daily basis. This business made my friend legitimately afraid to go into work (he works in PC World), however he was OK because by his shift most of the stock was gone that was on any kind of offer. Which is good I suppose. It's a disgraceful but not really surprising reflection of how people are, I'm not going to extend that to "these days" because people have always been like this and probably will be for a long time to come. The fun part is how ridiculously little it takes to turn people to this kind of behavior, this isn't free stuff, this isn't even reduced essentials, it's moderately reduced luxury items and people are willing to assault each other over it.
Black Friday - the most wonderful time of the year where you get to witness the true side of people with the power of store discounts. Black Friday at my local Wal-Mart last year. Between that and cheerleaders pissing in sodas and giving them to people, Saginaw is full of class and sass.