I went out in the a.m. this morning, I was in Target at 0430. NO ONE hardly there…literally were more employees than customers. All the checkout stands EMPTY, with cashiers waiting in front for someone to come up. So, I go cruising up the strip where all the big stores/malls are, and I mean NEAR EMTPY parking lots. Best Buy lot was 2/3 empty.
Belks, J.C. Penny/Sears only a few dozen cars. Went past two 1/4 full Walmarts, then on to the one next to me. If there were 50 people in this Walmart Id be shocked. I bought some grocery items and split.
Hell, IHOP had more people in it this morning than these stores.
Taget had STACKS of tv’s and other stuff, with like 3-4 employee’s standing there to help, only no one was there to be helped!
Whats every body elses experiance? If the rest of the USA is like the Huntsville/Madison Al. area…gonna be some places in dire straights after the holidays.
Walmart started at 8pm, target at 9pm, best buy at 12 midnight. If anything, it was done by 4am lol. I know we turned in at 3am after doing dicks, target, prime outlets, kohls and Walmart.
Black Friday? That requires spare money to participate in right? Yea, I dont have any of that.
That also requires you to get up before the sun on a day off, yea I dont participate in that either.
Wow Carlo!
Take a knee. Drink water. 
-Jax
Local news is reporting a very low turnout. Reporters standing in Best Buy with an empty showroom in the background at 6:30am. Reports that there is very low volume at the traditional malls/stores. News anchors seem to be a little freaked and perplexed why there are no crazy masses of idiots yelling and screaming as they enter the doors.
I would not be surprised to see this reported as the norm across the country. Despite the gobernment spouting that everything and the economy is business as usual, the reality is most Americans have less disposable income to spend.
For those following the situation/economy, it sure would appear to be another indicator of the furthering decline of our country’s economic health. Scary considering some retailers absolutely DEPEND upon these traditional spending/feeding frenzys for survival. If it is a national trend, the slide downward is getting faster…
Am I really reading this on M4carbean?:stop:
Well, there’s probably a couple factors that could be at play here-
- Most retail stores, from what I noticed, did not do a traditional black friday event- what did it used to be, like 5:30- 12 in the afternoon, one day only and limited stock, IN the store only. So people HAD to turn out early and in large numbers.
Now it’s more like “Black Weekend”- seriously, Walmart has 3 different “events” on three different days, and even DSG started their specials what, 3 days early, as did some other stores, and as Carlo mentioned, at different times in the day AND, NOT actually “on” friday (and then of course “cyber-monday” afterwards).
So if the majority of people cashed in early, then yeah, the reporters expecting to get droves of people showing up ON friday morning, are going to be disappointed and panic. But then gettting info wrong and panicking is pretty much expected of them these days, so I see no reason to be surprised. 
- The internet. Do I really need to say more? This year, I did all my ‘end-of-year’ shopping online- I have not set foot in a retail store in a while actually…
That being said…
I would totally expect this year to be smaller than last year- and if anyone recalls, companies/news were spazzing out last year too, due to lowered turnout/sales.
Agreed completely.
Meanwhile, in the animal kingdom: http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104668&article=10591459
Gotta love the comments below that video clip:
“God, I hope the Mayan calendar was right.” :suicide:
I hope it was a bust all over.
They start the commercial Christmas promotion early enough as it is. Let Thanksgiving Day be Thanksgiving Day.
And I hope all the employees at various stores who were required to work on Thanksgiving and who now will likely be laid off due to low turnout all voted for Obama.
Eat your Twinkie dinner and realize you have four more years of this ahead of you.
Interesting article which outlines all the varied ways in which “Black Friday” is a total marketing come on:
From the article cited above:
[i]"There are many, many reasons not to participate in Black Friday. Maybe you like sleeping in and spending time with family more than lining up in a mall parking lot at 2 a.m. Maybe you object on humanitarian grounds to the ever-earlier opening times, which force employees of big-box retailers to cut their holidays short by reporting to work in the middle of the night. (Or, increasingly, on Thanksgiving itself.)
But among the most potent reasons no sane person should participate in Black Friday is this: It is carefully designed to make you behave like an idiot.
The big problem with Black Friday, from a behavioral economist’s perspective, is that every incentive a consumer could possibly have to participate — the promise of “doorbuster” deals on big-ticket items like TVs and computers, the opportunity to get all your holiday shopping done at once — is either largely illusory or outweighed by a disincentive on the other side. It’s a nationwide experiment in consumer irrationality, dressed up as a cheerful holiday add-on."[/i]
Thanksgiving Day should be left alone, and hopefully all the big box stores did poor enough to agree on that. But I had two family members who had to leave the festivities early so they could take a nap before their 11hr shift. They most certainly didn’t ask for the hours, and both are very conservative. I’ve been trying to convince my dad to quit, especially since he has to pay back social security once he hits an (extremely low) income cap. He won’t do it out of devotion. You can certainly argue with that, since the store doesn’t give a shit about him.
We are running a skeleton crew at our store today. It’s -20F outside and I need to be open for emergencies since I’m the only hardware store within 60 miles. Otherwise, I’d give my folks the day off. I can’t imagine telling my employees they have to come in to work overnight Thanksgiving night, much less get up early on Friday. This whole black Friday deal is just another example to me of how far we have descended as a culture (sorry Carlo)… It’s not like that shit isn’t going to be on sale for nearly the same price sometime between now and Christmas.
That video linked above is titled, “Walmart Black Friday Fighting Over Phones During 2012, White People At Like Animals”… plenty of minorities in the second part of the video. Funny how the race card gets thrown down by both sides on this…
I’ve been encouraging my friends to take advantage of the 4 day weekend (if you get it) and make it Family Friday…not Black Friday. We’re doing something exciting today…:sad: changing the oil in our vehicles. We had big plans, but the cold temps kind of shut that down.
amazon & shopping mostly done 
no desire to go out on black fri days anymore
I hit a couple of places but I am glad I didn’t have long lines to wait it. Our local stores in my area were pretty normal, maybe a little above, but the malls were completely assholes and elbows.
Also, don’t forget the lousy economy and worse job outlook. I went out to a couple of stores with my sister and brother-by-law. They bought a few items but I did not buy anything because I currently do not have a source of income.
I suspect that the almost 100,000 who lost their jobs since the elections are in the same boat along with those who have been unemployed even before that.
No money to spend and I never go ‘out’ on BF anyways.
As Carlo noted above, Black Friday actually started on Thanksgiving Thursday around 20:00 hrs. I myself had to work but heard a good deal from a buddy and ordered online. I picked up a Blu-ray player (yeah I’m behind the times) for $29. The retailer let you buy it online and then pick it up the next day at the store anytime before they closed; no lines, no fights, etc. Then I ordered all my Blu-ray movies from Bestbuy.com with free shipping most of which were marked down to $3.99.
Every Black Friday these videos surface on YouTube, ever notice how they are almost always at Wal-Mart? Then we see them again at shopping malls when a pair of Jordan’s are released. Every time I see these hoards of oxygen thieves fight over reduced price trinkets and or overpriced made in China basketball shoes I imagine how these same useless eaters will react if/when their uncle Sam’s Pez dispenser runs dry.
Yes, because this is so much better.