My Interesting Black Friday Experience

In my previous blog post, I pointed out an alternative to Black Friday; Cyber Monday. But truth be told, after doing my 3pm-7pm shift on the air on Thanksgiving, then eating my holiday dinner at about 8:15pm, I let myself get talked into going out and taking a stab at these great deals we all heard about.

It was definitely interesting. I witnessed people pull maneuvers with their vehicles that I've never seen before. All to get to the stores! Well, I must say, I was pleasantly surprised with myself because I managed to get holiday shopping done for my entire family. Usually, I wait until about December 22nd to make my first try at gift shopping.

One interesting thing I noticed, however, was the fact that I didn't save all that much money! Don't get me wrong, I was walking past stores that had an "entire purchase 40% off" deal, or "buy one, get one 70% off." Just, the gifts that I know my family wanted were not in these particular stores. At most, I saved 20% on one purchase. I'm happy about that, better than nothing right? Other places I shopped had literally no sales whatsoever.

It's brilliant business, really. If you're a store in an outlet, mall or plaza, and you know your huge chain department store neighbor is going all out on Black Friday, just open up! Don't bring down the prices any more than you would on say, Memorial Day Weekend... OR DON'T BRING DOWN THE PRICES AT ALL! There will be thousands of people lined up for hours and will see that your store is one of the stores with their lights on at 2:00am on Black Friday, so you're going to get customers, whether you like it or not.

Regardless of how much money I saved, I still consider it a success since I'm done getting my family's gifts. Also, it was kind of fun, in a zoo-like atmosphere kind of way. I would even consider going next year, although maybe I'll take a shot at getting some stuff for myself this time!