raffertyesque

During my brief tour of duty at Circuit City back in aught two, I only saw battle once: Black Friday.

It was a cold November morning. The air was foggy. I remember it well. Two nights prior, my band of brothers and I had prepped the store for battle. We stocked the shelves, updated the planograms™, printed the sale tags, and loaded the mortars with Christmas music.

Did I say mortars? I meant in-store speaker system.

With the store prepped, we went home to our families, perhaps for the last time. The calm before the storm.

Friday morning, the 518th Regiment reported for duty at 0600, hunkering down for the impending onslaught. As the troops rolled in, each gasped at the sight of the enemy lines on the horizon. Looming silhouettes, ready to pounce at any moment.

Well, maybe not any moment. Doors didn’t open until 0700.

And open they did. At 7AM, the General Manager opened the front gates (shouting “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”), and the hoard washed its way in, ransacking the store. Televisions were bought, DVDs, CDs and other long-forgotten media formats were purchased and a copy of Madden 2003 for the GameCube was probably picked up and discarded. (Because honestly, who buys Madden for the GameCube?)

An hour later, it was over. Yes, the store was a disaster area, and yes, Steve over in car audio wound up bleeding to death from a Blaupunkt-related injury, but overall, it wasn’t so bad.

Flash forward a few years. To today, in fact.

The rules have changed.

It’s a common misconception that Black Friday was always the biggest shopping day of the year. For many years— decades even— the Saturday before Christmas, whenever that happened to be, was the biggest shopping day of the year. But that’s not marketable. “The Last Saturday Before Christmas Day” just doesn’t have the same ring to it that BLACK FRIDAY does.

So retailers started pushing Black Friday more aggressively. Like any good war, capitalism hates a stalemate. It demands a winner and a loser. The Black Friday arms race was on.

Over the past few years, Black Friday has been creeping up on Thanksgiving. Back in aught two, Circuit City opened at 7AM on Black Friday. So did most other retailers. Okay, cool. A few years later, 6AM became the new standard. Then 5AM. Then 4AM. And it stuck at 4AM for a while. This year, though, the gloves came off.

Toys R Us opened at 9PM on Thanksgiving this year.

Clearly I needed to check this out. “Surely this is a bluff,” I thought. “They’re not going to make their employees work on Thanksgiving. And people aren’t actually going to shop, are they? Shouldn’t they be with their families, eating pumpk— holy crap, that’s a long line of people.”

The Toys R Us line last night at 9PM looked like a bread line during the Great Depression only these people were wearing sweatpants and they were waiting for Bratz instead of bread. The parking lot was cordoned off by the police, with cars overflowing into the Bed Bath & Beyond on the other side of the fence and the bank next door.

“Okay, fine, that’s Toys R Us,” I thought. “Christmas shopping is all about the kids. Certainly the mall will be more civilized, since most stores don’t open until 4AM or 5AM. I’ll just drive over there, surely it will be much more quie— holy crap, that’s even more people.”

The line outside of Best Buy stretched deep into the parking lot, probably five or six hundred freezing bodies long, with hours still to go until midnight when the store opened. News vans were interspersed, antennas deployed, ready to report on the impending madness.

While I wanted to see how things played out, I wasn’t physically or emotionally prepared for the slog that these folks were (physically because I was full of pumpkin pie and emotionally because I knew we were out of pumpkin pie). I decided to come back in a few hours.

When I returned at 4AM the scene at the mall was much different than at 9PM. After parking, I followed the trail of empty Red Bulls and garbage where the line had been hours before, looking like the remnants of the world’s saddest rock concert. As I walked past the crying Indian, I noticed a man asleep in his pickup truck with the engine on. He was either cold and tired or cold and tired of life. If it was the latter, I didn’t have the heart to tell him you need to be in an enclosed space to kill yourself like that, so I continued onward.

Inside the belly of the blue Best Buy beast, things were actually fairly quiet. The store was a mess, sure, but it was merely “busy” and not “insane.” I decided to case the rest of the mall in search of more madness.

As I walked around, the lines were mostly tame. In fact, they were mostly non-existent. Mostly. There wasn’t a soul in front of the Apple Store, nor was there anyone lined up outside of Sheepskin Gifts & Alpaca Too. For a while it looked like the longest line would be the three dudes camped out outside of Radio Shack hoping to pick up… uh, batteries? Maybe a Tandy? I have no idea.

There was a small line in front of Hollister, but it wasn’t for the store, it was to have your picture taken with the male model they had outside who was made up of approximately 70% abs.

Surprisingly, the most angry-mob-like group of people I saw were outside of JC Penney. Penney’s hadn’t opened yet and there was a disorganized mass of people waiting outside hoping to pick up… uh, pillow cases? Maybe a Tandy? I have no idea.

You’d think with 100+ years in the business JC Penney would be more on top of their Black Friday game than anyone. They’ve been around the block, they should know how to handle a line that goes around the block.

But, I guess it almost makes sense old man Penney is behind the times. Like I said, the rules have changed. Black Friday is over before the Sun rises now. It’s a new world out there, soldier. Watch your flank. Don’t get Blaupunkt’d.