Black Friday Post Game Report

Written by Bob Rehak
Edited by: Sharon Estill
Joboja Staff Writers

I have to admit, I couldn't do it this year. By ten o’clock Thanksgiving night the line at my favorite Best Buy was halfway around the building. By my estimate, that works out to about 312 customers tripping on tryptophan and each other. So after a five-year steak of getting there earlier and earlier; common sense, the weather and bronchitis teamed up to hold me and my best friends - VISA and American Express - at bay.

Don't get me wrong, we would have loved to join our fellow shopletes, and I can even understand the impulse to stand out there and be more bored than the ring bearer at a Royal wedding. But as my father would say, "Every time you exhale while you're standing out in the freezing cold, God sends a smoke signal to the rest of us that you're an idiot." I think we had that embroidered on a pillow.

Looking at the deals that were available on Black Friday, there were only two items worth risking a stay in ICU for—three if you count the 50% off rectal thermometers at Walgreen’s. Best Buy had a Toshiba laptop and printer on sale for $229 and Target had a 37-inch high-definition TV for $549.

According to some early recon, pop- up tents started popping up at Best Buy about mid day. Seasoned Black Friday shopletes knew that Best Buy would hand out tickets before the store opened, sometime around 3am. Still, if you weren't one of the first 20 people in line, you could forget about that Toshiba. But you still had a good shot at frostbite.

I decided to sleep in this year, which meant a 5:30 wake up call. I was showered dressed and in front of Target before they opened at 6. The line wasn't terribly long; about the same length as a Starbucks at 8:30 on a Monday morning - probably 500 shopletes.
At 6:10 I even walked past someone carrying out one of those 37-inch TVs. As I walked past him, I touched the box. It was a pretty moving experience.

By 6:20 I was inside Circuit City, temporarily known as Circus City, looking for a ___* for my daughter (*item description deleted by order of S. Claus). Since the store had already been open for an hour and twenty minutes, the display where that sale item should have been was empty. Only a rookie shoplete would utter the words "sold out." Slowly scanning the aisles like a teenage football player walking the buffet line at Old Country Buffet, I spied it in the computer aisle. Ah, yes, the rogue sale item, caught in the wild, misplaced by a stampede of wild shopletes.

I snagged it and headed for the checkout lines, backed up to O'Hare. Since this wasn't my first Black Friday, I knew that long lines were for other people. I quickly spied the short line near the big-screen TVs, where shopletes willing to spend December's house payment for their HD-TVs go. I got in line as soon as I heard the store manager announce that they were out of the Sony 46-inch models. Ten minutes later I was at the cashier with my daughter's ___*. I told him that I had wanted the sold-out Sony, but since they had just sold out, I only wanted to pay for the one item in my hand instead. He rang me up.

On my way to Carson's, I celebrated my Houdini-like exit from Circus City with a self-high-five (nearly lost control of the wheel and narrowly missed a Wal-Mart shopper). Now that I had set the bar so high for myself, I made it a goal to get in and out of Carson's in nine minutes or less. Armed with a $10 gift card that came in the Black Friday ads, I looked for the $11 aisle. No such markings at Carson's, so it looked like I'd have to do some actual shopping instead. Seven minutes into the store, I found a $13.50 clothing item (a little more than I wanted to spend, but I was in a good mood). I headed for the nearest checkout, but the lines snaked around every mannequin in the joint as customers waited patiently for another price check.

With seven minutes gone, it was time to go into my two-minute drill. The rules of the game (and society) say I can't cut in line. These rules against line jumping are not the same as those that they have at Six Flags, by the way. At Six Flags you can line jump over Bugs Bunny and no one will stop you. Try that at Carson's on Black Friday, and you'll need an organ transplant.
What to do? Go to the hurry-up offense. The loneliest cashiers at any department store are in the fragrance department. No one goes there because no one wants to get hit with a spritz of $24 Moonlight Cotton Candy. So I pretended to look at the counter, and as soon as the cashier pounced I said I was just looking, but, hey, could I pay for my clothing item here? She was just happy to dust off the register. I paid for the item ($3.75 after tax), and hit the door with 19 seconds to spare. I spiked the package just as the clock ran out. Thank God it wasn't perfume.