Celeste's Column

Black Friday

By: Celeste Brown

Last week, I was watching the news and the topic of Black Friday came up. If you are not aware, Black Friday is a big day in American society, it is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the US.

This is traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but since Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday many workers have the next day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Crazy Shoppers

This increase in the number of potential shoppers has created an opportunity for retailers to kick off the holiday buying season. According to Reuters in 2007 more than 135 million people participated in the Black Friday shopping rush.This year Black Friday will take place on November 26^{th and} retailers are certainly hoping for even larger crowds. It is amazing to think that 135 million people, who are almost half of the US population, can all agree on one thing. Personally, I would do not think I would be able to handle the massive crowds of people surrounding me.

Almost all of the big box stores like Sears, Best Buy, Macy's, Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart, and Target adjust their opening times, some open as early as midnight. Many potential shoppers will camp in front of stores waiting for the early openings and then spend the whole day waiting in line, bumping into people, and getting trampled in order to try and find deals on things that they think they need for Christmas.

The truth is that many of these deals will last throughout the shopping season and these shoppers could find these same prices in the following weeks.  Often they can even find much better prices online.

 Recently, current National Sports Academy student Alyssa Parke’s mother, Dawn Parke was on the news and described a situation she found herself in on a previous Black Friday. As she was trying to leave the store she was getting sandwiched in between people, she literally had to climb over boxes to get out of the store to avoid the immense amount of people.

At many of these big stores and inside of malls you will see police officers located near the entrances and exits because there have been reported deaths due to the crowds. Large crowds are loved by retailers but there are also other people who like large crowds and they are shoplifters.  With stores crowded and store personnel busy it is prime time for shoplifters to try and steal merchandise.

My personal opinion is that I have no desire to be a part of the Black Friday crowds at all.  Being frustrated to find a parking place, dealing with rude people, trying to be helped by difficult to find clerks all add up to a horrible shopping experience. Not to mention most of the deals that these stores have will be the same the next weekend.  There may even be bigger discounts closer to Christmas if the overall shopping season is not going the way the retailers want.  I could even sit at home and shop on the Internet while drinking hot chocolate. In short, there is no reason I feel I should risk my life and be stressed out while shopping when I can easily just wait a week.