Black Friday

With the thanksgiving weekend, the holiday season begins in the US. This season is the favorite of retailers, because this is when people shop like crazy. You ask me whether it is any different during rest of the year? Hmm... yeah, but not much!

This thanksgiving weekend I decided to join the shopping mela, so that I do my bit to help the economy. Country's that is, not mine. I had distant memories of trying my luck at a day-after-thanksgiving sale in Salt Lake City 5 years back. I had gone to Wal-mart at 8AM and had found such a mad rush, there was absolutely no way I could get into the store, leave alone shop. So I knew I had to go early, but I was not prepared for what Gururaja told me - reach our neighborhood electronics shop "Fry's" at 3:30 in the morning! Fry's was running a 'Black Friday' sale on Friday, where many electronic items were selling with 'deep discounts'. This is when a typical shopper feels obliged to buy things he/she doesn't need, because after all, they are on sale. I used to think that most people, after eating turkey the previous day, wouldn't even be able to wake up by 3:30, but decided to trust Gururaja's advice, coming out of experience.

When we made it to Fry's at 3:30 I could not believe my eyes - the queue was already around 100 meters long! Some people seemed to have arrived with tremendous preparation - camping chairs, food, water, etc. It appeared to me that some had camped there since Halloween. By 4AM, it was difficult to find parking in the vast parking area. The store opened at 5AM and people rushed inside like they were running for their lives. I wasn't far behind, and luckily, I was able to get the stuff I was looking for. But the checkout queue was at least 10 times longer than a typical queue for 'darshan' at a temple in India. This shopping was nothing like the one typically enjoyed by women - browse 100 shops and in exceptional cases, may be buy at one. This was instead for the sophisticated male shopper. One had to know his targets in the store well in advance (having studied the catalogs), run as fast as possible without caring for any bodily injuries incurred or inflicted on others and go for the kill as soon as the target is in sight.

Rest of my day was spent visiting other shopping malls and stores, but nothing like the initial burst of 5 to 11AM shopping, when many stores look like K.R.Market. I read that the retailers have expressed optimism about how the holiday season is gonna go for them this year. This is a funny time of the year - if the shopping season goes well, the retailers are happy, product manufacturers are happy and not to mention, customers are also happy! But common sense says not all of them can be happy at the same time, such a win-win situation doesn't apply to sales. But the shopping season is when common sense of shoppers takes a hibernation. And economy booms :-)