The one and only time I participated in a Black Friday Door Buster was the same year a New Jersey Walmart employee was trampled and killed. I’ve never been one to get up at the crack of dawn; a cheap flat screen TV or a free XBOX 360 won’t motivate me. I tried it one year, just to see what it was like. When folks stormed the doors at opening time and went sprinting through the store, I did get a bit of an adrenaline rush. But I also didn’t get swept away in the madness. The year before, my father had witnessed a fist fight at Comp USA where two complete strangers resorted to physical violence over an alleged line jumper. A part of me was afraid that people would forget about humanity in exchange for a deep discount.
When I came home that morning, the news reports were already started to trickle to the West Coast about Jdimytai Damour’s death, I immediately felt incredibly guilty about my greedy spending. Sure, I wasn’t on the East Coast. I didn’t shop at Walmart. But I was a participant in a ridiculous event to get people in the store at a ridiculous hour all the hopes that we spend oodles and oodles of our hard earned money. I was a part of the problem.
From then on, I’ve chosen that no deal is really worth it. I’ll probably end up at the mall at some point on Friday, as I inevitably do every year. But I won’t be waiting in line at 2am or Midnight. And I sure as hell won’t be shopping on Thanksgiving day. Over the years, I’ve found plenty of good deals on Friday or Saturday or Cyber Monday. I don’t need the door buster. And I bet, when most people stop and think about it, they’ll see that they don’t need the door buster either.
I totally agree with you. I worked retail while in college and I HATED the day after Thanksgiving. It was even worse than dealing with all the returns the day after Christmas. Although everyone seems excited and jolly to be out getting good deals, as soon as things go wrong, something runs short, two people reach for the same item at the same time, suddenly people forget the meaning of the season and resort to hand-to-hand combat or emotional abuse of workers (which is sometimes almost as bad as physical abuse). It truly is an experience I never want to be a part of again. I think with online opportunities, ebay, and all the follow-up sales, you can get almost as good of deals without all the human flaws and tragedies being witnessed first-hand.