Last night, Thanksgiving evening, Jack and I queued up before midnight at Target to buy a high definition TV when the store opened at 4 AM. To me, a 40 inch television is huge but I see that it is only moderately sized among the units advertised this year. Jack has been helping his grandmother a lot, lately, and she gave him enough money so he could indulge himself with his first major purchase. I wanted a $200 laptop from Walmart, which would open at 5 AM but decided to keep him company at Target rather than split up on this cold night. I’ll tell you what happened, but many of the things I noted in a prior shopping expedition still seem to be true. I wrote this in 2006, detailing our last all-night shopping trip.
Shop ‘til you drop
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when most stores open early with special promotional sales for early shoppers, has become a ritual for me. I enjoy getting up in the pre-dawn hours to stand in line at various stores, hunting for “deals.” Normally, the idea of getting up at an hour when I would prefer to be contemplating going to bed is anathema to me, but something about the chase for a great sale price makes it all OK. I like to complete my shopping no late than 10 AM, before the stores are completely overrun by later shoppers. This year (2006), I got in lines for the openings of different stores at 5 AM, 6 AM, and 7 AM, and got small door-buster items at all. Once each store opened, I was in and out of each store in less than ten minutes, then on to the next store. I also went to a couple of stores after they opened. This year, there were relatively few items that I was interested in - most stores primarily offered large screen panel or plasma TVs, which were out of my budget, despite the door-buster prices. I spent less than $300 in total, buying some clothing for myself, a few tools, electronic devices, and digital camera memory chips, then went home before 8 AM.
This year, Jack desperately wanted a Nintendo Wii. I didn’t know this when they first came out, a few days before Black Friday, and none of the stores that I went to that day had any left. Early in December, we went to Best Buy, to pick up a small accessory for Jack’s Game Boy. We ran into one of my students, Will, who works there. I commented that his name tag looked remarkably like the word, “Wii.” He told us that Target, next door, was going to have them in their flyer the next day, Sunday, and that if we went early, we might get one. That’s all it took. We decided to try our luck by going early, before the store opened. Mike was visiting, helping me insulate the rest of the second floor addition, and he was also game. I set my alarm clock for 5 AM, and we got to Target before 6 AM. We came with chairs and a few things to do while waiting for the store to open at 8 AM. Each of us planned to buy a game system and that we would put two of them up for sale on Ebay, to recompense us for our time (and also, as I’m only marginally employed, a way to pay for the unit that Jack wants to keep). There were 33 people already waiting when we arrived. I know this as someone had come prepared with a pad and, as people arrived, everyone signed the numbered list. We all understood that the list was not official, but we all agreed to honor it. This way, we didn’t have to stay in line and could freely mill around, talking to people. It made a fun but polite line.
We chatted with people who had arrived immediately before and after us. The fellow behind us came in shorts (the temperature was around 30 ) and said he had been fifth in line at a store that only had four units, and sixth at another store where they had only five units for sale on Black Friday. He told us that the game units came packaged in boxes of three, so he didn’t know how they had been limited to numbers that were not a multiple of three, but hypothesized that the two stores might have shared a shipment.
At 7:30 AM, the manager of Target came outside and said he would follow the list that we had created. We all reassembled into the line as the list-maker walked down it, calling names in order of arrival. The manager came back out and said that there were only 21 units. He handed out vouchers to the first 21 people, unlocked the mall doors so the lucky group could stay warm until the store opened, and the rest of us left. The fellow in shorts told us that Walmart was holding their Wii shipment for sale on the following Wednesday. Jack immediately began negotiating with me to allow him to camp out at Walmart on Tuesday, a school night. I said that any plans would depend on the weather.
The weather forecast for Tuesday night was cold - it had snowed a bit earlier in the day, but the sky had cleared by nightfall, allowing for radiational cooling. The temperature was going to drop to around 16 F. I vetoed the idea of Jack’s camping out, but suggested we might go to bed early and arrive at Walmart around 4 AM. We went to Walmart on Tuesday night and asked in the electronics department how many units they had for sale the next day. The fellow at the store thought there were around 10 units. We revised the plan and agreed to try to get to Walmart around 2 AM.
I went to bed around 6 PM and set my alarm for 1:20 AM. I actually got up around 1:40, and got Jack up by 2 AM. We left the house with blankets and chairs at 2:10 AM, arriving at the Hadley Walmart at 2:30 AM. There were four young men, college-aged, lingering in the parking lot. They told us that a woman had been waiting since 8:30 the night before and that she had started a list. We added our names, noting that we were numbers 5 and 6, which didn’t quite add up until one fellow told me that he was only there for moral support; he didn’t intend to purchase a Wii! About ten minutes after we arrived, a woman in her late 30s joined us, then another a bit later. The woman who had been waiting since the night before came back from warming up in her car and rejoined the line, bundled into a down comforter inside a down sleeping bag, all atop a papasan chair. Another young man, then the fellow who had been in shorts at Target on Sunday joined our band around 3 AM. All of the young men were students at the University of Massachusetts (about 5 miles away), all of the women (including me) planned to buy the game for their 15 or 16 year old sons. The father of another 15 year old boy arrived around 3:30 AM. One of the college boys told me that he was buying the game for Christmas for his 15 year old brother but also planned to share it.
I retreated to our car to warm up around 4:30 AM, leaving our chairs to hold our physical spaces. Jack came to warm his numb feet, too. Going back outside to wait in the cold was all the harder after the warm car. The college boys periodically left to get coffee and to use the bathroom at a nearly Dunkin’ Donuts. I didn’t drink anything but Jack had two Red Bulls that he had purchased at Walmart the night before; he also had to visit the facilities at Dunkin’s, discovering a board-bridge over the little stream that divided the two parking lots. Jack slipped off the board and soaked one of his shoes, dampening his sock. We both worried about the now-wet foot in the cold but he stayed on his feet to keep the blood flowing for the next three hours. Between 4 AM and 6 AM, around 30 more people arrived, with arrivals coming faster as the hour grew later.
Walmart opens at 7AM, but a sign on the outer door said that the Wii units would not go on sale until 8 AM. This Walmart has a small, enclosed porch area, with two sets of doors on opposite sides. We were all lined up on one side. Around 3 AM, we grew concerned that people might try to line up in the other side as well, so we posted a sign, saying that the Wii line was only on our side. The employee entrance was on the other side and we could see people entering the store, but, since they all saw the sign, all of the day’s employees knew what we were all waiting for. No one knew how many units would be available. A young man who had joined the line around 4:30 AM, when there were about 25 people in front of him, went into the store (he was apparently an employee) and came out, glumly stating, “Nine. I’m going home,” then left. This caused a few people to also leave, but most stayed. The first woman’s husband arrived to take her place, although she didn’t actually leave until after the store opened.
Around 6:15 AM, as the night sky was beginning to give way to dawn, I (and the other women) grew concerned that people who had arrived late would try to “jump” the line. Unlike at Target, the late-comers were edging closer and closer to the doors, crowding those of us who had arrived early into an increasingly smaller space between the doors and the wall. A couple of late comers were particularly aggressive in their attempts to get closer to the door, although no one provoked any actual fights. Around 6:30 AM, an assistant manager came out and seemed clueless about the need for order. We asked him if he would honor the list that we had made; he responded, “Well, it’s really up to YOU to honor the list.” The college boys assured him that they would reconstitute the line if he would honor the list. He said he would have to ask his manager and retreated back into the store.
The Target-shorts fellow, a burly young man who was more sensibly dressed on this cold night, took the list and started calling names, pointing to the places where each person should stand. The rear of the line still tried to crowd up, but the front had patience and so did he; he continued pointing and told people to move back if their names had not yet been called. Order was restored, although there were still a few men from the back lingering outside the line, as close to the front as they could be. The manager came out and said that there were, in fact, only nine units. Unlike Target, most of the line did not leave. Two young men, who had apparently tried to cut the line by entering through the employees door, were brought out of the store by the manager and told to go to the back of the line. They also lingered in the parking lot near the doors with a few other late arrivals. The manager opened a single door at 7 AM and handed numbered vouchers to the first nine people in line, repeating that he could not sell the units until 8 AM, that the sales computer was locked out for these items until then. Most of the late-comers left when all of the vouchers were distributed. It was finally apparent that there was no way to circumvent the order that the group had, collectively, agreed to. The manager told us that he would hold all units at the customer service desk at the front of the store and that we were free to do what we wanted until 8 AM.
I just wanted to be in the warm store; I was happy to wander around and window-shop, although I had intense chills about 20 minutes after I entered the store - I guess my body finally warmed up enough to discover that it was COLD. Jack rushed to the rear of the store to obtain accessories and game disks. There were no accessories in stock at the store but he got two of the games he wanted. By 7:45 AM, all nine of us (plus companions) eventually migrated to the coffee shop next to the customer service desk, to sit in relative warmth and comfort while we waited for the magic hour. We still continued to chat. All of us had met one or more of the others in the Target line and we had become comfortable chatting over the last five hours. Still, none of us exchanged names (as typical Americans, we wouldn’t).
The sales were rung up in the order we had been in line. The two men who had tried to cut in front by entering the store before it opened waited across from us, eyeing our vouchers and purchases almost hungrily. They apparently hoped that one of us wouldn’t appear at 8 AM, that we wouldn’t have the cash or credit to complete the purchase, or that the manager had undercounted the number of units for sale. We all bought our game systems uneventfully, and they finally went home, disappointed. No one who arrived after 3:15 AM was able to purchase a unit.
Next, we stopped by Target, to try to get an additional controller for the game. We met up with three of our companions, all the early arriving young men, also on a quest for additional accessories, but Target had run out, too.
Jack was tardy to school on Wednesday; school starts at 7:45 AM. He missed gym class, but he got his game. To him, it was a win-win situation, as he is not fond of gym class. I had another successful shopping excursion. Shopping really IS a sporting activity for some people! We’re still planning on putting the second unit up for sale on Ebay, but I’ll wait until the weekend, which will be two weeks before Christmas, which is, I think, the perfect time to offer such a thing for sale.
We were all such typical Americans. We never exchanged names, despite the apparent comradery of the night. The “winning” group was evenly distributed between Generation Y young men who wanted the game unit for themselves (and were old enough to afford to purchase this $250 item for themselves), and the parent of somewhat younger Generation Y teenaged boys, who were willing to indulge their offspring. The parents were typical parents of Generation Y children - kids who were considerably more indulged than their parents had been at a similar age.
Aftermath - 2006. I sold the Wii via Ebay to a local fellow for bit less than the cost of the two units, combined, so Jack got his Wii for a cost of about $50 to me. I handed it over to the buyer in the McDonald’s marking lot in Chicopee and we were both highly satisfied with the transaction.
Black Friday, 2010
Jack got his TV. Once again, there was a sign-in list at Target. We agreed to have an hourly roll-call. If someone missed the call twice, they lost their place in line. A cold rain started to fall shortly after midnight. Jack and I went inside the mall, which had been unlocked for the Best Buy line, to wait in relative warmth and comfort. We emerged hourly for check in, finally staying outside after the 3 AM check-in. By that time, the line at Target wound down the length of the store and wrapped around the far side. Employees came out and walked the line, explaining that anyone who ran would be escorted out and not allowed to purchase anything. Target had about thirty of the desired model of television and we were numbers 27 and 28 in line. We were in and out by 4:10 AM.
I had gone to the Cumberland Farms store about three miles away at 1:00 AM, to use the bathroom (it was the only place open), and had chatted with a Hadley cop who was there, getting coffee. He had expressed surprise at the vast number of people out to “save ten bucks by staying out all night.” I assured him that I was one of those lunatics and explained the list that we were employing at Target. He told me that Walmart had hired nine Hadley cops to maintain order at the store. Jack and I went to Walmart after Target; it opened its doors at 4 AM, so I walked in without any line with which to contend. The cop was at the door and he gave me a friendly challenge, “Hey! I thought you were going to Target!” I assured him that my shopping at Target was already completed and now I wanted a laptop! He grinned and wished me luck.
I found a store map and located the sale-place for the $200 dollar laptops (in with foods, not in electronics for the morning), but they were all gone. A clerk directed me to the line (in the pharmacy) for the $300 ones. I was number 21 in line and got one when they were handed out at 5:00 AM. I paid and was out in the rain, headed home, before 5:15, and securely tucked into my bed before 6 AM. My “newest” computer had been my desktop, which is over five years old. My last laptop was new for my 2004 trip to Mexico! It owes me nothing and it will be good to have a computer that should be reliable for the next few years. I’m not a kid; I don’t use a computer to play games (except for solitaire); mostly, I use a computer for writing and research, but I want the option of watching videos, so a netbook was not for me. This laptop’s screen is almost as big as my desktop’s monitor! I think this computer will serve my needs nicely. It isn’t too heavy and it wasn’t too expensive. The $200 computer was an emachine; the HP has more memory, a bigger hard drive, and more USB ports. I’m satisfied with my purchase.
I maintain that shopping is a sport that, in the past, primarily women competed in, but increasingly, men are now playing, too. As men have joined the fray, incidents of incivility have become more common but groups can enforce rules to control the otherwise unruly. When groups do not clearly determine and state these rules at the outset, store managers must, and it takes them years, fraught with unnecessary and hazardous chaos, to figure out a system that works for them. These systems usually involve law enforcement. I like it best when the group creates and enforces its own rules. And I had a good time this year.
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