Blog 7 - Black Friday

Although Black Friday is for many people, the biggest shopping day of the year, as a family, we have only woken up early to shop once. That one occasion was last year when we had woken up early in order to fall in line to purchase a laptop for one of my cousins in the Philippines. I firmly believe that the reason we do not wait in line to shop is due to my mom. She has and still does not like to feel rushed or stressed out when she shops. While in the past I always just viewed her opinion as being fussy, after lining up last Black Friday, I can now see the merits of her opinion.
My experience last year was in a word, hectic. We had woken up early and driven over to CompUSA in order to get a good spot in line. We arrived rather early with only a few people in front of us in line. However, once the store itself opened, we were forced to get into another line in which we found ourselves further back than we were outside. This was rather frustrating because the staff at the store provided very little in help or direction regarding the procedure for purchasing the laptop we had come for. Not only was the line rather long and slow moving, but also the line wasn’t for getting a laptop but instead for getting a number that would then allow you to get a laptop. On top of all this, by the time we were given our number, we were notified that the particular laptop we were waiting for had been sold out, the last taken only a couple spots before us. Therefore we were forced to purchase a similar, more expensive laptop so as not to have waited in vain. Although we did end up finding a laptop, the trouble we had to go through to get it far outweighed the savings, especially since the laptop we ended up getting was abundant in numbers in the store and could have easily been picked up later in the day. Needless to say, this whole experience turned me off of shopping on Black Friday that is of course, unless I find another particularly good deal on an item I really want.