The Best, Worst of Black Friday

I’ve heard the horror stories about Black Friday when people get trampled while trying to get their hands on the last Tickle-Me-Elmo or how people camp outside in tents for hours, waiting for stores to open in the middle of the night. Despite all of the craziness that happens around this “holiday,” I felt the need to experience it for myself.

My night started at 8 p.m. when I got picked up in a silver Toyota minivan by my friend, junior Annie Foster and her close family friend, Aunt Penny. Aunt Penny is a brave lady — she took seven teenagers, shoved them in a minivan and carted them around shopping for around 10 hours. The car was stuffed with Starbucks coffee to-go dispensers, leftover rolls from Thanksgiving dinner and store catalogs sprawled all around the car.

We arrived at the Roeland Park Wal-Mart on a mission to get about 30 pairs of pajamas for a kindergarten class’ pajama party at the inner city school, Gladstone Elementary, just to help out. When we got there, there was not a single cart left. We ended up following a couple out to their car while they unloaded their items just to snatch their cart.

“Hello Kitty”, “Tinkerbell”, “The Hulk”, and “Go Diego Go!” pajamas were thrown all over the aisle while we tried to find the correct sizes for the kiddos. I shoved my way through people with their children shoved in the remaining cart space and grabbed a few pairs, then I picked up a few more that I found scattered on the floor. Hopefully there are a lot of small kids because all of the larger sizes were for the most part gone. Who knew that boys Avengers pajamas size 7-8 were so popular?
While waiting in the checkout line Aunt Penny informed me that there were pillows on sale for $2.50, I had to get them, who passes up pillows for that cheap? Not me! I got my pillows, Aunt Penny got her pajamas. We finally made it back to the minivan where items began to pile up in the trunk.

I can always waste time and money at Target, so I was excited to see how Target measured up to Walmart. Considering that most of my random items come from Target and not Walmart I was expecting Target to do better, I don’t buy princess band-aids from anywhere else. The line waiting to get into the Target in Mission wrapped around the front of the building and all the way down the side when we arrived at 8:45 p.m. Aunt Penny let us all hop out of the car and run across the intersection to get a spot in the line of more than 500 people.

Target was way more organized than Walmart; they allowed about 25 people in every minute or so and had arrows of blue duct tape on the ground of show which way to go. They actually had staff passing carts out so, needless to say, almost all eight of us grabbed a cart considering our past cart experiences. We were on a mission to the back of the store for Aunt Penny where they would be handing out 50-inch widescreen TVs for incredibly low prices. I got stuck behind a slow, elderly woman and was separated from my group, but it did allow me to pick up an enormous blanket that felt like a big, fluffy cloud — it was half off the original price of $40 (score!). Good thing all of those people were crowded around the giant buckets of blankets and towels or I would have never noticed that my new favorite blanket was only a few feet away.

On my journey to the back of the store to find my group again Annie’s little brother, sophomore John Foster decided to throw a 32-inch TV into my cart for himself when he saw me. After about 10 minutes of struggling to not crush people while having an obstructed view from the huge TV box, I made it to my destination. Too bad you actually needed the voucher that was given out before the store opened to get the 50-inch TV at all. That would have been nice to know before I wasted my time running into people to get back there.

The checkout line was insane; we had to zigzag through the line for the check out that went through the cosmetic and pet aisles. It wasn’t a long wait (thank goodness); they had an employee set up at every other row to help guide the crazy shoppers. We only waited for about five minutes, and during the waiting Annie found “The Lucky One” with Zac Efron on sale for $4 and you don’t pass up a Zac Efron movie for that price–especially one based on a Nicholas Sparks book. We didn’t even mind that we were totally spazzing out in front of so many people that were giving us strange looks.

We returned to Walmart later to get a camera during their electronic sales. Shoppers, mostly teenage or a bit older guys, that were lined up around the electronic checkout waiting for their new iPad or any other electronic that they couldn’t wait until morning to pick up. Even though this was the place we bought the least, it’s where we spent the most time because of the insanely long lines. We got the camera for Aunt Penny’s son and instead of waiting in the lengthy lines of more than 150 people at the front, we checked out extra check out lanes in the back along with 25 other people for at least a half hour.

As we waited, we attempted to fill out an application as a way to pass the time in the line that didn’t seem to move for 10 minutes. I have never seen such weird questions on a job application, such as “What’s your shoe size?”, “What part of the newspaper do you read first?” and “What pets do you have?” Aunt Penny paid for the camera and we weaved our way back to the front of the store to get out of all the chaos. By that time everyone agreed it was time for a midnight snack at QuikTrip.

We woke up at 4:30 a.m. after a power nap at Aunt Penny’s and piled into the minivan once again, but this time without the boys. We made it to Home Depot 15 minutes before it opened at 5 a.m. Aunt Penny let us sit in the warm car until she saw the few people in line moving and we ran over to only find out that it actually wasn’t moving at all. We waited in the 30 degree weather for a shivering 10 minutes, which was the worst experience of the night. The nice employees ended up letting us in five minutes early, good thing too or I would have left considering how bad I was shivering (oh, the things I do for The Harbinger). We were on a mission to get 40 poinsettias for 99 cents each. I made sure they were full of life and looked Christmas-y enough.

We accomplished that and made it to the checkout line where I almost bought a giant stuffed bear for $20, but I had to resist the temptation for the sake of room in the car. While in the checkout line we realized that we forgot to unload the car before we left to make room for all of our new stuff. Fitting 40 poinsettias in the car was a challenge, but after a few minutes of squeezing, we fit them all in with each of us carrying six poinsettias on our lap. The night was finally over, we made it to Annie’s house and basically fell asleep as soon as our heads touched the pillows.

I would advise anyone who is planning on going on this crazy adventure next year to definitely wear tennis shoes (not Sperry’s), socks, jacket, gloves and a hat. Waiting outside in only a thin jacket and ear warmers was not great planning on my part. Definitely know what you are going to buy before you head out for your night of shopping. A lot of stores send ads in the newspapers and mail a few weeks before Black Friday, those will help you to know what you’re going for instead of getting caught in the whirlwind of people. Make sure you clear out room in your trunk for all of the new goodies you will be bringing home beforehand or else you will end up like me, with pounds of flowers on your lap for the ride home.

My experience was pretty great, even being as tired as I have ever been I still ventured out during the day for some more crazy shopping. But nothing beats going all out at insane times of the night just to elbow people in the face for the perfect looking poinsettia. It really shows peoples’ true holiday spirits when they can trample someone for a certain item they want when hours before they were thankful for what they already had. Yes, my feet hurt by the end, but it was definitely an experience worth going through.