Since businesses are all closed on Thanksgiving we've now found black friday as our way of over commercializing Thanksgiving. I personally say to heck with that. We need to put Family and friends before saving a few dollars on a new TV or something silly we don't even need. Join me in being against black friday for the right reasons.
I agree 100%. It's getting worse and worse year after year too. I recently saw an ad on TV that some store will be open Thanksgiving Day. How unfair to the employees and family of that establishment. Stores opening at 4 and 5AM, with a handful of come on's to draw in people, most of which will not get the great deal but since they are there anyway will still spend money. My plans...grab a hot cup of coffee (made at home), a comfy warm robe and watch the local morning news showing the lunatics out at the stores. I love shopping as a spectator sport!
+2 i totally agree with Way. on black friday (why do they even call it that? it sounds so gloomy and dark), i'll be working the night shift at Cinnabon selling high-caloric cinnamon rolls to people who want to stuff their tiny and not so tiny stomachs. best part is, one cinnabon classic is a just $4.02! included tax. glad to be a part of this rushing economy by making and selling over priced pastries :skep:
The name has had many meanings over the years. The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" (in this sense), found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect Society, refers to Black Friday 1965 and makes the Philadelphia origin explicit: JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing. The term Black Friday began to get wider exposure around 1975, as shown by two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, both datelined Philadelphia. The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor," in The New York Times: Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday" - that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army–Navy Game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion. The derivation is also clear in an Associated Press article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy," which ran in the Titusville Herald on the same day: Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. ... "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it gives them." Usage of the term has become more popular in the Midwest since 2000. Many merchants objected to the use of a negative term to refer to one of the most important shopping days in the year. By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black).
people are crazy.... there is no way i'm going shopping on black friday. Normally i just shop on line. But this year.. Im not buying for every one in my family. I'm just buying for my 3 nephews
Tough. I'm gonna be at Old Navy at 3AM on Friday for the BARRRRRGINS. Screw the rest of yas. Maybe I can trample a few people on the way in. jk
Shoulda seen me beat everybody else to the counter at the Asheville Hardee's on the way to MSSD. It was epic.
Count me in! I've never been a fan of the post-Thanksgiving sales blitz that stores have, but after hearing about the shootings and people being trampled last year at these sales I want to boycott all this stuff. My wife was at one of our local stores last year and was telling me how many times the police were called to break up fights in the store. Combine that with the fact that the Christmas sales push starts earlier every year and I want less and less to do with any of these stores.
I did the black Friday once. I think I still have that 13 inch LCD TV somewhere. :cornut: Now that my time is worth a little more, it just doesn't make sense anymore. Plus camping out in front of Fry's at 3 a.m.... it gets cold.
shopping online ftw. saves time, pain, and gas. only sacrifice is IMpatience luckily for me, and probably many car owners, we are patient people.
I spent most of Friday playing WII with my adult kids. Much better time spent than shopping for deals.
Here in the frozen north we don't have Black Friday but there certainly are truckloads of Canajuns who head south for a few bargains. I wonder how many of those people who wait at the border for 2+ hours are also the ones who boast about how good they are at recycling their milk jugs, and how they only drive their kids to school 4 days a week now to 'save the environment'. I wonder too how many who complain about where all the jobs are going, are also heading south to spend their hard earned dollars. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with spending a bit of coin south of the border while your on vacation or work, but come on people, give your head a shake! :frown2:
USA #1! Shopping, watching TV and eating corn-based fast food are what make us the greatest nation on earth. Love it or leave it, baby!