emo tech support

Black Friday

Lord, people are stupid. Think about it: For as long as we can recall, the day after Thanksgiving has been the busiest shopping day of the year. Hands down. Yet, still people head to the malls, the chains, the whatnot, packing the corridors and parking lots... all for a sale that lasts from 5am-noon. It's insanity.

Two incidences regarding this "Black Friday" stand out in my mind. The most recent was when I worked at Best Buy during the "Dark Period" that we like to call 2003-2004. Every employee in the store who didn't have a dying relative or was giving birth was assigned to work on that dreaded Friday. The craziest part, though? They made us run drills. I shit you not. Half the staff would line up at the front of the store and the others would stay in their departments. Once the exercise began, the first half would race through the store to grab merchandise and the second half had to upsell, direct, and maintain order of all of the chaos. It was utterly ridiculous. The crazy part came when the actual people showed up and we realized that the exercise was not for naught. Automatons duped by ads and sale prices showed up in droves and were constantly hounding us for answers regarding where the laptops were or if this was covered by a rebate. All I could think about was drinking myself to death.

The other incident occurred when I was a freshman in college. My friend Chris always loved to go off and do crazy activities for no apparent reason. This time? "Hey, I'm going to the mall. Care to join?" "Dude, It's the day after turkey day. EVERYONE is there." "S'the fuckin' point! You coming or not?" And off we went. Traffic was backed up to the main freeway and there was literally NO parking. Once we entered the mall, the walkways were so packed with people, you had to make sure you were focused straight ahead so you wouldn't get distracted and subsequently trampled by patrons. There was this bobble-head kiosk near the ice rink and upon close examination I noticed that all of the heads were moving. Every single one. I felt the railing with my hand and realized that there was a low vibration emitting. Now, I was a consummate mallrat at this time and had never, NEVER, seen this occur. It was terrifying. We were probably setting off the Richter scale on some small level.

So after all of this, I wonder why people bother? Is a deal on a pair of socks or computer game THAT important? Have we been duped that far by advertisements and sales that we have to follow a convention of consumers that we know to be manufactured?

In response to this and because of my own experiences in retail, there's a practice that I used to partake in. Since a few of my friends work retail and thus work this ghastly day of days, I've made it a habit for the last few years to visit them at work with "survival kits" consisting of cigarettes (if they smoke), starbucks giftcards, red bull, a good book, and a cheap DVD for when they finish. I don't know if I'll be able to do it THIS year, since having a car is required and I've parked mine for the time being (long story), but for those that I can visit, I'll do what I can. It's the least I can do for soldiers in an infantry that fights a grueling annual battle against an army of mindless attackers.

Semper fi, comrades.

posted by AmeroKafka @ 2:52 AM