Topic: My first and (probably) last experience of Black Friday

The fancy shmancy PS3 bundle, my bro wanted one for when he goes to college. We won't find it again, but it doesn't matter.

i wonder if the wii u is lauched on black friday and what chaos will it come with it?

hey, be glad you're not where i am — we had some people get into a fight at the mall down the street from job#1 and shots were fired. yeesh.

that said, i like how you keep calling everyone else there animals in bold and you take the time to poke fun at the employee who was likely hired last week and thrown to the dogs this morning (it happens everywhere, they need warm bodies standing around to fetch things for shoppers on BF is all). considering you were there to get the same deals they were wanting to get too, i don't really see where you get off calling them names like you're so high above them on the food chain, and if you could show a little respect for the employee who was nice enough to actually check the available colors for you instead of brushing you off and/or ignoring you outright, you'd come off as far more mature than you do at the moment. :/

This. Black Friday is not a place for pathetic weak snivveling little pansies. You put on you game face and man pants or gtfo. At least you learned your lesson.

I love going to Black Friday sales for the chaos. It's the only time you can get away with kidney or rabbit punching the person in front of you to get that last reduced price TV.

That's why I'm pre-ordering it as soon as its it amazon's system.

This. No matter how amazing a deal is, going through those crowds and dealing with all that stress is not worth it.

TBD is spot on.

my son pulled a 3-midnite shift at walmart y'day; today he's on from 12-11pm. he is in the electronics dept, which is great because he's the only one there that really knows games, computers, phones...the whole bit. he is the supreme geek and lives/breathes this stuff. he's also a nice guy and treats customers as what they are: people preparing to spend money on goods that enable him to have a job.

he spent 45 minutes with a couple who wanted 'movie theater experience in our home'...only they had no idea what they wanted. he shepherded thru a number of options only to be told 'well, we just thought of this idea over the weekend so we'll think about it'. which is fine. but meanwhile my son is getting the stinkeye from other customers who needed games/systems etc.

add to that the fact that only newly shipped games especially for black friday are on sale: those in the case have a different UPC and sell for the regular price. angry customers who think the sales associates set the prices/policies. customers who think they are better because they don't work at walmart. customers who think their needs/wants are more important than another's.

the set up for black friday was double duty for those who have to get the pallets to the floors. next they will have to clean up the whole thing.

but mick is just glad to be working! it beats no job in this economy. he will most likely spend tomorrow in a fetal position til he goes in again at 6pm...

This is my Black Friday story:
Well I just got home from college on Wednsday, and to spend time with my Dad, I went Black Friday shopping with him.
It was hell.
We thought it started at 12:00, but there is a new MA law that all stores in MA have to start at 1:00. So we standed in the Best Buy line in the freezing cold for 2 hours. We were in the middle of the line, We were looking for XMAS presents for my siblings, and also a new laptop for me. But when we FINALLY got out of the freezing cold, and got into Best Buy, it was a freaking war zone! Especially because my dad does not play around. He would literally fight people for things he wanted. What we did was, he would get the XMAS presents, and I would get my laptop. I got the laptop and went back to my dad, and he and this other guy were pushing and pulling at each other for the last StarFox 64 3D. There were police there, and they took our fingerprints, and got kicked out of the store. We were banned from going there for 6 months. And it was 2:00 now. We drove to ANOTHER Best Buy, and when we got the shopping done, it was 4:00 in the morning. It was terrible. So I'm just gonna skip today, and go to sleep and wake up tomorrow. Sigh

Then everyone who went to the store will die.

I'm not saying I'm above anyone, if that's what you're coming off of. Sorry if it comes off that way, but to fight over these things I find is ridiculous. I can tell some customers didn't want to be there. And really, I didnt even feel like going but had to because I needed to get a bike, where most people, I asuume, just want the things they.. well, want. The people who act like rabid animals, those are the ones who I'm referring to.

But really, I'm not above anyone nor do I think, so please don't come to a false conclusion :/

I can understand people wanting good deals. But no reason to scramble, trample, or fight over it. That's what I'm mostly referring to.

@mickeymac
I saw that.. Pretty good deal. Overheard people wanting to get that PS3. But I always thought Sony would be selling that bundle for $200 throughout the holiday season, not just black friday. Remember reading an article on it last month about it.

@pntjr

How much was SF3D. No idea it was on sale. Then again, I already had it.

oh my! but just think of the story you will be able to tell your kids about grandpa someday...

Just came from Gamestop and it was crowded mainly due to it being a small store. Couldn't find darksiders,Bioshock, or Sonic colors. All of Mircosoft points cards were gone but I still grabbed what I wanted. Got a Power up card pro and Gameinformer membership for $2 as apart of my free game purchase. My mom is going to the mall later on and getting some stuff but im staying home.

_{tl;dr at bottom for the short attention span kiddies}

I had a pretty good experience. My kids went to their Grandma's yesterday after dinner and we hit the stores last night.
We went to Wal Mart first around 10pm. For some reason they had loaded the Black Friday pricing on some items as early as that morning. It just so happened that the items we wanted had already been discounted so we found what we wanted (some toys for the kids mostly) and made it out of the store in around 15 minutes. NO LINES WHATSOEVER.

Our next stop was Best Buy which opened at 12am so we stood out in the cold for around an hour and a half. Everything was pretty orderly. About 45 mins before opening the employees started handing out tickets for their really hot items. If you didn't have a ticket, you didn't need to worry about running for the iem. They had a few local police at the door and they only let in around 100 people or so at a time. Once they got in and dispersed, they let the next 100 in. We missed out on the $99 flat screen 24" tv's that we wanted for the kids rooms, but we were able to score a pair of 250gb XBox Elite's with Fable 3 and Reach for $199 each. Now I can upgrade mine from my Jasper-era and give my old one to my daughter and my son's xmas shopping is FINISHED (yay!). We also scored around 10x 3-month Xbox Gold cards for $8 each. The games are already on Craigslist and I'm hoping to recoup around $40ish for each pair. Spent all of 20 minutes in the store and never even so much as accidentally bumped another person. Earlier in the day (but still too late) we discovered that nearly all of their ad-items were on sale for the same price on their website and I scored a PS Move bundle (Move controller, Eye Camera, Nav Controller, Killzone 3, Resistance 3 and the Sharpshooter gun) for $119. A steal imo.

We went back home and slept for around 4 hours. Got up and went to Staples. A whoppingly-huge line of around 20 people (heh). They too were handing out tickets for their hot items. We were just their for a shredder (not THE Shredder). We found it pretty quickly and my wife even got time to "try out" all the cushiness on the display chairs. Still made it out in around 10 mins. Very calm atmosphere.

We then drove straight to an adjacent city and hit Bath and Body Works for candles and wife-stuff, Ulta for more wife-stuff, another Best Buy to see if they had more 3-month Gold cards (sadly they didn't), Panera Bread for breakfast, another Wal Mart to check out the movies, games and CD's (they still had a ton of them), and finally Target to pick up a few odds-n-ends. They were all NEARLY EMPTY of people. I guess everyone started their shopping at midnight so most people had already cleared out by the time we started our second excursion.

Crashed back at home for a nap and now I think I'm about to get talked into watching the FREAKING NEW TWILIGHT MOVIE. ughhh.

@TBD I heard about that from some relatives there. They don't call it "the 'Nam" for nothin!

The tl;dr version: We had a pretty calm, organized, and safe Black Friday. I'm concerned for some of the restaurants though. In previous years, most enjoy the increased traffic flow of the post-morning shoppers. This year, since most of the shopping was done at midnight and WAAAY before the restaurants opened for breakfast and lunch, I wonder how they and their employees will be affected.

Yeah, I'd tell them my dad was a psychopath that will do anything for good prices.

It was 34.99. Yeah, I know, only 5 dollars difference, but c'mon, it's my Dad we're talking about. He will kill someone if he has to in order to get a discount on something.

Not sure if there's anything that proves that, deep down humans are just glorified animals like war and Black Friday! KomicZ, you were lucky to walk away with your life. Should be Red Friday, for all the blood shed every year. I think about every year people are trampled to death, also proving that a good deal comes above human life! Wal-Mart shoppers are often intolerable on a NORMAL DAY! Poor grossly underpaid Wal-Mart employees. I've been desperate enough for work that I briefly joined the Dark Side to put up with crap for peanuts an hour.

@fluttershyguy: believe it or not, there are parts of this country where walmart is one of the better employers and pays higher-than-average (local) wages; central ny is one. we are very rural. we don't have people who will pepper spray to cut the line. we have our share of idiots, but certain lines are rarely crossed.

to those advocating on-line shopping: it is one of the things that have made all the stores open earlier and earlier on black friday. stores know that people can go on line and they need to do what they can to get them into the stores.

retail is hard, no matter where you work. i've seen people shopping in macy's that make walmart shoppers look positively classy.

I'm guessing it's different in every state. My brother scored that Zelda 3DS limited edition just 4 hours ago and the last one. And didn't the sale start at 12am? I'm surprised, since Nashua, NH is a small town but loads of people from MA go up there and invade (which annoyed me because it makes extra traffic and they freaking have loads of Best Buys in their area and there's only one in Nashua....)

Well, can't blame them. Tax Free New Hampshire. Happy for my brother. He also got SM3DL. LOl, could have been mean and said "Yeah, go with RE Mercenaries." but 3D Land is a much better game to experience on 3DS.

So weird... this reminds me when my brother got a special edition Black GBA with Link to the Past back in 2002 a year after I got my GBA... And he gets a special edition Black 3DS with Zelda... It's like everything is repeating itself.

Well, anyways- glad everything went well with you Magi. Hearing that they were handing out tickets and keeping things orderly could curve my chances of doing it again, but by the time Black Friday 2012 comes, I'll be satisfied with what I'll be getting within the next year. Deals on WiiU is expected, but I don't care. Want it to be the first home console I get at launch :3

Maybe Vita...

@Shingi_70 LOL.
next thing you know, people will be bringing shotguns and shoot people down if they get the last item.
Black Friday=War.
There are no survivors.

Hehehehe... This is so very true.

And I don't mean to disrespect anyone here (my girlfriend LOVES Wal-Mart for some reason), but look around and many of those who shop at Wal-Mart are... questionable.

Man and here I thought Boxing day in Canada was insane. That's just one of the stories I've heard that makes Boxing day look tame in comparison.

@Qwikman: I bet the people aren't the only questionable thing about Wal-Mart.