Preparing for Black Friday on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is coming,
Turkeys are fat.
And upon Black Friday,
You're buying this and that.

I didn't have any knowledge of Black Friday as a child. During those innocent times, the day after Thanksgiving meant turkey leftovers, full control of what movies I wanted to see, and Mother disappearing from the house and later reappearing with many shopping bags that she would immediately try to hide from the rest of the family until Christmas. My eyes opened to Black Friday once I had a car to travel to shops, a job to earn spending money, and a Christmas list.

From what I picked up from the news and an economics class, Black Friday was established as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Retail stores would calculate how much consumers would spend for Christmas based on the Black Friday foot traffic and purchases. To help increase both, the marketing department advertised ridiculous sale prices, extended store hours, and exclusive items for sale. By getting consumers into the stores, they are likely to buy some of the regularly priced items out of impulse or convenience while buying the promoted sale items during Black Friday and possibly will continue to shop there because of memories from the Black Friday sale prices.

There was just one small oversight about Black Friday: The Black Friday sales would cause customers to go totally insane. Even prisoners in the middle of a prison riot watching footage of the Black Friday activities would think, "I may be doing life in prison for murder and am currently beating the stuffing out of my fellow inmate, but I would never lower myself to go through THAT."

I remember my first Black Friday experience like I remember seeing my first car accident. Both featured huge traffic jams and a giant pile of debris on the ground. During my first Black Friday I fought fellow drivers for a parking space, fought several shoppers for the sale items I wanted, and stood in line for at least an hour with the same shoppers I just fought with waiting to be rung up by cashiers. Then I repeated the process until the afternoon. By the end, I was home promising never to do this again until next year.

Over the years I picked up a few tips to have a more pleasant Black Friday experience. The first preparation is the preparation. Mid-October is the earliest that stores may leak information about what will be the big sales for Black Friday. The Internet is such a lovely tool to find out who is selling what at what price. As Black Friday draws nearer, more information is leaked through the Internet, newspapers, television, and radio. After researching, you'll have an idea of what you want and where you want it.

Once you have the information, plan a route. Know the early opening times and aim to hit the earliest opening stores first. Say if Target opens at 4AM and K-Mart opens at 6AM, then visit Target first before raiding K-Mart. Or plan your route to visit stores with high priority items first. If you know Wal-Mart is selling a Blu-Ray player, flat-screen TV, and a diamond ring in one convenient bundle pack, make Wal-Mart your first stop. A GPS device or printed directions will help direct you on the road. Chances are GPS devices will be the hot item for Black Friday anyway like they were last year.

Try to arrange a carpool with a fellow Black Friday shopper. Parking will be anarchy on Black Friday and you should consider sending one shopper to buy as much from both shoppers' lists while the driver performs an exercise in futility looking for a parking space before circling in front of the store to load the purchases. Teamwork can be fun and useful sometimes.

Know your spending limit before you shop. The PS3 may sell for $50, but if you only have $20, you're just wasting your time, the store's time, the time of other customers, and you're probably taking up a good parking space as you waste time. Stick to cash or credit cards. The checkbook is another time waster.

I remember when stores would have a service providing wake-up calls for those ridiculously early opening times. If they still provide them, use them. Or just set your alarm early.

If you have any friends who work retail on Black Friday, it may be possible to have them hold requested items for you. But that mainly depends on the store's policy on such practices and how good your relationship is with that friend. Perhaps I shouldn't have played that prank involving a car's air conditioning system and talcum powder on my friend who works at Best Buy.

On Thanksgiving Thursday, devoted Black Friday shoppers may eat a light dinner, skip the football, quickly mingle with the guests and family, and call it a night early to get enough sleep for the 4AM opening times on Friday. That kind of defeats the purpose of family togetherness and other Hallmark messages that Thanksgiving intended to give. This is a sad time when shopping takes precedence over family and friends. So if you plan to go that route, the gifts you buy on Black Friday better make up for the snubbing.

Nevertheless, a good night's sleep is helpful to prepare for the long Black Friday morning. So eat a light dinner and sleep early. The sleep will provide the energy to put up with the crowds, traffic, and competition for the items. If you're an insomniac like myself, the lack of sleep means not oversleeping through the opening times. The crankiness from the lack of sleep will increase aggression to plow through the other shoppers for the items. Judgment may be impaired, but with everyone else stressed out and competing for the items, everyone else will not be thinking straight anyway.

On Black Friday, eat a quick breakfast. A fried egg and toast is quick and will provide protein and energy. Don't start on the Thanksgiving leftovers until after the shopping is done. Consider the leftovers the celebratory meal after a successful raid.

Once at the store, dodging and weaving skills are a must to avoid other people, floor displays, and other obstacles. I took plenty of dance classes to perfect my agility, reflexes, and dodging. Leave the children at home with a responsible adult or sitter. They're just going to slow you down and will be another floor obstruction for other shoppers.

If you work retail on Black Friday, my hat's off to you. Good luck with the customers.