Black Friday Feeding Frenzy
Posted on 30 November 2009 by Stenberg-Tendys W.L. in Society
Black Friday means different things in different countries. For many it is when Friday is the 13th of the month, as it was on November 13th. For the United States, however, Black Friday is an annual event, which announces the start of the Christmas shopping spree.
Friday 27th November, the day after Thanksgiving, is the day millions of Americans, some in their pyjamas, hit the stores, eager to grab the bargains. Hordes of shoppers queued outside stores long before dawn’s early light broke. They swooped like hungry seagulls dive-bombing a fishing fleet, hunting for discounted products.
Many elbowed their way through crowds, grabbing up a deal and text messaging their victory to a friend, before zooming off to find more bargains.
“This is our last stop of the day,” said Richard Javinett at 9.00a.m., helping load two $99 TV credenzas and two $99 coffee tables on a rolling cart at Ikea. “We’ve already been to Sports Authority, Citrus Park mall, Walmart, CVS and Walgreens. I think that’s it.”
Incentives were rife. The first 200 shoppers entering the Queens Center Mall, in New York, received a $10 gift voucher, when the doors opened at 11.00 p.m.
Last year the shopping frenzy proved fatal for some shoppers, when a Wal-Street employee was trampled to death and several people badly injured, in a shopping stampede of utter chaos. Two men died when they had a shoot-out in Toys ‘R’ Us in Palm Desert, California.
This year shop managers attempted to control the eager crowds in a more civilized fashion and the worst fights broken up by police. At some shops, the staff walked the waiting lines, taking orders in advance, then filled carts with those items to save customers time, in the hope of lessening the crush. One shopper complained “It was horrible. You couldn’t move”.
Other stores stayed open 24 hours, hoping to quell the competition among the shoppers. The feeding frenzy is expected to continue through Saturday and Sunday of the holiday weekend. Black Friday is the country’s biggest shopping day, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the retail industry’s annual sales. The question remains, will other countries pick up the challenge to also host a ‘Black Friday’?
Many shoppers are now opting for ‘Cyber Monday’ on the Interent, rather than Black Friday in the stores.
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