Black Friday 2004
Posted By Kathleen David on November 26, 2004
I have worked a lot of retail in my life. I have worked in department stores, bookstores, specialty retail, and comic book shops. On a number of occasions I worked the Friday after Thanksgiving or Black Friday as it is known in the trade. Today is used to gage the rest of the holiday buying season. For some it is a make or break day. For larger chain stores, the monetary goal for the store that day is jacked up to the stratosphere. This day is all about trying to make a profit for retailers. I have made it my personal goal not to buy anything today or even go out into the madness.
In high school a bunch of friends and I would go to the mall just to watch the insanity. People fighting over the early bird specials or yelling at the manager that the super special VCR at a price of 29.99 of which each store had only twenty to sell was gone. Of course they
I always thought the term “Black Friday” was a bit weird considering “black” is usually a synonym for something negative (except in finance where red is bad and black is good)…
Wow, I didn’t even realize today had a name.
Most of my working “career” to date has been retail, although at the moment my main income is coming from Customer Service…it’s like retail, only I don’t have to stand for 8 hours a day (or more…it’s all in the shoes). Believe me, the first Christmas season in a retail job permanently cured me of shopping madness. Aside from the verbal abuse, I had cranky “customers” throw punches at me, deliberately push over shelves, you name it. And this was working in a bookstore! To this day I loathe having to go into shops, no matter what time of year! And no $30 VCR is worth the sacrifice of a good night’s sleep in my own bed.
Kathleen, I don’t know if you know about this, but today is/was the Adbuster’s foundation official Buy Nothing Day. You can see the details here: http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/# personally, out of respect for those I know who are still working retail jobs, many of whom rely on that job as their primary source of income, I do still shop today, but it’s more of a Buy Responsibly Day for me. I buy only necessities, from stores where I know for a fact the staff are treated well by their management, and I am as patient and polite as I can be.
Wonderful commentary on the woes of working retail, especially on black friday. Forget the VCR, I once worked in a mall where people lined up at 5 am to receive a ten dollar gift certificate (the townsfolk was notoiously cheap). Personally, I would have paid ten dollars to sleep in that day and avoid the commercial madness. Thanks for sharing your retail insight with everyone.