Materialism at its Finest

So, we went shopping this morning.  I know, this makes you question my sanity, and I don't blame you.  Now that the incident is over I question my sanity too.  We started the evening at Wal-Mart at midnight.  We picked up the Band Hero bundle for seventy five, along with a couple of blue rays and a present for my father in law.  We didn't get out of there until about three.  Then we came home, chilled for an hour and  hit Target, where we waited in a line outside for an hour.  All we went for was FF13 for seventeen bucks.  I literally got the last one.  It was awesome.  Than came Toys R Us, where we saw a guitar hero guitar was on sale, but it turned out to be only for the wii, lame.  Then off to Kmart where we saw that a guitar hero guitar was on sale (but only on Thanksgiving Day)  and NHL 11, which sold out on Thanksgiving Day.  We hit 2 out of 4, but some of the experiences were classic.

Experience 1:  The Scene, Wal-Mart.  We've got out stuff, we're standing in a three mile line.  My Aunt is in a line next to us a good distance back.  I've made a friend, things are going fine.  Then the line stops.  We look ahead and see a woman with an ad out.  She's price matching.  On Black Friday.  What the hell.  She had a whole cart load and must have price matched the whole things for like fifteen minutes.  My Aunt passed us.  People, if you are one of the price matching individuals, wait in the store until the majority of us are out.  I know this sounds crazy, but your time is not worth more than mine.

Experience 2:  The Scene, Target's outside line.  We've been waiting for fifteen minutes and here comes the Target Security man.  He says that people cannot get into line after three thirty, and if they do, we need to snitch on them.  We found that a little funny, but whatev.  As the line starts moving we get to the front of Target and this guy is shouting at people and physically throwing them out of line.  The two I remember most are him yelling at a young woman while pushing her and telling her to get out of the parking lot, and him physically throwing a man out of line who then tried to chest up to him, and the security guy calling a policeman over.  I didn't know what happened next because I was madly trying to get to FF13.

Experience 3:  The Scene, Any Time I Needed to Ask a Sales Associate a Question.  Every time, I was met with a blank stare and an, "I really don't know..."  As they rifled through the local ad (Which I could download from the Internet).  Shouldn't these people know what's going on?  Is there no training meeting?  I'm trying to figure out the store manager's thought process...

Biggest Selling Day of the Year
Lots of People
Sales on VERY specific items strewn about the store
These lots of people will have questions they will ask my workers
How to prepare for this?
Certainly my workers need no training...

Absolutely ridiculous.

So, I can say that it was real, and it was fun, but it certainly wasn't real fun.  I'm happy we got some good deals and I'll probably do it again next year, but I would like to send a shout out to a few people out there.

All of you who are price checkers:  Try to think of others.

All of you Security Guards:  I may have found the Target guy funny, but he did his job, and it made Target one of the more orderly stores.

All of you store managers/workers:  Figure out what's going on.  Few things are more frustrated than a worker who is as clueless as you are.

Everyone else:  Isn't Black Friday the best way to start the season?  Let's all try to kill each other while fulfilling out materialistic wants.  Fa la la la la, la la, EL-BOW.