The day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday, signals the first day of the Christmas shopping season. This has not become a sport, a very violent one. Much like the presidential primaries, every vendor wants to be the first one open their doors for customers.
In recent years, some malls and stores have opened at midnight on Friday and have attracted customers with deep discounts on a select number of items. So, after Thanksgiving dinner, people would drive out to these places and stand in line or wait in the parking lot until the doors opened at midnight. It is quite a spectacle. Other stores, opened later in the wee hours of the morning with the same enticements. Because of the frenzy, there would be throngs of people at the entrances and when the store was opened, a mass of humanity (and I use the term very loosely, more biological than philsophical) would rush into the store and grab whatever was marked down.
As in any scenario where a lot of people are trying to squeeze into small space, injuries (sometimes fatalities) do occur. People have been trampled by this rush, sometimes store employees or even shoppers. Comparatively, the running of the bulls in Spain seem safer because the bulls will only knock you over and the rest will try to avoid you. What kind of people (again, I use the term loosely) would just step over a person who was knocked down and grab a discounted appliance?
That was last year, when some people were trampled to death in the mad rush, this year, people were robbed in a parking lot (seemingly unrelated to shopping, yet, if you sit in a dark parking lot with lots of money, you will be robbed). One person employed the use of pepper spray to get to the front of the line for a video game. If there is anything that video games have taught us, it is the proper use of pepper spray to disperse large crowds. In one other instance, a grandfather (50 year old or so) was slammed to the ground by security because someone accused him of shoving a video game (yet, another video game) into his shirt. The explanation was that he was trying to secure it for his grandson, whom he had brought along, because others had wanted this item as well. There were other stories this past season of shoppers rushing into a store that was not even scheduled to open and then looting the store as the employees hid and called the police. What is going on?
Some people blame the retailers for causing this frenzy by marking down items well below any sane price. Are retailers really to blame? I saw this one video where a shop offered waffle irons for five dollars and that caused a fight. WAFFLE IRONS!!!!!!! We are talking about WAFFLE IRONS!!!!!!! Has everyone lost their minds?!?!?!!?? Even for five dollars, all you can make are waffles. The economy is in a free fall and spending five dollars on something like that is considered a deal?!?!?!?!?!?!
A friend once told me that if you wanted to slow traffic down, you did not need to cause an accident, all you had to do was to throw a mattress (it does not matter what condition) on the the shoulder of a highway and you can cause the greatest traffic jam in the world because every single car would slow down just to look at it. I scoffed at the comment until one time, I slowed down and looked at a mattress that was on the shoulder of a highway wondering how it got there. Just like everyone else, I slowed down and looked at it.
I cannot blame the retailers for this frenzy on Black Friday. The mass hysteria about buying last year's technololgy at cut rate prices is from the consumer. The general consuming public is not smart enough to see that the stores wait until this time and then start to unload inventory to goose their year end numbers. The warehouses are empty so that by February, they can be filled with the newest items in fashion and technology. The public just eats up this crap that is dumped on them.
All explained by economic behavior and the theory of games. The notion of utility and what people will pay for certain things. Of course economists can explain it more techinically, but in the end, P.T. Barnum is righ, "there is a sucker born every minute", and I will add that these suckers are the result of multiple births.
Retailers know that the more money you give, the more money they have. .
In recent years, some malls and stores have opened at midnight on Friday and have attracted customers with deep discounts on a select number of items. So, after Thanksgiving dinner, people would drive out to these places and stand in line or wait in the parking lot until the doors opened at midnight. It is quite a spectacle. Other stores, opened later in the wee hours of the morning with the same enticements. Because of the frenzy, there would be throngs of people at the entrances and when the store was opened, a mass of humanity (and I use the term very loosely, more biological than philsophical) would rush into the store and grab whatever was marked down.
As in any scenario where a lot of people are trying to squeeze into small space, injuries (sometimes fatalities) do occur. People have been trampled by this rush, sometimes store employees or even shoppers. Comparatively, the running of the bulls in Spain seem safer because the bulls will only knock you over and the rest will try to avoid you. What kind of people (again, I use the term loosely) would just step over a person who was knocked down and grab a discounted appliance?
That was last year, when some people were trampled to death in the mad rush, this year, people were robbed in a parking lot (seemingly unrelated to shopping, yet, if you sit in a dark parking lot with lots of money, you will be robbed). One person employed the use of pepper spray to get to the front of the line for a video game. If there is anything that video games have taught us, it is the proper use of pepper spray to disperse large crowds. In one other instance, a grandfather (50 year old or so) was slammed to the ground by security because someone accused him of shoving a video game (yet, another video game) into his shirt. The explanation was that he was trying to secure it for his grandson, whom he had brought along, because others had wanted this item as well. There were other stories this past season of shoppers rushing into a store that was not even scheduled to open and then looting the store as the employees hid and called the police. What is going on?
Some people blame the retailers for causing this frenzy by marking down items well below any sane price. Are retailers really to blame? I saw this one video where a shop offered waffle irons for five dollars and that caused a fight. WAFFLE IRONS!!!!!!! We are talking about WAFFLE IRONS!!!!!!! Has everyone lost their minds?!?!?!!?? Even for five dollars, all you can make are waffles. The economy is in a free fall and spending five dollars on something like that is considered a deal?!?!?!?!?!?!
A friend once told me that if you wanted to slow traffic down, you did not need to cause an accident, all you had to do was to throw a mattress (it does not matter what condition) on the the shoulder of a highway and you can cause the greatest traffic jam in the world because every single car would slow down just to look at it. I scoffed at the comment until one time, I slowed down and looked at a mattress that was on the shoulder of a highway wondering how it got there. Just like everyone else, I slowed down and looked at it.
I cannot blame the retailers for this frenzy on Black Friday. The mass hysteria about buying last year's technololgy at cut rate prices is from the consumer. The general consuming public is not smart enough to see that the stores wait until this time and then start to unload inventory to goose their year end numbers. The warehouses are empty so that by February, they can be filled with the newest items in fashion and technology. The public just eats up this crap that is dumped on them.
All explained by economic behavior and the theory of games. The notion of utility and what people will pay for certain things. Of course economists can explain it more techinically, but in the end, P.T. Barnum is righ, "there is a sucker born every minute", and I will add that these suckers are the result of multiple births.
Retailers know that the more money you give, the more money they have. .
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