Blecch Friday

Yes, that’s the best title I could come up with. Fuck you.

I am fed. I finally had my Thanksgiving dinner with my folks today, after working Thanksgiving and the eve of Black Friday. Nothing fancy, just simple, delicious home cooking. Turkey. Mashed potatoes. Stuffing. All nuked to perfection. My folks were kind enough to save me some leftovers. For dessert, a slice of Pumpkin/Cheesecake Pie a la mode with whipped cream. In short, I am satisfied.

But let’s rewind to Friday morning at 3:20 AM, shall we?

I had slept for approximately one hour the night before Black Friday. I thought, since I was headed to Target at four in the morning, it would be a good idea to try and just stay up all night. I abandoned this idea at about two thirty.

Another idea that was abandoned: Black Friday shopping while drunk. Just absolutely shitfaced. (Actually, the idea was just to go and simply observe the scene while drunk; I never would have actually gone into a store with money in hand until I caught…the fever.) But, with good reason, I couldn’t find a friend willing to chauffeur my belligerent ass around two hours before dawn. I am a handful when I’ve been doing some serious drinking, and if it were three in the morning when I started drinking, it would have gotten serious real quick.

Just ask my friend Logan. We did karaoke a few weeks ago and I had had four screwdrivers by the time the poor bastard picked me up. Then I had a Martini at the bar, which I couldn’t bring myself to finish. Not only do I not remember what songs Logan sang, but at one point, while I was attempting to sing The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” I think I was singing the lines one line off, as if I could hear the real vocals and I was repeating each line. I had heard of seeing double, but singing double? Christ I was a mess. At one point Logan looked at me and said, “Wow. You look like death.” The evening ended while Logan, the saint, was ushering me into his car. I felt the drink rising back up. I heard Logan say, “In the bushes!” and I hurled into some shrubbery. In between my heaves I looked up to notice four or five police cars and an ambulance across the street. Luckily the cops were too busy loading some poor son of a bitch into the meat wagon to notice me. I don’t know if I apologized to Logan or not, so I’d like to do so publicly, right here. Sorry, man.

So thinking about stories like that, I feel I made at least one right decision on Black Friday.

At 3:50 AM I rolled into the Target parking lot. The line to get into the store was stretched literally from one end of the shopping center to the other. I contemplated just going halfway down the line and then waiting until they opened the doors and the end of the line came to me, but I wasn’t crashing just yet. You ever get up super early and feel like you have all this energy, though you know you shouldn’t? And then about an hour or two later you’re wishing everyone around you for miles would die painfully? I had some of that this day I can tell you. So the doors open (I assume; I couldn’t see from way the fuck over by Martin’s where I was, perhaps some lunatic shattered the glass doors. It is entirely possible that they could have had all that glass and shit swept up and hung new doors by the time I got there) and before we had gone halfway to the entrance, a Target employee bellowed: “32 and 47 inch TV’s are SOLD OUT!” and I saw people already leaving the store with TVs and other cartloads of merchandise. Soon, I was in.

I was seeking a Western Digital Elements 2TB External Hard Drive. The ad promised them for $69 which was a fantastic price from the research I’d done in shopping for one. Somewhere, deep within my heart of hearts, I knew, knew it was a bad idea to go searching for one during the door busting hours…but for some reason I welcomed the pain. Somehow I had caught…the fever.

And so had every-goddamn-body else. I passed a pile of twelve televisions, all seemingly loaded into shopping carts by one small, thin Indian woman. A Target employee was explaining to her that they could only sell these TVs one to a customer. The woman was phoning and texting like mad; apparently she had eleven other family members with her and she was trying to round them all up. Meanwhile, a group of shoppers were slowly encircling the pile of TVs. Drawing closer, salivating. Like vultures sharpening their talons. I got the hell out of there before it got ugly.

When I reached the electronics department, there was a very long line up to the electronics desk. I tried to see if I could find the hard drives on a shelf or an endcap somewhere, but I was wading through an ocean of bloodthirsty bargain hunters. I ducked down a fairly empty aisle and caught an employee. He told me the hard drives were behind the counter; I would have to wait in line.

The line stretched back to the Indian woman and her cache of televisions. The vultures had been spooked as more of the woman’s family members had come to claim some of the enormous boxes. I waited in this line for an hour. As we got closer to the counter, a short African American woman, (we’ll call her “Flo,” because I didn’t get a look at her name tag. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if it read “The Enforcer.” This was clearly not her first rodeo) announced that some items could just be handed out without waiting. GPS’s, Nikon Cameras, some other things. I asked about the hard drives, but before Flo could answer, the same guy I asked before once again assured me they were behind the counter.

As the line entered the “home stretch,” I noticed that we were bumping up against another line. At first I thought perhaps another department had a similar setup. Soon I learned that this other line was the line for the front registers.

Understand, at this particular Target, the electronics department is all the way at the ass end of the store. And here was the line for the front checkout, snaking all the way back and bumping up against the electronics line. I laughed hysterically, which devolved into a coughing fit, which I’m sure might have scared some people. I couldn’t help myself. It was the only reaction I could muster.

I was all laughed out by the time I reached the counter. I spouted off “I want a Western Digital Elements two-terabyte external hard drive!” like fucking Ralphie to Santa Claus just before he gets booted down that dumb slide. A guy behind the counter pointed off in one direction. “Oh, they are on an endcap, that way.” I calmly explained that I wasn’t going to get out of line and I would very much appreciate someone going to pick me up one so I could pay for it and exit this establishment forever and ever. They sent a girl to look, and I waited. And waited. Two or three people were rung up while I waited.

Naturally, they were all sold out.

I thanked the girl and bolted. As I fought the urge to weep openly, as I cursed the shithead who twice gave me bad info, I came to the front of the store. All those people! I saw them all, lined up, marked off, the line stretching back to one corner of the store and winding around, out of sight. Some carts full, some with just a few items, none with anything anyone really needed.

I was free.

I knew where that checkout line ended, and I felt so lucky not to be standing in it or any line anymore. I was out of there, man. My fever had broken.

It was pouring down rain when I got out of the store. I laughed again (how perfect!), and tromped through the puddles to my car. I had originally planned to try to check out Best Buy as well (Blu-ray player!), but when I passed the store I saw a fire truck and an ambulance outside, and decided I shouldn’t press my luck any more. I drove home.

I was going to begin this piece with a boring bit about how (inaccurately) the legend goes that it’s called “Black Friday” because it’s the only time of year that stores stay “In the Black.” But I found something much more interesting on Wikipedia:

“Black Friday refers in general to the superstition that Friday is an unlucky day - possibly originally because the crucifixion occurred on a Friday…”

I am not a religious man, and I wouldn’t call what I went through a religious experience. I brought the humiliation and wear upon my soul upon myself. But I can certainly understand the story of the crucifixion a lot better now. That mob, I think, was capable of just about anything.

Oh yeah, I went home, got about seven hours’ sleep, went to work, checked out another Target at about nine PM, got my cheap hard drive and didn’t have to wait in line. Win.

Clearly, I didn't learn a thing!