by Megan Stewart, PAW Writer
You’re stuffed with Thanksgiving turkey and you’re laying on the couch in your annual food coma, waiting for the hours to pass. Soon you can head to your nearest mall and raid the stores for your favorite marked-down products, fighting competitors off who want to look just as cute as you in a major sale outfit. It’s Black Friday of course, but more recently might as well be called Black Thursday. This is because these annual store sales start early Thursday night. While families should be still at home on this Thanksgiving holiday sharing memories, they are instead inclined to go from rack to rack finding the best bargains for the upcoming season.
Now there is no denying the simple pleasures of finding that perfect outfit you have been searching for and realizing that, since its Black Friday, you get it for half the price. It’s a thrill to say the least. But the downside is this tradition leads some customers to absolute madness! Pushing, shoving, and throwing elbows are what are exchanged between opponents in the competition to see who gets to walk away with that perfect marked-down scarf. It can get pretty intense and make store employees and owners go into a sort of frenzy trying to control it all.
Recently I spoke to my friend; Cierra Ramsay, who is an employee at Target, and she told me this would be her first experience working on this dreadful Black Friday. “ I was pretty bummed to find out I’d be working on Thanksgiving, considering that our Black Friday starts that day, but at least I won’t have to experience the whole Black Friday day on the actual Friday, only the opening on Thursday, which might be just as terrifying,”she said. Some employees may be concerned about serious injuries and crimes. It gets very intense and Cierra also heard horror stories from previous years where “there were riots, and a bunch of crazy people from Walmart came over and caused commotions, and some employees even got trampled”. She even stated cases of robberies happening multiple times and some of the robbers even getting away with it.
Black Friday can lead to people to do some outrageous things, and showing their true colors when it comes to that perfect handbag. So if you’re thinking about going out Thanksgiving night into the Black Friday night hours, just be warned, keep your friends close, but your competitors closer. This way you can grab that amazing handbag first and they won’t even see your plan till its too late.