I find it hard to digest the melee that is Black Friday.
The people in the above video are after waffle irons. Waffle irons!? And one woman even appears to be losing her pants in the chaos.
I see the news coverage of stampedes, fights, violence, people getting trampled, and the people who have camped out in front of stores for weeks, and I think, “SERIOUSLY?”
I don’t get it. I don’t. There is nothing in this world I need so badly that I’m willing to get involved in the insanity that is Black Friday. I stay home. I don’t go out. If I’m desperate to shop on that day, I’ll do it online.
Members of my family brave the madness, though. Friends do it. They head out at midnight or the wee hours of the morn to get in line and wait…and hope they’ll beat the crowd to whatever deal is their goal. I’ve heard of people who get entire families involved, preparing a strategy to race through the stores at insane hours of the night in order to snag the best deals.
I’m all about saving money, of course. There’s nothing I love more than a good deal, but I’m not willing to risk my life for it.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about Black Friday is that there are too many opportunities for greed to rear it’s ugly head. And more often than not, it does. And those are the stories that make the news. And it comes one day after we sit around our tables and thank God for our many blessings.
But now some people aren’t even doing that. As my husband pointed out, some people are skipping Thanksgiving all together to get in line at the store to be one of the first to get a deal.
I’m going to say it–there’s something wrong with that.
When a woman feels the need to pepper spray people because they cut in line in front of her (or for whatever reason), something is wrong. A friend of mine got a waffle iron snatched from her hand at a WalMart at midnight. Really–who needs a waffle iron so badly that they need to snatch it from someone? And what about the shooting that took place outside of a WalMart when some folks got into a fight? (What is it about WalMart…?)
And as the video above showed, it gets U.G.L.Y. out there on Black Friday.
And I can’t support that. I don’t want to be a part of it.
I do realize that not all people who venture out on Black Friday are insane, but it certainly appears that there are plenty of looney-tunes out there… at least evidenced by the horror stories. And those few, isolated incidents are enough to sour me on the entire “experience.”
Black Friday, appropriately named, makes me sad/scared/leery of elements of humanity. I don’t like what it’s become or what it represents. I can only imagine what people in 3rd world countries, if they had access to TV coverage of Black Friday, would think about seeing a crowd of people fight over waffle irons.
I think the beauty of thanking God for his many blessings on Thursday is being overshadowed by the greed that is Black Friday.
Share with Me: What do you think? Do you venture out on Black Friday? Have any stories to share about your shopping experience? Were you able to score any deals and remain unscathed?
Hale and Hearty Words 