Looks like I ……..
Forgot to wake up early and go shopping on the annual “Black Friday” holiday! Cause that is sort of what it is, right? Many folks turn Thanksgiving Day weekend into a long weekend bye taking today off (and I get it, not everybody can, I personally have worked on many Thanksgiving Day’s and the Friday’s after themselves, I mean, someone has to or there’d be no Black Friday shopping to get done, so yes, someone does have to actually work to make it all happen) and I say, if you can, please do. I just can’t bring my self to actually go shopping on this particular day, deals or no deals. I think it has something to do with the feeling we are all being hypnotized into thinking this is something we have to participate in simply by repeating it over and over again (and earlier and earlier each year), kind of like the Pavlov’s dog thing (if you don’t know, Google it)! And I no doubt believe that there are going to be things on sale that are truly great deals, but….I do tend to believe the whole plan is to get you out to shop and buy lot’s of things which may or may not be “great deals” but tend to make “great” profits for retailers, again, not really a bad thing as everyone that is in business does need profits to survive…I guess it’s just the fact that we are sort of being toyed with. Which is also sort of what marketing is all about and I get that as well, I just refuse to go shopping on Black Friday. But if you choose to, that’s cool as well.
What is a bit on the positive side, and I believe this all had a lot to do with the pandemic, stores don’t seem to be open on Thanksgiving anymore, at least the ones that were always advertising for Black Friday sales (sure, many groceries are open but that makes sense, folks have last minute food forgets and need to get those to pull off the Turkey day feast, and groceries tend to have lot’s of pies left that were meant to be sold for Thanksgiving and need to be off of the shelves so what a beautiful time for BOGO free sale on pies, correct)? What I am talking about, remember the commercials, “so and so store, open at 6pm Thanksgiving Day to kick off the Black Friday sales event”. The stores would open up on Thursday night and either stay open all night or close down from midnight to 5am or so and then open right back up to continue the “sale”. So there you are, having your Turkey day feast, watching some football, letting the food digest, taking a nap, hopefully not having more than one beer and then, boom, time to go hit the mall! And if the stores are open, well, yes again, someone has to be working there, so the store folks also have to venture out after all of the festivities (albeit, much earlier than the shoppers) to do the store thing and I mean, I just can’t think of a worse way to spend Thanksgiving day. So kudos, to the stores for doing away with that tradition as it was extremely rude on all accounts (hate to mention this but it will be back again some day in the future, I guarantee it)!
And you know what, I bought a 55 inch TV a month ago for somewhere around $300 for which I am quite happy for and I don’t think I’d ever complain about that, even if they had it on sale today for $150 (which it probably is). Anyway, if you are out there shopping today, have a great time, It’s all good, but I’ll be working on some home Pulp Projects, with the TV on in the background showing today’s College football and basketball games, drinking a cold one and really just enjoying the day. FYI, “Small Business Saturday” tomorrow, I will indeed be supporting that!
Happy Thanksgiving Day weekend to you all and I’ll be back next week!
