People rush past one another looking for the hottest toys and cheapest electronics and small groups gather in the aisles. Eventually, shoppers start to climb the shelves, nearly knocking it and other customers over. Black Friday has begun.
Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. Each year, thousands of shoppers line up outside stores for hours on end, waiting to find everything they need on their Christmas lists for the cheapest prices. Many stores open at 5 a.m. or earlier while crushing crowds wait outside in lines wrapping around the store.
Prices on Black Friday are usually obscenely low, which is why many customers look for high-priced electronics and popular toys. As soon as doors open, the throngs rush into the stores, grabbing as many items as they can. Check-out lines wrap around the stores until customers can't find the beginning or the end.
Ashley Carpenter, a junior psychology and criminal justice major, has been a Black Friday shopper for the last few years. She usually goes shopping with her mom and aunt, who frequent Target and Kohl's. Carpenter usually wakes up early in the morning to get to the stores on time.
"I think we've gotten up at four in the morning before," Carpenter said. "Actually I got up at two in the morning because I had to get ready then drive to pick up my mom."
Carpenter and her mom are usually able to find great deals. Although Carpenter usually gets movies for low prices, her mom is able to get deals and most of her Christmas shopping done on Black Friday.
"Most of the time she looks for stuff for me and my sister, so whatever's on our Christmas list," Carpenter said of her mother's shopping habits. "For my sister it's usually toys or electronics."
Carpenter has fun looking for bargains on Black Friday. However, she also enjoys people-watching while at the stores.
"Sometimes people get pushy and it's kind of funny when the security people have to break up fights," she said. Carpenter recounted a time last year in which a Target manager and security guard had to stop a fight between two customers over where the line for the register began.
"The manager goes on this tangent about how we have troops overseas and it's almost Christmas and they're fighting over who's in line when there is so much else going on in the world," she said.
Although some crowds can be controlled by managers, sometimes they become overwhelming.
On Black Friday in 2008, a Long Island Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death when shoppers couldn't be held back by employees. As police officers tried to perform CPR on the dying man, crowds continued to trample the group. Five other shoppers were injured. Since then, Wal-Mart refers to the day after Thanksgiving only as The Event. Since then, Wal-Mart and other retailers have incorporated other measures to make sure no one is injured during the mayhem, specifically hiring extra employees.
People across the country get a head start on Black Friday by going to outrageous lengths. Lorie Davenport of St. Petersburg, Fla. set up a tent outside her local Wal-Mart a full nine days before Black Friday, according to the St. Petersburg Times. She has already been rewarded for her patience - the manager gave her a free iPad for being the first in line.
An online equivalent to Black Friday, known as cyber Monday, has been used by those who don't wish to deal with crushing crowds. Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately following Black Friday. In 2009, comScore reported that $887 million was spent on Cyber Monday.
The term Black Friday has many different origins. The Philadelphia police department started referring to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, in a negative sense, in 1966, due to the massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as customers mobbed department stores. However, according to BlackFriday.com, accountants started calling the day Black Friday for the opposite reason. When financial records were recorded, accountants marked losses in red and positive amounts in black. For most of the financial year, retailers were in the red. However, after Black Friday, retailers were back in the black, having gained profit. Black Friday marks the official beginning of the holiday shopping season.
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