Friday, November 23, 2007

Black Friday Shopping Experience

Today Nov 23, I got up around 6:30, thinking of not going to do any shopping, because I know how bad the crowds can be. And was I right.

Here's how it went.

I showed up to Fry's in Burbank around 7am, two hours after they opened at 5am. There was a line around the outside of the building of people just waiting to get in the store! After about 20min of waiting in the line I got in.

I spent maybe 30-45 minutes getting around and picking up some items. Then the most shocking part of the trip......the line to get out! One line, ran completely around the inside of the store, be the cafe, through the appliances around the software, through the bags, unreal... it felt like I was in the twighlight zone.

That lasted around 2.5 hours. Then I got to the checkout, and the guy seemed a little slow, actually very slow and he ended up charging me twice for an item. Then he had to go and get a credit, this whole checkout process while at the register lasted at least an hour! So 5.5 hours later I am out of Fry's in Burbank... What nice weather outside. Why would anyone want to spend such a nice day inside a store waiting in a line? Well you can save a few bucks, but is that really worth it? I wanted a camera, which they didn't have, there was items left scattered throughout the store in the line where people had abandoned the march to the checkout. So I picked up a few things.

Some advice, bring a buddy, you go through the store and pickup stuff and the other person stands in line. This could save you at least 45 minutes if the line was as bad as it was this morning.

The other thing you can do is pays someone to stand in line....or just buy the item from someone else.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and holiday.

I'll report on the various items I purchased in a future post.

Best wishes,
Victor

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