Today's moment of WTF?!

[poltr1]

11/25/05: 5 AM? You've got to be kiddding me!

It's Black Friday, folks. The day after Thanksgiving, when retail merchants pull out all the stops, put lots of things on deep discount, and open their doors at insanely early hours.


But why do stores even do this? Is it because they expect customers to be queued up at this hour in the morning? Or is it because customers expect or demand this sort of thing? Or does it have to so with the magic word "SALE"?

I can understand why retailers now rolling out their Christmas stuff immediately after Halloween: To eliminate this early-bird rush. Or so I thought, until today.

They might as well take the example from the Harry Potter booksigning and open the stores at 12:01am. But the folks who work for retail merchants will revolt.

Speaking of the folks who work the sales floors.....this early-bird crap isn't their idea. I'm sure they'd rather sleep in and come in at a more reasonable hour, like 9am. But nooooo! Management says, "We're opening early today, and you'd better be there."

And some folks who don't work retail jobs, like R, have a "forced vacation day". The office is closed, but it's not a paid holiday, so the workers there have to burn 8 hours of vacation or PTO time.

As for me.....what do you get for the man who has everything? A place to put it all. Or the universal gift: cash.

All I want for Christmas is a debt-free life,
My credit cards
All paid in full
All I want for Christmas is a debt-free life,
So I can skip the monthly payments.

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

But why do stores even do this? Is it because they expect customers to be queued up at this hour in the morning? Or is it because customers expect or demand this sort of thing? Or does it have to so with the magic word "SALE"?

Because it works. No more, no less.

People who have never worked closely with marketing folks often seem to assign nefarious motives to them, but to be honest, it's just a very specialized form of applied sociology. Which isn't to say that individual companies or even industries don't do unethical things, but most of them don't do it with the mindset of "this will screw over huge numbers of people", simply "this will generate more dollars for our bank account."

[poltr1]

And they'll keep doing it until it stops working.

Hurm.

When I was younger, and a lot more naive, I thought S&M stood for "Sales and Marketing". Maybe I wasn't so far off the mark.

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

And some of us have the company closed, and don't have PTO to burn. We just don't get paid, because we're temps. *sigh*

[(Anonymous)]

Mainly, stores do it because they sell lots of stuff. There's a reason it's called Black Friday -- it's the day that they hit profitability for the year and go from red ink to black.

And it IS an entire culture of early shoppers, much like the people who deliberately queue up at the post office on April 15th to send their taxes out (yes, they exist). They do it every year, without fail, and many of them enjoy it and, most important, they spend lots and lots of money.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Whoops. That anonymous comment is me, BTW. I didn't realize that I wasn't logged in.

[poltr1]

'Salright. In the meantime, have another cup of tea. :)

[athenawindsong.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm against getting forced into a buying frenzy just for the sake of it. I do things on my own time, for my own reasons and will not be dictated to by big, greedy corporations. Sale or no sale, if there is something on my list for a particular person, I get it. Black Friday, to me, feels like a cattle call and this is one heifer who ain't gettin' corralled! :-)

[poltr1]

Amen, sistah! Testify!

(P.S. Love the new icon. That's Pussyfoot, isn't it? From "Feed The Kitty"?)

[athenawindsong.livejournal.com]

Thanks. No, it's the kitty that Pepe Le Pew is always chasing around. She and Pepe were always my favorite Looney Toons.

[poltr1]

Oh. What's her name? Hang on.....

(/me riffles through one of my Warner Bros. animation books)

Aha! Penelope!