For some, Thanksgiving weekend is all about the holiday traditions of home, family and food. For others, though, the weekend centers on another holiday — one that is more focused on competition, big crowds and, most importantly, retail.
Black Friday, the day that traditionally ushers in the Christmas shopping season, gets its name from slightly outdated accountant jargon; on the fruitful day, retailers typically make a return from their financial losses of the prior season — "in the red" — and begin earning profits — "in the black."
But the day is not only profitable for retailers. To draw customers in on Black Friday, stores are known to hold generous sales, often offering eye-catching bargains like 50 percent, 70 percent or even 90 percent off of store merchandise.
To accommodate the huge crowds of shoppers these offers bring in, stores notoriously extend their hours the day of — or sometimes the multiple days surrounding — Black Friday. Four or 5 a.m. is a typical opening hour for larger stores, such as Best Buy and Macy's, that take part in the Black Friday mania. Some stores, such as Toys R Us, have even begun opening at midnight after Thursday's Thanksgiving meal.
Junior Julia Stimeck, a former employee of L.L.Bean, said that when stores try too hard to attract customers, they can end up using marketing tactics that do not result in significantly increased sales.
"When I worked at L.L.Bean, they decided that they needed to stay open for 24 hours every day between Thanksgiving and Christmas," she said. "The intention was clear — they wanted to attract customers shopping for the holidays. But they didn't really think about the fact that, other than on Black Friday, people are not willing to shop in the middle of the night. Why would anyone come shop at L.L.Bean at four in the morning on a weeknight? In the end, they probably spent more money hiring staff for night shifts than they earned by keeping the store open."
Even with increased shopping hours throughout the entire holiday season, people still line up outside of stores at all hours of the night before Black Friday, eager to be among the first to dig through the best deals of the year. While some shoppers choose to pitch a tent and camp out in line, others simply brave the cold.
According to senior Ari Dukas, Black Friday shoppers may have to combat another phenomenon before they even reach the parking lot: late night traffic.
"A friend of mine woke up early to go wait [in] a line outside of a department store. She said that at 2 a.m. the traffic was already awful because of all the people trying to get to stores ahead of time," Dukas said.
Once the stores open, those courageous enough to step foot in a department store must sometimes endure swarms of pushy people more concerned with grabbing the items they want than with their own, or anyone else's, safety.
For Dukas, the reputation of overly aggressive shoppers is reason enough to avoid Black Friday shopping altogether.
"I'm not intense enough for Black Friday," Dukas said.
Indeed, Black Friday occasionally gets more out of hand than a little pushing and shoving. Last year, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled and killed by Black Friday shoppers who stampeded through the store's glass doors minutes before opening time. This year, policemen were called to break up brawls between competing customers in two Wal-Marts in California.
According to Stimeck, working to control the stampede of forceful shoppers can be more stressful than being a part of the crowd.
"Employees are given absurd work hours around the holidays, especially when your store is open 24 hours for about a week straight." Stimeck said. "And clothing constantly ends up on the floors, on the wrong racks, all over the place. Customers can also be really nasty."
This year, however, some Black Friday shoppers found that venturing into stores on Friday was not as intimidating as they had expected.
"I went [shopping] in the afternoon and was surprised by the fact that it was not absolutely packed," junior David Johnson said.
Junior Lia Tucker had a similar experience.
"I just stopped off at Ann Taylor the day after Black Friday to take advantage of whatever sales were continuing, and I couldn't believe how empty it was. There were about 10 people in the entire store," she said.
Some students suspected that due to a struggling economy, people simply could not afford to shop for gifts, even with Black Friday discounts. Others guessed that retailers could no longer afford to offer sales as enticing as those they had offered in the past.
"The sales were sub-par. Too many ‘buy one, get one half off' kind of sales instead of actual percentage discounts," Johnson said. "Then again, I haven't much enjoyed Black Friday for the past few years, either."
