Every year on Black Friday, stores open at ungodly hours and try to offer the “best” savings and deals to those devoted enough to come shopping in the middle of the night. Many come pajama-clad and carrying coffee, all anxiously awaiting that magical moment when the doors finally open to their favorite store filled with mark downs. But too often these shoppers are scammed into wasting their money and time on deals that aren’t really deals.
“I try to avoid Black Friday shopping at all costs because I really don’t find any of the deals worth it enough to interrupt my sleep and go to the mall,” sophomore Jenny McCann said. “People who go are crazy.”
Many popular stores trick their consumers into buying items that aren’t really discounted. Shoppers spend so much time waiting to get into the store that when they realize that they aren’t getting that great of a discount, they purchase the item anyway because they don’t want to go home empty handed.
Every year in an event called Midnight Madness, Tyson’s Corner opens its doors at 12 a.m., where the mall is instantly stormed by devoted shoppers. The mall’s once peaceful, open hallways quickly begin to resemble the science hallways at AHS within seconds of opening. There were even reports of injuries due to stampeding and people being trampled from last year’s Black Friday. Are the sales really worth all of the chaos?
“I tried to go last year at one in the morning to Tyson’s and we were backed up on the highway for an hour,” senior Christina Uglietta said. “In the mall it was a disaster and way overcrowded; I didn’t even buy anything.”
For most shoppers, Black Friday means one thing: lines. Lines of traffic, lines for the dressing room and lines for the cash register. In most cases, shoppers spend more hours waiting to shop than they actually do shopping. In this culture, time is money, and the amount of time people waste waiting to shop or waiting in traffic is far more than the money that you end up saving on these discounts.
Sure, you can find pretty good deals on a variety of products on Black Friday, but the whole month of Dec. is filled with holiday savings that, in many cases, are just as cost effective as the ones offered on the shopping holiday. If you are willing to wait hours in lines, you can wait another week for the holiday sales to begin.
“I don’t go Black Friday shopping because it’s extremely hectic and the atmosphere is discomforting,” junior Hayat Yusuf said. “The amount of people that go and the mediocre sales don’t really draw me into it.”
With the modern technological society we live in, it is no wonder that the solution to avoiding the Black Friday Madness is online. The Monday following Black Friday is known as Cyber Monday, and offers extreme discounts on online shopping.
Through Cyber Monday, you can avoid the hassle of long lines and traffic, the overwhelming feeling of large crowds and the unnecessary trip to the mall. With online shopping you can search for deals while in the comfort of your home, making it much easier to focus on which items are best for you. Also, online shopping makes it a lot easier and quicker to compare prices and deals that different stores offer on the same products, thus helping you find the biggest bang for your buck.
Save yourself from the chaos and the let down and stay at home on Black Friday.
