I got to Best Buy on Thursday a few minutes before midnight. I was ready for a long night. I had my PJ bottoms on underneath my jeans and an extra tshirt under my shirt. I had my leather jacket, my neck warmer, and my stocking cap. I had my Bible in my cargo pants pocket and my MP3 player in my coat’s breast pocket. One of the unfortunate things was my position in line. Despite getting there at midnight, I was 177th in line. Another unfortunate thing was that it was cold. Another unfortunate thing was the great volume at which those around me were talking (with less virtue in the profanity department than I deemed ideal) and laughing. I mitigated this quite effectively by pushing my earbuds deep within my ears, cranking the volume up, and pulling my stocking cap over my ears. I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag and slept for a total of about three hours.
Best Buy at midnight
A mob of people gathered around two people having an argument
Me, in repose
Me again
Those around me in line
Those around me in line
The Papa Johns guy came around at about 3 AM and was selling pizza for $2 a slice! I got a piece of pepperoni pizza! It was very good.
The line at about 3:30 AM
The line at about 3:30 AM
At least one cop car was patrolling the parking lot all night and at times there were as many as three
This was one of the times when it was three. A guy threw a beer bottle at someone’s head, shattering the beer bottle and raising a big lump. The guy got a ride in an officer’s back seat for his efforts.
A cop just sitting by our line.
When they finally opened, a cop parked his car between the entrance and the crowd of people that had just arrived (and hadn’t stood in line, but were right up by the door) so they wouldn’t cut in line. People up and down the line were shouting threats of bodily damage to anyone that tried to cut in line.
At 4 AM, Best Buy employees started down the line passing out tickets for the biggest items on sale. When they ran out, a group of young punks started yelling obscenities at the Best Buy employees. Someone else in the line yelled at them to shut up.
I have highlighted the dramatic incidents of violence and obscenity, but on the whole everyone was amazingly well-behaved and polite. I made a number of nice acquaintances while standing in line: a cute young Indian couple originally from Bombay, a cool young Asian teenager, and a mother-daughter shopping team.
When I got into Best Buy at about 5, I instantly went to the monitors section and searched in vain for the $129 Samsung 19″ LCDs. After searching throughout the whole computer section several times and asking multiple employees, I finally found about 25 of them on a high shelf. I got a delighted grin on my face and looked to my left to see an Asian teenager mirror my movements as he looked up, saw the LCDs, got a delighted grin on his face, and looked over at me. We both grinned and gave sighs of relief. I then corralled a Best Buy employee with a ladder to come over and get them down. He wasn’t available for a bit so I and my buddy stood guard under our treasure. A middle-aged lady came over and followed our gaze up to the stack of LCDs, her eyes widened, and she asked us in a stage whisper, “Are those the 931BW’s?” We eagerly nodded. She put her fingers to her lips and said, “Line starts here. Let’s keep it quiet.” I finally managed to disengage the Best Buy employee from handing down the Lexmark printers to come aid us in our retrieval problem. I quickly got two of the LCDs and everyone else in our line (which had grown to about 5 by then) got one. I stood around trying to get a third one, but I felt sorry for the people who started to come (when the Best Buy guy at the top of the ladder started yelling at the top of his voice, “Samsung LCD monitors!”) who didn’t have any and I let them have them. I met the Asian dude in the checkout line again and he said he was sorry I hadn’t gotten my third one.
I next went to Staples and got some stuff. I managed to snag one of their Samsung 19″ LCDs for $129. As I was carrying it through the store, I all of sudden came face to face with the Asian teen from Best Buy. We grinned at each other and he said, “Cool! You got your 3rd LCD!” There was a group of 4 Hispanic guys in front of us in the checkout line who were haggling among each other and trading various products. They each had an overflowing shopping cart with two chicas to help push them. They were discussing a Kodak digital camera and one guy told the other that Kodak digital cameras were junk and that he shouldn’t buy one and that his broke in several months. I chimed in and said that mine had stopped working after just a couple of months and the lady behind me said, “Mine did too!” When one of them caught sight of an older Asian man who had in his possession a 400 GB Western Digital external hard drive for $80, his eyes widened. He said, “I’ll trade you my camera for that!” The Asian man grinned slightly and shook his head. “How about this paper? Pleeease? I’ll give you the paper for the hard drive”, said the Hispanic guy as he held up a $2 pack of photo paper. The Asian guy just started laughing and moved on.
One of the Hispanic guys (the one with the chica who had the stereotypical plumber’s problem with her pants) forgot his wallet in the checkout line. The sweet mother-daughter team behind me discovered it and ran out of the store after me and asked if it was mine. I said, “No, it wasn’t me, but I bet it was one of those Hispanic dudes.” I opened the wallet and looked at the driver’s license and it was one of them. So I scanned the parking lot for them, but didn’t see them. So I handed it back to her who took it to the service desk. On my way to my vehicle, I passed the guy whose picture was in the driver’s license. I told him that he had forgotten his wallet and that it was at the service desk. He got a terrified look on his face and began to slap his pockets. When he failed to find his wallet, he ran as fast as I have ever seen anyone run with a cart back into the store.
I went back to Best Buy to see if anyone had failed to redeem their tickets for the $186 desktop systems. Last year we got three nice eMachines for $200 apiece because people had failed to redeem their tickets before 10 AM. This year I had no such luck. I did, however, remember that I had forgotten to get a $299 Panasonic home theater system. So I went to that section and asked about 3 Best Buy employees before I finally came across one who cared. He checked the system and found that there was one in the back yet. So he went and got it for me. I then asked about the free rear wireless kit ($160 value) that had been advertised as going along with it. He said they were out of stock, but he took me over to their home theater manager and asked him if they could order it for me. The home theater department head said that we’d have to ask the store manager. After trying to track him down, the home theater department manager finally just said, “I’ll go ahead and order it for you.” They are going to deliver to our house the free wireless kit on the 30th!
When Benji got to Circuit City at about midnight, he was about 60th in line. Dad joined him at about 4:30. The people in line got to know each other quite well. They were in line for their stuff til about 11 AM. Benji talked sports with one guy for hours. Several people took orders for everyone and went to Starbucks and brought back drinks. Someone else took orders and went to McDonalds. A Circuit City employee came down the line and asked who wanted what. They had only 5 Optoma projectors but Dad and Benji were far enough up the line to each get one! However, when they finally got to the front, they found out that Circuit City had the projectors in front of the counter and someone had made off with them when they weren’t watching! So, they gave Dad and Benji rain checks. However, the projectors are not something Circuit City stocks on a regular basis, so the manager was worried that we’d never get them. However, Dad called around this afternoon and found some in a regional Circuit City warehouse and went in this evening to sign an order for them.
I noticed a predominance of Asian and Indian (Asia India) people among the Black Friday tech shopping crowd. A combination of the greater tech savvy and greater frugality of those ethnicities probably prompted this. They also tended to be nicer, politer, and less raucous than their American counterparts.
Here’s a list of the stuff we got:
Circuit City
- HP Pavilion Notebook, Intel Core Duo T2250, 2048 MB DDR RAM, 100 GB hd, $849.99
- x2 - Optoma projector, 1000 lumens, 480p resolution, 4000:1 contrast ratio, built-in DVD player, $449.99
- x2 - Acer Laptop Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-50, 120 GB hd, 1 GB RAM, $599.99
- x5, Sandisk 1 GB SD Memory Card - $2.99
- x2, Nexxtech 50 pack spindle of DVD+Rs - free
- Free 3.2 megapixel Polaroid camera
Best Buy
- x2 Samsung 19″ LCD monitor, $129.99
- Panasonic 5.1 home theater system with rear wireless kit, $299
Staples
- x1 Samsung 19″ LCD monitor, $129.99
- Sandisk, 4 GB Cruzer thumbdrive - $59.98
- Sandisk 2 GB SD Memory Card - $29.99
- Playo DVD+R 60 pack, $2.98
- HP CD-R 100 pack, $14.98
