The Drama of Black Friday

I had completely forgotten about this until I looked at my archive of ideas here. I never talked about Black Friday. You see, there were some precious items to be had at Toys R Us at midnight on Black Friday, and as I didn't want to send the Queen out by herself, I went. I thought I'd go out there about an hour before midnight to see if there was a line.

Heh...

Yeah, there was a little bit of a line. The Toys R Us I went was the one at 71st and Memorial, if you're familiar with Tulsa. The line from the entrance stretched to the north from the front door across their entire parking lot, across their alley entrance, past five store fronts on the strip mall next door, turned the corner to go west past three small store fronts, one large one (Vintage Stock), and all the way to the door of the dollar theatre in that strip mall. I was amused, but there were some good deals, so I stood in line.

The line went well past me as well, but once it started moving, it went pretty quickly to get in. Some thugs cut in line behind me and then talked very loudly about how it wasn't right that they had to wait in line. I'm not racist, but they weren't of the Caucasian persuasion and acted their stereotype well. There were cops at the entrance holding back the crowd on the South side of the door who also didn't want to track down the end of the line going North. There were quite a few cops in the parking lot to control the crowd actually.

Once inside, it was wall-to-wall people. There was no line once inside. It was a mob. I fought my way around the store and got all but one item that I'd come in for. I was afraid my one big ticket item was gone when I found the row it belonged on and an empty shelf. Fortunately the checkout line was so long that I found a display of them.

As for the checkout line... Ok, so Toys R Us is a large department store, right? Department stores have a general "action alley" aisle that runs around the inside of the store with stuff on either side of it. This line went from the registers at the front of the store and snaked in and out of the individual aisles toward the outside of the store all the way down the south side of the store through the games and then the clothes, and then down the west side through the baby accessories and furniture, but when it got to the north side, it stopped snaking, though that's where I started with the line that went beyond me right back to the registers. They had this poor employee standing at the end of the line with a red balloon who kept moving back and back and back. Other employees were trying to keep the lines snaking through the aisles. It was a nightmarish situation. One employee who was trying to control the line said they never planned for that level of chaos.

You see, Toys R Us was the only store open at midnight, beating out everyone else. I saw on the news later that the other Toys R Us in town had a fight break out. People get cazy during the shopping season.

Anyway, I waited patiently in line for two hours to checkout, which went smoothly, and to her credit, the cashier still had a smile. I was impressed.

So in the end, I went to Toys R Us at 11pm. I got home at 4am just in time to wake up the Queen for her shopping time. However, I saved more money than I spent that night, which was significant. But I was very grateful to go to bed. If I find the pics from that night, I'll post them as well. I took some, but it's been a couple months and I forgot about this post.

Black Friday. I'm sure I'll be there again this year.

Black fri. Drama of xout line. Line 2 nxt dr theatre. Pics 2 post. Line out
4 hrs.