Why I Think I'll Shop At REI. Black Friday Related, But Not What You Think

I'm giving huge cheers to REI a sporting goods and outdoor equipment company with a wide reach.

Here's why. According to The Atlantic and many other media outlets, REI announced that on the infamous shopping day Black Friday it would close all 143 stores, its headquarters and even its website.

As for REI's 12,000 employees? Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, will be a paid holiday. These employees also have their marching orders from REI's CEO for Black Friday: "Go outside and do something."

REI's gambit is good or employees, who won't have to work on Thanksgiving like many of their counterparts in the retail world.

Nordstrom and Costco, for instance won't open on Thanksgiving Day, bucking an obnoxious trend among retailers in recent years.

Maybe we are finally starting to get rid of Black Friday stupidity. According to the Atlantic:

"More generally in the economy, though, Black Friday fatigue has been on the rise. Last year, there was a wave of Change.org petitions and social media campaigns calling for both retailers and consumers to boycott Black Friday.

While it's still one of the biggest shopping days of the year in the U.S., a report from the National Retail Federation found that only 55 percent of holiday shoppers spent money on Thanksgiving weekend last year, and that 42 percent of their spending was online.

REI's announcement reflects more than just how tired its customers are of Black Friday; it reflects how tired many Americans are as well."

As I've whined about before, I've always hated the Black Friday spectacle of people waiting in long lines in bitterly cold predawn mall parking lots so they can bust the doors in of the local StupidMart to buy their Door Buster TV.

There's even a web site dedicated to the carnage called Black Friday Death Count, which tracks the seven deaths and 98 injuries associated with Black Friday chaos since 2006.

So hats off to REI. I think I'll do the same thing their CEO suggests: Go outside and do something on Black Friday. Then maybe, I'll check out their web site the  next week and see if I can reward them for their efforts with a little holiday shopping.

My Least Favorite Day Of The Year, Black Friday, Expands And Spreads Overseas

Really? This is supposed to be fun?  

I'm most of the way through Black Friday, far and away my least favorite day of the year.

I don't participate in the madness, of course.  Even so, the frenzy puts me in a foul mood.

The foul mood spread this year. Or at least Black Friday did.

First of all, as many of you know, a lot of stores opened on Thanksgiving, because we have to make these doorbuster sales earlier and earlier!

Let's take a quiet holiday and turn it into a frenzy. I guess a lot of people hate their families, because according to news reports, more than 40 million people shopped on Thanksgiving, I guess to escape their mean Aunt Louise sitting at the dinner table, or something.

I guess its younger people who hate sitting around a Thanksgiving table, as surveys say they, in particular, like the idea of shopping on Thanksgiving.

WHUT-Ever!

That number of Thanksgiving shoppers took the wind out of the sails, or sales of Black Friday a little bit.

I suppose that's a good thing, because the smaller crowd meant fewer stampedes, violence and fights and such that marked past Black Fridays in the United States.

The bad news is we exported the Black Friday riots and stupidity to other countries.  Retailers, through their advertising cunning, have created the kind of Black Friday fights in Britain that we long had in the United States.

The result is that across the pond, lots of people have been getting hurt and arrested over brawls to grab big screen TVs or something.

I'm sure the Brits just love this American export to their country.

New York Magazine has an excellent summary why Black Friday is a scam, that cunning marketers have taken advantage of the way our brains are wired to screw us over.

After all, you seldom actually save money on Black Friday, but the psychology of Black Friday makes you think you are.

Here, according to New York Magazine, is what they are doing:

Doorbusters: It's the cheap big ticket item like a big screen TV that's on sale big time. But the retailers know you will also buy the fancy cables, fancy wall mount kit with a hefty installation fee and the Xbox that catches your eye across the aisle.

Fake scarcity: The store will say "limited quantity" or "maximum two per customer" on a deal to make you think they're running out, so you'd better, hurry, hurry, hurry to grab the stupid thing. Usually, though, the item is not any more scarce today than it is any other day, but the fake scarcity makes it seem like an emergency, so you irrationally buy.

Wasting money in other areas: The Black Friday items might be on sale, but think of the money you're wasting stuck in traffic, burning gas, paying for warranties, dealing with rebates, and wasting time in line at the store when you could be doing something more productive.

Stuck there, might as well. Once you get up at a ridiculously early hour and wait in line in a freezing, windy parking lot for hours, you don't give up because you've invested so much time in this mess. So you go ahead and buy, buy buy.

I suppose people say they like the event, so that's why they go to Black Friday. And I suppose they're not harming me much by going, so knock yourself out if you enjoy going to this silliness.

Still, I can't help but be irritated by at all, because it feels like so many people are being taken advantage of. Especially the retail employees who are paid a sub-poverty level pittance to deal with these surging, awful, sick crowds, and must work on Thanksgiving, too.

At least things aren't as bad as what's depicted in the Onion. At last check, 42 million people have actually not died in Black Friday sales today.

Well, at least things haven't gotten that bad yet. But give it time.

Stupid People Camp For Three Weeks

Vicky Torres and Juanita Alva camped out at
a Best Buy for weeks.  

I hate to be so judgmental, but Vicky Torres and Juanita Alva are kinda stupid, in my opinion.

Since November 5, they've been camped out in front of a California Best Buy store, so they can be first in line for the big Black Friday sales.

"Black Friday" as the day after Thanksgiving is called in Retail Hell, is on November 28.

(Actually, Best Buy opens at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, so I guess it's Black Thanksgiving.)

 So they will have wasted 22 days of their lives hanging out in front of Best Buy.

Why? Because they want to be first in line for 50-inch HD TV for the low, low price of $199 at Best Buy.

Again. Why?

Alva's husband helps us out with this. Sort of.  He says: "The point is to get the sales, because everybody is on a fixed income and we don't have that kind of money to splurge."

As so many commenters pointed out in the article linked in this blog, there's some obvious questions here.

Wouldn't you make more than $199 if you worked during these 23 days you're hanging out at Best Buy.

Yes, I know jobs are sometimes hard to come by, but can't you at least try? A part time position or something?

I also get that these two women don't have a lot of money. I can't always buy what I want, too. Lots of people live paycheck to paycheck, and scrounge for every penny in this age of low wages.

Give that Torres and Alva are short of cash, is a television set the best priority? Maybe food? Some halfway decent clothes to wear while, um, job hunting?

I know, I know. I shouldn't get all worked up over a couple women on the other side of the country who have some strange priorities.

But geez it makes us all look stupid, in a way. I think the real reason these two women are sitting there in front of the Best Buy is not the TV, but the attention.

This is a Look At Me! Look At Me! society. Just ask Kim Kardashian. 

Our lovely ladies in front of Best Buy I'm sure will continue to give their TV interviews. So they can watch themselves on their brand new Panasonic 50" HDTV.

Unless the hordes at Black Friday smash it to smithereens during the annual brawls at these stores.

Sigh.

Newspapers Want You To Pay Extra For Papers That Have LOTS Of Advertising

Newspapers might charge
you extra for those big, fat
Black Friday editions
the day after Thanksgiving 

Lord knows the newspaper industry is going through some tough times and they need to cut expenses and gain revenue as much as they can.

Newspapers are laying off staffers left and right. (I was one of those victims of newspaper layoffs in the summer of 2013, but I'm not feeling so much like a victim at this point.)

But the following seems like too much:

Those of you who are still getting print newspapers delivered to your door might be in for a surprise on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Newspapers on Black Friday are usually stuffed with tons and tons and TONS of advertising, inserts and flyers to get you all set for the Christmas shopping season.

A number of newspapers, says media watcher Jim Romenesko, will charge you extra for the paper with all the extra advertising. They're calling these fat, advertising stuffed papers, "premium issues"

Oooh! Premium! We all want to get charged extra for all
those extra ads the newspapers are making extra money on.

Let's get this straight:  Newspapers get a needed extra revenue boost at Thanksgiving through many advertisers. And readers now get to pay extra for the privilege of pawing through all those advertisements to see if they can find any nuggets of news in those newspapers.

The logic from the newspapers is you get all these nice wonderful coupons from advertisers, so you save money, if you go shopping at the advertisers' stores.  The newspapers are trying to grab that money back from you for their own bottom line.

Granted, we're not talking a lot of money for newspaper subscribers here. Maybe a couple bucks.

But this extra charge for "premium papers" has the potential to drive readers away. The point of all those advertisers advertising is to catch the eyeballs of readers. But if those readers are driven away, there's no eyeballs, hence no reason to advertise in the paper.

Next Thanksgiving, maybe these advertisers will find somewhere else to tell us all about their wild, wonderful Christmas season deals, rather than your local paper. So less revenue comes in. There's more layoffs. Less news, less advertising, and the newspapers' downward spiral continues.

It makes you wonder whether newspapers so desperate they are trying to commit suicide?

To me, this is more evidence that journalism will survive, but many print newspapers, and their parent media companies, might not.

Update: Told Ya: Black Thanksgiving/Friday Fights, Violence, Gunshots, Ugliness

I ranted yesterday about the stupidity of Black Friday and now, this year Thanksgiving shopping stampedes the result in fights, injuries, and just general ugly behavior.

Black Friday violence last year. Similar
scenes are being reported across the country today.  

True to form, as of 7 a.m. this Friday morning, there have been several reports across the nation of people being shot, stabbed, punched and assaulted over these store "sales" So far, there have been no reports of deaths.

According to NBC News, there was a litany of bad behavior. A man was shot in Las Vegas as thieves tried to steal the big screen TV he just bought. There was a big fight in a California Walmart parking lot because somebody tried to cut in line. At a West Virginia Walmart, somebody was badly stabbed over a fight centering on a parking space.

Early Friday morning, the Huffington Post had a series of videos and Tweets posted about numerous incidents of bad behavior at Walmarts overnight.

On the bright side, in a update from yesterday, Pizza Hut corporate media relations stepped in on a Pizza Hut franchise owner who fired a manager for refusing to work on Thanksgiving. Pizza Hut offered to rehire the manager after a public outcry.  No word yet if the guy even wants the job back.

Ah, the holidays. A time for peace and joy and giving and aggravated assault in the middle of a fight over a cheap television.

Here's a heartwarming video over sale items, supposedly at a Washington State Walmart last night.

Predictable Black Friday Violence Vile, Unexplanable

As predictable as it was disgusting, there were reports Friday across the nation of Black Friday violence, in which people rioted, fought, stampeded and otherwise behaved abysmally to grab the Christmas gifts they demanded.

Peace on earth, good will toward men? Not these morons.

A lovely Black Friday scene. Wish you were there?

I don't think there's a more shameful scene than people rioting in stores on the Friday after Christmas. I don't think any of the people who participate are nearly smart enough to have any self-awareness of how awful they are.

I poked around today looking for information on the psychology of Black Friday rioters and found precious little on the topic. It does seem there's an emptiness in these people that they try to self medicate by being the Top Dog in the holiday shopping wars.   If a few heads get smashed, so be it, I guess.

A Christian Science Monitor piece last year suggested the violence is desperation on the part of consumers and retailers to bust out of iffy economic times, come hell or high water.

Look, I know I've complained about people standing in long lines and struggling through clouds to attend the Black Friday festivities. It's not for me, but if you somehow enjoy that kind of thing, even if the deals aren't really as good as advertised, go for it.

The vast majority of people who partake in Black Friday are fine. They're mostly happy, or at least nonviolent. Almost all of them manage to avoid rioting.

The rioters? I hope they don't find what they're shopping for, and I hope the rest of their holiday season really, really sucks. They deserve no better.

Here's a happy little video of morons at a Wal-Mart this year:



The retailers that invite these riots are at least as disgusting as the actual rioters.. They create this onrush by appealing to the way our brains are wired. They create an atmosphere of scarcity by saying the deals are for an hour only, there's limited supplies, limit two per customer, yada, yada, yada.

And then the riots happen. So what if they're employees get trampled, punched, run over, injured, killed? The retailers' disdain for their employees is breathtaking. We have an associate in Aisle 3 killed by a mob? Get rid of the body and hire some other schmuck at minimum wage to face the homicidal mob. As long as we rake in the profits, who cares if a few people die in the process?

There's a lot of good in Christmas. But the Black Friday lunatics, and the retailers that enable them deserve something much worse than a lump of coal from Santa. They just need to crawl back under their disgusting rocks and leave us alone.