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.

"Layaway Angels" One Of Few Nice Things About Christmas Shopping Season

Happily, "Layaway Angels" have been striking coast to
coast this holiday season.  

Today, as we scramble to get our last Christmas gifts purchased, I'm going to stand up and salute Layaway Angels.

Layaway Angels are people who have a pretty decent stash of money. They walk into places like Walmart or Kmart and hand over a check to the layaway department.

What they're doing is paying off everybody's layaway stash. Or, if they don't have that much money to donate, they just pay off the layaway of a few strangers they don't know.

Just because.

Layaways scare me.  For the uninitiated, if you don't have a lot of money but want to buy something as a Christmas gift, you select your merchandise, and bring it to the layaway department in your favorite department or discount store.

You put in a down payment, pay a layaway fee, then make weekly, biweekly or monthly payments until the balance is paid off. Once you've paid everything, you grab your merchandise and go.

Apparently layaways started in the 1930s, when everyone (well, almost everyone) was suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. People tried anything they could including the installment plans associated with layaways, to get their consumer goods.

Credit cards pretty much did away with layaways, since people could just charge their purchases. But the Great Recession, starting in 2008, brought back the layaway, just as the Great Depression gave birth to it.

People couldn't get credit cards, so they went the layaway route.

The problem with layaways is, if you can't pay off your purchase, you don't get the item. You do get refunded, but stores often keep a portion of the proceeds. Which means people who couldn't pay lose.

That's one of the beauties of layaway angels.  A certain percentage of people won't pay off their layaways. And pretty much everybody else who can is strapped for cash. So the layaway angels really put people's minds at ease for Christmas,

Which is precisely what you want during this stressful time of year.

So it's great that there's been a flurry of "Layaway Angels" this year. According PennLive.com somebody know only as "Santa B" plunked down $50,000 in a Pennsylvania Walmart to pay off a bunch of layaways.

Other layaway angels have struck in Tennessee, West Virginia, Boston and elsewhere, says Consumerist. 

Various media outlets have reported layaway angels in almost every state.

The layaway angel trend seems to have started in 2011 and had been building since. 

You can participate, too. People who don't have thousands of dollars running around can also anonymously go into a store and just pay off one stranger's layaway debt, maybe $100 or $200 and remain anonymous if they choose.

In nearly every case, the person acting as a layaway angel has refused to be publicly identified, which makes it even better.

I salute these layaway angels and wish them a totally happy holiday season. Because they deserve it.

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.

Retailers Already Planning To Be Basically Open All Day Thanksgiving For Your Shopping Pleasure

Looking way ahead to Thanksgiving, this
is what we have to look forward to.  

It's the end of September, which means if you haven't gotten SUPER Excited about Christmas shopping yet, you're way too late, at least in the minds of our fine nation's retailers.

And if you're already waiting anxiously for the big Black Friday sales stampede the day after Thanksgiving take note: Black Friday has now been rescheduled to Thanksgiving Day.

Throw away that turkey and march off to the mall like everyone else! Even more so than last year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that retailers plan to open even earlier on Thanksgiving than last year, or stay open all day.

And, they'll start hammering us with Christmas sale ads earlier, too, like any day now.

All this is because retailers want to punish us for not buying enough of their crappy products so far this year.

Revenue isn't so great, so they want to hammer us on Thanksgiving.

Says the Wall Street Journal:

"Retailers are struggling to boost sales, and the bottom line. Most consumers in the middle see little, if any, wage growth. The back to school selling season is shaping up to be the worst since 2009, says Craig Johnson the president of the consulting firm Custom Growth Partners."

The Journal also says holiday sales are forecast to rise about 3.5 percent over last year. Not enough to keep retailers happy. Clearly, we're not spending our nonexistent money to do our duty and keep these lousy stores, and their corporate parents, awash in cash like apparently we're supposed to.

So, they'll punish us by demanding we abandon our families and our dinners to go shopping. Worse, they're punishing their low wage employees by making them work on Thanksgiving. That, while the upper management, marketers, etc who decided to open stores on Thanksgiving surely sit down for a leisurely turkey dinner on the holiday.

I also think, as do many observers, including some quoted in the Wall Street Journal, that if retailers have everybody shop on Thanksgiving, they won't go out in December. So they won't get ahead.

But I'm sure these store chains will be happy to ruin Thanksgiving as much as they ruin an otherwise nice Christmas season.

Then again, there's a lot of people out there who LOVE to shop, no matter what. Friends. family?  Go away!! There's a Big Sale at Walmart!!!

Sigh.

It's December 19 Already! Why Aren't You Stocking Up For Easter Yet?!

It's six days before Christmas.

Time to stock up on Easter
goods NOW!!  

Most sane people are still probably finishing up their Christmas shopping, but according to America's marketing and retail geniuses, you're, way, way, WAY behind schedule.

You should be stocking up for Easter, pronto!

My gawd! Easter falls on April 20 in 2014. Time is running short!

You're late, late LATE in getting all your Easter treats. Get your Easter bunnies, Easter chocolates, Easter EVERYTHING before they run out.

Do it NOW!!!

Granted, the Consumerist post I link to showing Easter goods at a Krogers in December is from 2011, but somewhere, some evil retail chief is stocking shelves with Easter goods now.

Because if you don't buy all your Easter stuff before Christmas arrives, you're really, really worthless.

ANOTHER Good Ad! Could This Be A Trend?

Yesterday, I congratulated Google on producing a very well made advertisement that simultaneously pitched its products and told a compelling story.

A still from the funny, silly "Show the Joe" Kmart ad

Well, Gollee! I found another good ad today. It's a holiday offering, and I almost never find Christmas pitches I can stomach. But this one is actually good.

It's from Kmart, of all retailers. They're pitching the Joe Boxer line of mens underwear, and the ad actually made me laugh out loud. I might not buy Joe Boxer products, but they made me remember them, and mention the ad to others, so the pitch was successful.

The ad agency is DraftFCB

Here's the honest-to-goodness silly and fun ad:

More Obnoxiousness from Abercrombie and Fitch

The Huffington Post recently ran a weird list of rules the head of Abercrombie & Fitch has for employees on his airplane.

An A&B model relaxes and protects his abs, in case
he's called upon to help out on the company plane.

Like something created by a self-entitled rock star, the rules are just an obnoxious to do list to ensure the employees know that the Boss, namely CEO Mike Jeffries, is in control. Like they don't know that already.

Who in the world could remember these rules, anyway? I wouldn't last a minute, because I'd be so busy trying to subvert the rules I wouldn't get any work done.

For those of you who aren't into retail, Abercrombie & Fitch is a clothing store catering to young people. The store tries to sell an atmosphere of being for Beautiful People only. (Anyone over 27 and having imperfect looks need not apply) Abercrombie & Fitch stores are dark, so you can't actually see what you're buying, so I guess it doesn't matter what the clothes look like.

They pump in very loud club music, and I'm surprised the overwhelming fumes of cologne wafting through the stores hasn't caught the attention of the EPA or the World Health Organization.

Anyway, some of the rules on the company airplane include:

The models (and they're all models) working in the plane must always respond to Jeffries and Smith with "no problem."  Nothing like "Yes, sir" or "Sure" are permitted. I would have responded by saying "Whatever you moronic highness."

The "no problem" response could be well, problematic. Imagine this conversation:
"Hey, the plane engines are on fire and we're going to crash. We're all going to die!
"No problem."

Well, geez, a deadly crash is a problem, no?

The models must wear Abercrombie & Fitch clothes, which makes perfect sense, but they must be in jeans, polo shirts, flip flops and boxer briefs. Uh, who does the inspection to make sure they are wearing boxer briefs. On second thought, I don't want to know.

Male staff, and they're all males, should spritz their uniforms with Abercrombie & Fitch #41 cologne during the duration of the shift.

Great, the planes smell as bad as the retail stores. And wouldn't all those fumes cause some sort of in air explosion if it mixes with hot jet exhaust somehow?  I'm surprised I haven't heard about a series of Abercrombie & Fitch airline disasters.

I get it that Jeffries wants to keep things clean in the plane.  Who wants to jet around the world in a dump?  But everything, including cabin, galley and cabinet doors and seat belts should always be free of fingerprints, according to the rules.

How the hell do you use all that stuff if you can never touch it?

Here's one rule I actually like and would demand if I were in charge: All loose advertising and inserts in the 13 specific magazines that are stocked in the airplane must be removed. I hate it when I pick up a magazine and a blizzard of advertising cards and papers falls to the floor. Who wants to pick up piles of paper when you really want to sit down and read a magazine?

Bathrooms must have eight washcloths, no more, no less, and they must be "tri-folded," whatever that means.

Before any guests go to sleep on beds that are apparently in the company jet, the crew should "spray the bedding with sleep spray."

What the hell is "sleep spray?"  Is it Raid, to kill the nonexistent insects? I hope it's not Abercrombie & Fitch #41 cologne. I'd rather be sprayed with Raid before going to bed. At least it smells better.

All these rules  came to light after Michael Bustin, a former pilot, sued Abercrombie & Fitch for age discrimination.

The pilot that replaced Bustin was reportedly 32 years old. Which I guess is better than what I would expect. Imagine a teenage model with no brains but awesome abs piloting the plane.

Cleanliness would be the least of Jeffries' problems.

   

 

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