Black Friday 2008

This has been a deadly Black Friday. There is a story in the news today about the death of a Walmart employee in a Long Island store that was caused by people rushing through the doors to get at the deals. In that same store a woman was thrown to the ground and then miscarried. Who needs to shop at Walmart that much? There was also a murder suicide at a Toys R Us in California. A little six year old was killed.

As far as Darryl and I were concerned there really was no reason to try to go on a massive buying spree. The kids and the grandkids already got their gifts. My nieces, mom, and dad also got their gifts the last time we went up to Virginia. Again, funny how that worked out, we had brought all the gifts with us because I thought it would make traveling up in the winter easier. Who would have thought we wouldn’t have been able to travel then?

In the last few years we started a tradition that started with a cup of mint hot chocolate from Starbucks. Luck found me there because Starbucks actually sent me a gift card for a free drink because I complained about how I was treated the last time I went. So Starbucks was still part of the tradition this year.

Then we went over to Belk. Belk was opening early and having a gift card “sale”. Basically the first 250 people through the door got a gift card. The card was worth at least $5 but it could have been worth up to $5,000. Hey we were already shopping for next Christmas so this was going to work out even if we only got a $5 card. They were supposed to open at 5 in the morning but when we got there it appeared that they had opened early. The manager mentioned that one person had already won $100 on her card. Darryl and I were not quite so lucky but still we each had $5 and we bought some of those little slipper socks. I love those things. They were on sale for $5 so we bought two. One for each card.

The only other one that I was kind of interested in was one at Tuesday Morning. There was a 50% off coupon in the circular on their clearance stuff. I finally found a pair of chenille gloves that we bought for $1.50. That will be Mom’s gift for next year. They were really nice, one grey and one black.

It will be interesting to see how sales went for retailers on Black Friday. Darryl felt the prices were unbelievably low on many things but they were things we didn’t need to buy we just priced those things and looked at them. Things like TVs and digital photo frames.