No more Black Fridays

I hate Black Friday. This year, I waited outside of Best Buy in the freezing cold for over ten hours with Andrew, Thompson and Thompson's little cousin. It may have been the dumbest thing that I have ever done.

There were laptops normally priced at $1100 for $400. Our computer is in the process of taking a gigantic shit, so Andrew and I were there for a new computer. Thompson's cousin wanted an X-Box, and Thompson didn't know what he wanted. None of us had any idea just how bad it would be to camp outside of a store overnight in the cold Wisconsin winter.

We got there at 6:30 p.m. There were already a bunch of people in front of us. We had to wait until 3 a.m. for the employees to hand out reservation tickets for certain limited sales, like our computers. That wait was one of the longest of my life. I used to think insanely long car rides, like the one to Kansas City, were bad, but at least a car is warm and I could sleep if I wanted to.

I tried to be prepared for the cold. I put on six shirts, a sweatshirt, two winter jackets, four pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, a scarf and a hat. That wasn't good enough. I was still frozen after spending the night outside. We had thick, heavy blankets, but they were basically useless.

After seemingly endless waiting, 3 a.m. finally came. The laptop reservation tickets didn't even get anywhere near us. A bunch of fat, smelly, useless assholes at the front took them all, in addition to one of every other computer that was on reserve. Had they allowed more than one per person, I'll bet they would have taken them all. I can't imagine how much that much have cost, which raised the question of how they got the money to pay for it. These people didn't look rich by any means.

They ended up in front of us in the endless line in the store. I could hear them talking about how they got there at 10:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving day. Who does that? I thought getting there at 6:30 was really bad. There was another laptop on reservation that was almost as cool as the one that we originally wanted. We ended up getting those, so I have a new computer. Yay! That's my birthday and Christmas present to myself for this year.

The doors opened at 5. That was another terrible wait. As soon as the doors opened, it was actually as large of a mob scene that I had envisioned. There were no fights or stampedes. The line inside was also endless, but at least it was warm. We finally left the store at about 6 a.m. I was never so glad to be home and sleep in my soft bed under warm blankets.

Although I got something pretty cool, I don't think that I will ever do the Black Friday shopping thing again.