Some traditions of a cherished holiday will never change. Despite months of planning and making list after list I found myself out in stores later on the eve of Thanksgiving than I cared to be. I was in the advanced stages of readiness. The turkey, stuffing and cranberries had been purchased long ago but I was out and about for light bulbs and Dutch cocoa, items that were needed but not thought about in the great process of preparation until the very last minute.
The light bulbs forced the issue of me going to Walmart, a place I have grown to detest even in the most boring context. On a regular day I won’t be caught dead there. And for big days like Black Friday, Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve I’d rather eat my own foot than even approach the place.
I am an old-time retailer. I come from a time where merchants created their own buzz, bought products locally for their customers and engineered a personalized approach to the energy in their stores. We knew how to make money in those days and we didn’t need to get up in the middle of the night to do it.
As my children came along my view of Black Friday has evolved. For years, I loved it. I viewed it as a necessary time while raising a young family. It was the one day of the year I could buy winter coats for all my kids for less than a hundred bucks. And for the extravagant dreamer, Black Friday gave me the hope and reach of getting the coveted bigger television or new video game.
As my kids wandered into their teen years Black Friday became an event akin to attending a big game. There were people to watch, things to see, and energy to bask in even if we didn’t have the money or the plan to spend anything. We could go store to store, collecting the free goodies and later head out for hot cocoa. Rarely did we come home with anything in a bag.
Being a retailer we would take note of what all retailers were doing. Their strategies were familiar in some sense, even respected at times. But over time my enthusiasm for it all began to change. I’ve stayed in retail and for years had to endure Black Friday in another sense. I had to schedule employees to work ungodly hours. I dealt with vendors who hated to deal with low-balling margins and dealing with mass product movement in the wee-hours of the morning.
I’ve seen the fights, called the cops, endured the grumpy customers out chasing their holiday cheer in the dead of night.
I’ve written product reviews, studied the ads, projected the results and reported on the carnage year after year.
But I’ve just wanted out because the joy of it all ended long ago. It has become absurd in the extreme, even for an in-the-blood retailer like me. And for the great evil that is Walmart on an everyday basis I especially avoid on Black Friday any more, mocking those I see in the news as part of my post-Thanksgiving traditions now.
So last night as I was chasing light bulbs in Walmart I was forced to see the calm before the carnage of Black Friday. There were plenty of customers in the store but even more Walmart associates, milling about as pallet after pallet of plastic-wrapped product was pumped on to sales floors.
I was needing light bulbs. Nothing glamorous about that.
But the Walmart I made the mistake of going into was neck deep in Black Friday preparations and the last thing anyone in that store cared about was my need for light bulbs. Every aisle was packed with wrapped pallets that blocked access to the rest of the store. If shoppers were already in the store they were trapped somewhere in the middle, unable to get to the check-out. And for light bulb seekers like myself I could see the promised-land of their hardware section but could not access it. It was ridiculous.
To the woman shouting orders to the troops of Walmart associates I lodged a protest, seeking a golden ticket to access the light bulbs. She looked at me like I was about to eat her young. How dare I interrupt the building of the Black Friday temple.
“Sir,” she said to me, “Can’t you see what’s going on here?”
“Yes,” I calmly explained, “You apparently don’t want my money now but think you’re going to get it from me later.”
“Oh, you’ll be here.” was all she said.
What an attitude. She didn’t want to be there moving pallets any more than I wanted to be there buying light bulbs.
So I circled the store, looking for a way in. From the pharmacy to the toys, from the groceries to the shoe department, I circled the Walmart in search of a hole that would allow me access to the mountain of light bulbs. After covering about a mile and sending out for pizza, I finally found a space I could squeeze through and began my trek back through the middle of the store to get to the less-than-sexy aisle of electrical items that no one would shop in a frenzy in the hours to come.
They didn’t have the halogen lamps I needed. Shocker.
So I began my trek back through the jungle. This time allowing my curiosity to get the better of me. Unlike years past Walmart didn’t wrap their Black Friday pallets in black — I could see what the deals were going to be.
And they were sad and pathetic.
I passed a pallet of Garth Brooks CD collections — the entirety of Garth Brooks career could be had for $29.96 for all takers as long as you were willing to be there on Thanksgiving to snatch it up. Sheesh, what a trade off. I wondered if Garth knew Walmart had sold his soul like that.
The interesting thing to me was the design of the display. It was all cardboard, perfectly engineered to display and hype the product. But it wasn’t made to hold much, maybe a couple of hundred pieces at most. That pallet, once the plastic was removed, would be empty in no time once the locusts descended. As I looked around at pallet after pallet I noticed similar near-empty strategies.
Black Friday is a sucker’s bet and a fool’s errand.
Gone are the days of really stacking it deep and selling it cheap.
I flashed back to a Thanksgiving week as a teenager working in a drug store, proudly building a display of 300-cases of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider for 79 cents a bottle. That’s how you stack it deep and sell it cheap. There was nothing fake about that display then and there’s nothing real about the displays of Black Friday now.
As I exited the Walmart — another half hour of my life gone and empty handed — I surveyed the gates and rope lines set up to control the coming crowds.
Cooking in the shadows of my kitchen without light bulbs sounded just fine for me.
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