We moved around a bunch when I was little but for the most part I was raised in a small Texas country town.  What does this mean?  This means that Wal-Mart was the centerpiece of the town.  Wal-Mart was It.  It was where you went to get everything you need (except for groceries which only existed in small quantities of dry goods back then).  It was where you ran into everybody you knew in town.  It wasn’t until I was a teenager that Wal-Mart Super Centers came about.  I remember what a day of reckoning it was when our small town got a Wal-Mart Super Center.  It was like Disney had come to town to build a new theme park.  The Barretts Drugstore that had been downtown on Main Street for decades closed down.  A couple of grocery stores went under.  We were all spending our days and nights at Wal-Mart.

Of course for many the idea of Wal-Mart is the bane of what is Wrong with America.  The low wages they pay (true), the way they bully manufacturers to get the lowest prices, the snobbery that many have towards “needing” to shop at the lowest prices—this could be another blog post.  But truthfully I don’t care about all that.  That isn’t the point here.

For the first time ever this year Wal-Mart started their “Black Friday” sale not on Black Friday but at 8PM on Thanksgiving evening, a day that the store used to normally close on.  I was visiting my 91 year old grandmother for Thanksgiving in her small Texas country town (not the same one I grew up in) and found that my cousin was going to the sale.  I had never been to a Wal-Mart black Friday sale though I had read horror stories of fights, long lines and even deaths reported by the media over the years.  This I had to see up close and in person.

When I got to the Wal-Mart at around 7PM the parking lot was already almost full which is really amazing considering the amount of parking space Wal-Mart takes up.  People had come in from far and wide and brought their RV’s and Winnebago’s. They parked these up front, blocking the entrance.  I went through the sliding glass doors and got in line…for a shopping cart.  I found out later that Wal-Mart always runs out of shopping carts on Black Friday so you must learn to hold on to yours at all times.  I asked for a map of where the sales were at.  They were already out of maps.  I was told that if I downloaded the Wal-Mart app it would have the Black Friday sales on it.

The reason why it is necessary to have a Black Friday map is that they do not conduct the sales in the appropriate department.  For example, the XBox sale was going on in the Lawn and Garden department.  The children’s clothing and toy sale was happening in Produce.  Want a big screen TV?  Then look for the balloons that are floating at the edges of each aisle in grocery to get in line for each appropriate TV you desire.  Samsung 32” flat screens were in the Frozen Food section.  Emerson flat screens were over in the condiments. 

Alas, I didn’t have the latest version of iOS5 so I couldn’t download the Wal-Mart app.  My cousin was running late and probably wasn’t going to make it.  I was going at my first Black Friday alone, and without a map.  This could spell trouble.

I decided to wait around the housewares as crock pots that were normally $24.99 were going for $9.  There was already crowds of people just standing around waiting for the sale to begin at 8PM.  All the items that were on the sale were wrapped up heavily in clear plastic and were sitting out in the center of the aisles.  We all stood there, still and watching, like animals stalking their prey when a few minutes ahead of 8PM somebody came on the Wal-Mart PA and announced that the Black Friday sale would begin.  Before the announcement was even finished people were ripping into the plastic and grabbing.  A woman let out a blood curdling scream.  Coffee pots, crock pots, cutlery and Tupperware sets were flying in the air.  One woman had her 3 teenage boys with her and she was throwing boxes of crock pots over the mob’s heads at her sons who put them in one of the 3 shopping carts she had saved.  One of the boys somehow in the mob got pushed way back down the Hallmark card aisle but that didn’t deter her as she threw the crock pot in confident desperation like John Elway in the final minutes of the last quarter of the game and the son caught it and they disappeared as quickly as they had started.  I’m pretty positive this family had rehearsed these moves prior to the sale.

In fact, a lot of people doing the Black Friday sale were seasoned Black Friday shoppers.  These are the ones who came away with the most stuff as they had a system.  You have to have a system to be able to effectively buy anything as one sweet, gray haired grandmother found out who stepped away from her cart for 2 seconds to get a Paula Deen pots and pan set and turned back around to find somebody had taken her shopping cart.  “Somebody took my cart!” she said to me with pain in her eyes.  But at least she got the pots and pans.  They were gone in under a minute.

I tried to make my way over to where they were selling fleece blankets for $15 but it was impossible as you couldn’t move.  By the time I was able to make it over to the blankets they were all gone, the oversized box they had been in ripped and on its side.  The sale had been going on for 10 minutes.  I slowly pushed my cart down the line of people trying to make their way over to electronics.  All of a sudden another woman with her cart pulled in front of me horizontally, blocking the flow of people slowly trying to make their way to the right.  She had a question for one of the employees about the sale and she pulled out her ad and began to ask questions.  People behind me began to complain about the stall.  One woman tried to pull the lady’s cart out of the way while she asked questions but the woman angrily snatched the cart back and into the line of traffic.  She wasn’t going to let go until she was done.

When I finally got to electronics I found the items that were to go on sale at 10PM in the center aisles with people standing around them, willing to wait for an hour and a half for the sale to begin.  Some of the other items that weren’t supposed to go on sale until later too had already had the plastic torn and the items pulled out.  Wal-Mart had hastily tried to re-apply the plastic to no avail.  I maneuvered through the crowd into the electronics area.  Police officers were stationed, arms akimbo, around the bins of DVD’s.  I looked over at the Black Friday bins of DVD’s.  They had been picked over, with only a few of the crappy titles left.  People were sorting through these scraps with hunger in their eyes.

At this point it was 8:30PM and the main feeding frenzy was over.  It would be another 90 minutes to the next sale.  I decided to go get in line for the flat screen TV I wanted to get for my mom.  I recently purchased her a flat screen for her birthday but it was too small for her to see stuff so I needed to get her a bigger one.  In order to get the smashing deals on the big screens you had to get a ticket and then go wait in line for the sale to begin.  This meant I would be stuck on the spices aisle for an hour and a half.  Having waited in lines for various concerts and other events over the years I have found the most interesting people you can meet are when waiting in lines for the same kind of stuff.  This time it would be a 19 year old college kid from UT-Tyler that was there with his cousin.  He was very talkative. 

His basket was filled with DVD’s.  Numerous copies of the same titles even.  Come to find out the strategy with Black Friday is to grab as much of whatever is on sale when you can, with the option to set the stuff down later after you had the chance to sort through what you really want.  This is one of the reasons why everything disappears in seconds.  This dude had his cousin man the cart while he pushed to the front of the mob and dove into the DVD bins and just scooped up as much as he could before slipping back out.  He had 4 copies of a Fringe boxed set. He decided at the cheap prices they were going for he would re-sell the additional copies to students on his campus.

The couple behind me in line were seasoned Black Friday pro’s.  They, like a lot of other people, had arrived at Wal-Mart early enough in advance of the sale to go to the Sporting Goods section and pick up some lawn chairs to sit in while waiting in the line for their big screen TV.  While the rest of us stood, backs aching from standing, they were sitting comfortably in their chairs though the amount of space for their carts and chairs took up more room.  The number of people waiting in line snaked around up and down 6 aisles deep.  Finally at 10PM the big screens went on sale.  Police officers were stationed at the wooden pallets while a Wal-Mart employee started handing out TV’s.  Just like the crock pots several people loaded up with more than one TV at a time.  “That’s not fair!” people would shout that were still waiting in line.  They were worried the TV’s would run out and that their standing for the last 2 hours would be for nothing.  A tall man in a cowboy hat stood next to the Wal-Mart guy that was rapidly handing out TV’s for our line.  He kept trying to get the Wal-Mart employee to slip him a TV without having to wait in line.  A fight almost broke out over this.  “YOU HAVE TO HAVE A VOUCHER!!” a group of angry people shouted to the man, fists shaking.  He walked away…only to come back and try the maneuver again.  The Wal-Mart employee, exhausted with the man, gave in and handed him a TV.  These employees do not give a shit.  The college student and his cousin got their TV.  And I got mine.  $148 for a 32” flat screen HDTV.  Mom can now watch her Fox News in full, high definition color.

The final line was waiting to check out.  This part is actually not too unfamiliar of a scene in regards to Wal-Mart and in the case of Black Friday actually the easiest part as people are no longer anxious about getting their stuff.  They are happy to have their cart filled with some or even all of the bargains.  Well, except for the lady in front of me who was unhappy with the brand of the TV she had to get.  She was worried about the quality as she got it so cheap.  When the cashier asked her if she wanted to take out the 2 year protection plan for $14 she said yes. 

Would I do it again?  Um, no.  It isn’t worth the hassle. And the consumerism hunger of Black Friday is still annoyingly gross to me, especially when fueled by obligation to purchase for others rather than just give something of quality well though out and uniquely from the heart.  But for those who want to buy in mass quantity at rock bottom prices the Wal-Mart Black Friday fills a void.  Just come prepared with a strategy, extra bodies to guard and transport everything and very thick skin.  Oh, and patience.  Loving, kind, open hearted patience for your fellow man just trying to survive and find some comfort and happiness in the world too.