Uncivil shopping for the win!

Francis Porrento muses about the wonders of the day known as Black Friday. For those not in the United States, this is day after the Thanksgiving holiday (today) where shoppers rush to retailers to buy gifts for the lovely upcoming Christmas holiday. As Francis points out, people are rarely civil on Black Friday:

…Black Friday seems to bring out the very worst of shoppers’ behavior — and in tandem with it, the most appalling, universal sense of unmet entitlement, as if someone had guaranteed each and every one of those folks that he’d find what he was looking for in the first store he visited, at a bargain price, and with gift wrapping thrown in.

Unfortunately I witnessed a couple of our American citizens engaging in timeless art of fisticuffs in a local Best Buy. Thankfully I was just dropping off my youngest sister at work. She’s the warehouse assistant manager and is somewhat (but not completely) spared from all the action.

As I pulled into the Best Buy parking lot, you could immediately see that the lot was filled to the brim. My younger sister is tall yet fairly slender and felt better with big brother escorting her into the store. Arms locked together, we proceeded to walk from the parking lot exurbs to the Best Buy entrance. Things went smoothly (losts of jostling) until we got near the back of the store. Right in front of us, near car audio, two men were aruging about who grabbed the car radio first. It didn’t take a good 10 seconds before one guy pushed the other and a fight erupted. The former insane football player part of me admired the amount of clean punches that both men landed in a very short amount of time. But the better part of me looked at them with this overwhelming thought in my head:

What a bunch of complete, full-developed dumbasses!

Several Best Buy warehouse workers broke up the fight and a local police officer was actually in the store and came in to regulate the situation. My little sister looked at me with a weary look in her eyes, gave me a hug, and headed back. The young lady’s tough but I know how much she hates confrontations. And to think that everyone was playing Thanksgiving yesterday and then the next day, giving thanks is the last thing on many shoppers minds. Holiday stress are two words that shouldn’t even go together.

[zing! to Francis W. Porrento]

One Response to “Uncivil shopping for the win!”

1. Rogue says:

   November 28, 2005 at 6:24 pm

   That is why you cannot pay me to leave my house the weekend after Thanksgiving nor the week before Christmas. People become fools. Fools with no brains at that!