So my younger brother and I decided to brave the Black Friday crowds and go all out at all of the big sales this year. WalMart opened their sales at 10pm. So Joseph and I left my house at 9:15pm after I was struggling to get babygirl off to bed. She was so tired because she had a long day with hardly a nap!
WalMart, as usual, was a mad house already! We got there about 9:20 and the roads were surprisingly clear of traffic. We walked around and peeked into the shrink-wrapped items that weren't yet surrounded by people. Of course we snuck our hands in one to grab a game my brother wanted for our niece. Finally we parked ourselves in front of the $2.84 mini coffee makers, food choppers and waffle irons. Of course this is a hot ticket item and people are planning on getting 10-12 at a time.
The WalMart employees were walking between the most popular items that had a lot of people around them. They were even escorting people out of the store for grabbing things before 10pm! While everyone was waiting, of course people were getting chummy and pretending they would help each other once 10:00 hit. "You want 12 of these? Ok, I'll help you if you throw me 3 of those."
Ahem. Riiight.
I've been Black Friday shopping before. Apparently they hadn't.
So needless to say, we stood around for about half an hour until everyone in the store started getting antsy. It hit 9:50 and you could tell people were getting ready to move. Women started setting countdowns on their cell phones.
At 9:54 somewhere in the madness, a guy yelled really loudly, "GOOOO!"
That was all it took.
Madness erupted and you could hear everyone in the entire store start moving.
I leaned forward to grab what I needed and then ducked my head and just backed away.
I looked forward into the madness that I had just left and there stands my brother. Arms flinging. Struggling to hold onto his boxes while tossing boxes into this lady's shopping cart and leaning over the cart. I tried to yell over the noise that I was behind him and that I had what I needed. He never once looked back. Eventually I yelled loud enough that he turned his head and I motioned for him to get out of there and let's head to the cash registers. We walked straight up to the register and was only the third people there. I was elated. The two previous years I have waited in line for 1-1 1/2 hours.
If you know my brother, you'd know that he is such a giving and helping person.
BUT!
This crazy kid was trying to help the crazy shopping cart lady to get all 12 of her waffle irons that she wanted! He was practically laying on top of her cart to fight off the people who were trying to take the boxes out of it. My sweet little brother walked away with war wounds! An old lady behind him had dug her nails into his arm to try and get into the cart! He had bright red scratches all down his forearms.
Time sort of froze at this point because we had to wait for 10pm to officially hit before the registers would turn on and honor the sale prices. I took this time to head back into the madness and search for babygirl's Christmas Eve jammies. Joseph stayed in the line with our merchandise. The little bins that held the pajamas were a madhouse too. I ended up peeking through people to see where the toddler sizes were and then said pretty loudly, "Anyone see the Dora pjs?" This younger lady said they were right in front of her and asked what size I needed. She then dug through the chaos for me and handed them to me. I was so appreciative. Like my brother, there were still good and helpful people in the world.
We checked out and were out the door by 10:08pm. This included a potty break.
None of the other stores opened until 12am so we had almost 2 hours to sit around and do nothing.
We headed toward Target and planned on staying warm in the car while we waited. Our waiting involved lots of amazing talks, peeing in cups, and poking at crazy people wearing only tank tops. We had a McDonald's run and I attempted to sleep.. it just didn't work out so well. The line at Target was patrolled by a few police and it wrapped around the building and curved around a few times into another parking lot. It was insane! So we waited until midnight and decided there was no way we were waiting here anymore because the cops were only letting about 20 people into the store at a time.
This is turning into a crazy long post so I can wrap up the story in tomorrow's post.
Come back and finish up then.
The WalMart employees were walking between the most popular items that had a lot of people around them. They were even escorting people out of the store for grabbing things before 10pm! While everyone was waiting, of course people were getting chummy and pretending they would help each other once 10:00 hit. "You want 12 of these? Ok, I'll help you if you throw me 3 of those."
Ahem. Riiight.
I've been Black Friday shopping before. Apparently they hadn't.
So needless to say, we stood around for about half an hour until everyone in the store started getting antsy. It hit 9:50 and you could tell people were getting ready to move. Women started setting countdowns on their cell phones.
At 9:54 somewhere in the madness, a guy yelled really loudly, "GOOOO!"
That was all it took.
Madness erupted and you could hear everyone in the entire store start moving.
I leaned forward to grab what I needed and then ducked my head and just backed away.
I looked forward into the madness that I had just left and there stands my brother. Arms flinging. Struggling to hold onto his boxes while tossing boxes into this lady's shopping cart and leaning over the cart. I tried to yell over the noise that I was behind him and that I had what I needed. He never once looked back. Eventually I yelled loud enough that he turned his head and I motioned for him to get out of there and let's head to the cash registers. We walked straight up to the register and was only the third people there. I was elated. The two previous years I have waited in line for 1-1 1/2 hours.
If you know my brother, you'd know that he is such a giving and helping person.
BUT!
This crazy kid was trying to help the crazy shopping cart lady to get all 12 of her waffle irons that she wanted! He was practically laying on top of her cart to fight off the people who were trying to take the boxes out of it. My sweet little brother walked away with war wounds! An old lady behind him had dug her nails into his arm to try and get into the cart! He had bright red scratches all down his forearms.
Time sort of froze at this point because we had to wait for 10pm to officially hit before the registers would turn on and honor the sale prices. I took this time to head back into the madness and search for babygirl's Christmas Eve jammies. Joseph stayed in the line with our merchandise. The little bins that held the pajamas were a madhouse too. I ended up peeking through people to see where the toddler sizes were and then said pretty loudly, "Anyone see the Dora pjs?" This younger lady said they were right in front of her and asked what size I needed. She then dug through the chaos for me and handed them to me. I was so appreciative. Like my brother, there were still good and helpful people in the world.
We checked out and were out the door by 10:08pm. This included a potty break.
None of the other stores opened until 12am so we had almost 2 hours to sit around and do nothing.
We headed toward Target and planned on staying warm in the car while we waited. Our waiting involved lots of amazing talks, peeing in cups, and poking at crazy people wearing only tank tops. We had a McDonald's run and I attempted to sleep.. it just didn't work out so well. The line at Target was patrolled by a few police and it wrapped around the building and curved around a few times into another parking lot. It was insane! So we waited until midnight and decided there was no way we were waiting here anymore because the cops were only letting about 20 people into the store at a time.
This is turning into a crazy long post so I can wrap up the story in tomorrow's post.
Come back and finish up then.
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