Black Friday: The Running of the Bulls
I’m not sure there was any bigger 5 a.m. Black Friday bull rush into a retail store than what I witnessed at the Elk City Wal-Mart.
This was the fifth year that I began my Black Friday in the dark outside the Wal-Mart in Elk City because my mother-in-law lives on a farm about 15-miles north of town.
This year, two lines already snaked far into the parking lot as I rolled up at 4:40 a.m. I shot a few photos and then positioned myself to video the run into the store when the doors. I filmed 45 seconds of it, and the uninterrupted rush of people into the store continued for another minute or two.I went inside and found the place already in gridlock.
Shoppers — mostly women — grabbed shopping carts and tried to crowd two or three abreast down the narrow aisles. Traffic stopped flowing about five minutes after the store opened.
As in past years it seemed that most were drawn to cheap electronics, with flat-screen televisions and computers the hot items. But so were toys, video games, movies and even clothing.
I saw women pushing carts piled high with all of this stuff, and I wondered how they had time to even find it and scoop it up.I had my eye on a cheap HP printer that my mother-in-law asked me to buy for her, but when I tried to get back to the electronics area I saw that it would be a near-impossible task, at least for a few minutes.
So, I stationed myself near the jewelry counter and waited for some break in the gridlocked aisles. Finally, about 5:45 –45 minutes after the door opened — I saw a route to the printers. It required circling around to the back of the store and coming in from the opposite direction.
I got my printer and headed to the checkout stand, which was its own story. The lines were already 10 deep, and cashiers were ringing up $300-$400 at a time. Two women at the register across from me bought about 100 cheap videos — wonder if they own a video store — along with enough other stuff to rack up a $454 bill.
The guy in line ahead of me looked around and said: “does this look like a recession to you?”
I finally got checked out and left the store with my prize. As President Bush might say, “mission accomplished.”
Special Correspondent
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