If you want to know how ridiculous Black Friday had become, look no further than South Park’s parody on ‘Game of Thrones’.
I know the deal they offered on ‘South Park’ was exaggerated, but the fight to get a $99 knockoff 40 inch tv is shockingly true, that people actually die because of getting run over by shoppers.
This is ‘The Rejected Playboy’ trying to uncover this madness regarding ‘Black Friday’. Mainly, how did ‘Black Friday’ was associated with shopping, even though it shares the same bad luck with the stock market, JFK, poker players (Pokerstars), and pop music (Rebecca Black). For starters, let’s go back to 1966 within the streets of Philadelphia.
Yes, way before Rocky take on Apollo Creed, the Philly police had to deal with huge crowds of shoppers that were causing so much traffic jams, they dubbed it ‘Black Friday’.
There it is folks, the Philly police used ‘Black Friday’ as a dreadful day to work overtime in order to deal with the massive crowds after Thanksgiving. It gets ‘better’. In 1975, not only the cops had to deal with the overcrowded shoppers, but also the Army-Navy game, which was playing at then still intact, JFK Stadium.
If you had been to conventions that’s also hosting a sporting event, you already know how much headache Public Safety had to face.
But wait, there’s another revelation that’s occurring on ‘Black Friday’. Despite the recession that occurred before, shoppers are still looking for deals. So much so, that companies realize that ‘Black Friday’ means another term: When their sales earnings are heading to the ‘black’!
Combine the fact that theoretically marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season during the final stretch of the 4th quarter, the negative connotation regarding ‘Black Friday’ was changed as a positive for merchants and retailers who were struggling to clean out their inventory for the next year.
That’s right, ‘Black Friday’ was officially commercialized.
However, ‘Black Friday’ wasn’t a real issue until recently because it wasn’t the busiest shopping day of the year until 2003. That honor goes to ‘The Saturday before Christmas’.
That is, until retailers are starting to get a little too greedy. You see, since 2004, there’s a little thing called the Internet that’s dissuading shoppers from leaving their house. Not wanting to lose out the competition, some retailers decided to make Thanksgiving their ‘Black Friday’ instead.
Even though some venues are opened on Thanksgiving, the hatred of it stems that companies wanted to increase the bottom line at the cost of their employees. And not giving overtime or other incentives to do so. And failing to give them proper protections. Or any notable promotion opportunities. Or, just something…..
And it’s all because you want that $99 42-inch no-name TV, which is probably sold out 10 minutes into the sale. Or that $10 toaster, sold out in 20 minutes. Or maybe that towel that was sold out in 30 minutes, despite it not a real discount on Black Friday.
Notice the pattern? Most of these so called deals aren’t that much of a deal at all. What even worse is they are in limited quantities. Yeah, 10 deals for a crowd that’s has at least a hundred shoppers. To put into perspective, they’re just using these improbable deals to get into their stores.
Not only Black Friday has been a negative connotation with commercialization, there aren’t any deals to brag about other than dealing with pushy shoppers. If you really want a decent deal, just check out Lifehacker for all those details, use your favorite credit card if there are hidden deals inside, or clip, clip, clip coupons.
Until then, this is ‘The Rejected Playboy’. Winter is coming…..
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