Just a short story today.
In 1995, I worked at Wal-Mart for the Black Friday opening. We opened the doors to the store at 6 am, which was insanely early for that era but is probably late for today. I worked in the Electronics department, which in that particular store was a straight line from the front door of the store down what’s called the “main action aisle” (that’s the really wide one for you non-retail workers). Our big deal was on Gameboy… color, I think it was. It’s been a long time. It might have been GBA.
We had a tower built of the units– all we had in the store. It was a 9 foot tall X-mas tree style monstrosity that took me and a co-worker about an hour to build that morning.
The doors opened and, with all respect to Bobby Lashley, it was WALKING ARMAGEDDON.
A surging, swooping mass of people thundered to the Game Boy display. Then it was just hands and dust and feet and people falling and parkour and screaming. It’s what I imagine it’s like to be in an actual war zone. It happened fast– less than a minute.
Then they turned, and like a plague of shopping locusts descended upon me at the register. Those with their hands/arms full were ready to check out. Those who were near the back of the line were ready to ask for more or call for blood.
I checked people out for over an hour straight, pausing periodically to tell an angry person that if there were no more left on the display (which I couldn’t see from the throng of people) we were out of them. This was received with profanity and rage. No one was ever just accepting of the simple facts.
By 9 am the bulk of the people had vanished, and I was already exhausted. All of our “door busters” were gone– the VCRs, the TVs, etc.
I didn’t find out until later that many people had pre-gamed and plotted non-conventional ways through the store to the electronics counter, sort of like covert warfare. One person told me his story of switching aisles and running full speed then just swooping an armload of the units.
Consumerism is carnage. Also, to this day it amuses and infuriates me, because Nintendo could have made more of those units and turned a profit. They have followed that trend for generations. I still haven’t found an NES or SNES classic.
Have a good Black Friday, but remember that if you’re heading toward an item that is on sale and there’s a person between you and it, that’s a human being who people love and want to see come home in one piece. Don’t act like an animal. There will always be more goods to purchase. What is the price of our civility, though? Of our humanity?