Consider me older and wiser.
As a former retail employee and manager in a small town, I thought that if I went to a big box like, say, Best Buy, in a small city an hour and fifteen minutes before it opened, I might have a shot at a ticket that they were handing out for their big bargains. I knew I'd have no shot in a bigger city, but I was confident I'd do okay in a smaller city. I was oh so wrong.
We came rolling up on Best Buy in Janesville at 3:50. I already had a bad feeling because there was a lot of traffic and stores like Shopko had about 30 people in front of them. I was stunned at what I saw at Best Buy. The parking lot was full and the parking lot at the adjacent outlet mall was busy with cars. The line started at the front door and went down the side of the store. I still thought maybe there was a very outside chance I might get a ticket for what I was looking for. We parked and started trudging towards the end of the line. Little did we know that what we thought was the end of the line really wasn't. Towards the back corner of the store, the line made a turn and stretched behind the outlet mall. I'm not kidding when I say that the line was almost a quarter of a mile long.
As it turns out, and I'm sure some of you were already aware of this, at Best Buy the tradition is to ruin your family's Thanksgiving by starting to line up at the door during the mid-afternoon. The first guy in line at the store that we were at got there at 3:30 the previous afternoon. We ran into someone we knew who got tickets for all three (two?) computers that they had on sale, and they had gotten into line at 5 pm the previous afternoon. We talked to another person who had driven by the store at midnight and the line had already turned its first corner.
We stuck it out, though. The lovely Mrs. Jib got one of the doorbusters that she was looking for plus a slew of other things. As for me, I managed to maintain a pleasant attitude...until I got inside of the store. My temper started to flare as I got jostled, so I went to the car until the lovely Mrs. Jib called me to come back in and run the store for some things while she stood in line for one product.
One other notable thing about standing in that line. An enterprising gentleman had set himself up in line yesterday and he got tickets for almost all of the big sale items. As soon as he got them, he started up the line, selling the tickets to people further back in line for $50 a ticket. I'll give him credit for finding a way to make a little not-so-quick cash, but he is lucky that the Janesville crowd was in generally a good mood. A number of people were not so fond of his enterprising spirit, especially considering that he couldn't sell the tickets for some of the more expensive items because those who wanted them didn't bring cash, and thus didn't have the $50 for the ticket. He ended with several items that nobody ever got a crack at.
After that, my inside the store experience was nearly complete. I caught up on some sleep in one parking lot, went into one other store, and patiently listened to talk radio while the lovely Mrs. Jib did her bidding at other stores. We have both agreed that this may be the last time we do the Black Friday thing together again.
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