Black Friday: Success or Complete Failure?
It's been a long standing tradition of mine to head out in the wee hours of the cold... and I mean COLD!... morning to fight the crowds on the day known as Black Friday. This year was not really different. I was determined to get out there yet again and see what kind of good deals I could score. The difference this year is that I have 2 kids to shop for now. In the past I was all about the DVDs and electronics. This year I had my eyes on toys.
Toys R Us opened their stores at midnight on Thursday night. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea what I was dragging Josh into. He didn't want to go and I practically begged him until he gave in. Now I feel really bad...
Thursday night we dropped the boys off with my mom and then went home to sleep for a few hours. I think I only managed to get in 45 minutes of sleep. At 11pm Josh and I dragged our butts out of bed and went to the toy store. We should have been more prepared. At first glance the line didn't look that bad. What we didn't realize was that it wrapped around the building before getting to the front entrance. We were at the end of the line. At midnight they opened their doors and let in about 30 people at a time. It took us 90 minutes to get to the front of the line. When we finally got in there I spotted what I wanted! It was a Home Depot work bench that was regularly $49.99 marked down to $19.99. I grabbed it and started heading towards the checkout line. That's when all my high hopes were thrown to the floor and stomped on! A man standing next to us told me that the one in my hand was NOT the one that was on sale. This one was $59.99... not the $49.99 one. WHAT?! The other one was sold out. Okaaaaay.... So we headed to the next item on the list... A train table for $79.99. If you bought that you got an $80 train set for free. Of course they were all sold out too. We overheard a store clerk saying that it was sold out in the first 10 minutes of opening. We left. Toys R Us left us very disappointed and we promised ourselves we would NEVER shop there again. They should really take a page from Walmart's book and have plenty in stock of their sale items. TRU knew that they would have a huge crowd. They're the only one around for miles of where we live. I had planned to spend at least $200 there... as I'm sure many other people there were going to do. I have a feeling they lost out on a lot of sales...
So we pulled out of the parking lot. I was apologizing to Josh for dragging him out there for nothing. Just as we turned the corner to get on to the freeway a cop flashes their lights at us. Great. Let's just add to our fabulous night. She was pulling us over because Josh was wearing his seat belt under his arm and not over his shoulder. She was a total you-know-what... she gave him a ticket. Josh was pissed. As she was writing it up he says, "Is that why you work nights? Because you can't sleep?" Argh... That didn't help.
I dropped Josh at home. He was done after that ticket. I was still determined to get something good out of that night. It was about 1:45 am so I headed over to Old Navy. The line was short and they opened at 3am. They passed out wristbands to the first 50 (or so) people in line to get the Lego Rock Band Wii game for free if you spent $20. I got one! They stopped passing them out 2 people behind me. That was close.... I picked up some cute hoodies for the boys along with a few shirts for them and I got myself some awesome fitting $15 jeans. I was in and out within 10 minutes of them opening. Success.
I was done after that. I went home and slept until 7:30am... I had to pick the boys up from my moms. I was dead tired and I don't think staying up all night was worth all the trouble we went through. I still plan to shop Black Friday next year, but I'll be staying far, FAR away from any toy stores!
Toys R Us opened their stores at midnight on Thursday night. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea what I was dragging Josh into. He didn't want to go and I practically begged him until he gave in. Now I feel really bad...
Thursday night we dropped the boys off with my mom and then went home to sleep for a few hours. I think I only managed to get in 45 minutes of sleep. At 11pm Josh and I dragged our butts out of bed and went to the toy store. We should have been more prepared. At first glance the line didn't look that bad. What we didn't realize was that it wrapped around the building before getting to the front entrance. We were at the end of the line. At midnight they opened their doors and let in about 30 people at a time. It took us 90 minutes to get to the front of the line. When we finally got in there I spotted what I wanted! It was a Home Depot work bench that was regularly $49.99 marked down to $19.99. I grabbed it and started heading towards the checkout line. That's when all my high hopes were thrown to the floor and stomped on! A man standing next to us told me that the one in my hand was NOT the one that was on sale. This one was $59.99... not the $49.99 one. WHAT?! The other one was sold out. Okaaaaay.... So we headed to the next item on the list... A train table for $79.99. If you bought that you got an $80 train set for free. Of course they were all sold out too. We overheard a store clerk saying that it was sold out in the first 10 minutes of opening. We left. Toys R Us left us very disappointed and we promised ourselves we would NEVER shop there again. They should really take a page from Walmart's book and have plenty in stock of their sale items. TRU knew that they would have a huge crowd. They're the only one around for miles of where we live. I had planned to spend at least $200 there... as I'm sure many other people there were going to do. I have a feeling they lost out on a lot of sales...
So we pulled out of the parking lot. I was apologizing to Josh for dragging him out there for nothing. Just as we turned the corner to get on to the freeway a cop flashes their lights at us. Great. Let's just add to our fabulous night. She was pulling us over because Josh was wearing his seat belt under his arm and not over his shoulder. She was a total you-know-what... she gave him a ticket. Josh was pissed. As she was writing it up he says, "Is that why you work nights? Because you can't sleep?" Argh... That didn't help.
I dropped Josh at home. He was done after that ticket. I was still determined to get something good out of that night. It was about 1:45 am so I headed over to Old Navy. The line was short and they opened at 3am. They passed out wristbands to the first 50 (or so) people in line to get the Lego Rock Band Wii game for free if you spent $20. I got one! They stopped passing them out 2 people behind me. That was close.... I picked up some cute hoodies for the boys along with a few shirts for them and I got myself some awesome fitting $15 jeans. I was in and out within 10 minutes of them opening. Success.
I was done after that. I went home and slept until 7:30am... I had to pick the boys up from my moms. I was dead tired and I don't think staying up all night was worth all the trouble we went through. I still plan to shop Black Friday next year, but I'll be staying far, FAR away from any toy stores!
Post a Comment