11-25-2010, 11:18 AM
I stopped doing Black Friday the year I waited 2 hours in the cold outside a Circuit City store. Police were on hand to control the crowds, but just before the doors opened about 50 people appeared out of nowhere and jumped the line. When the doors opened, I got swept in along with everyone else, and it became a feeding frenzy of folks seeking one of the limited number of cheap laptops, DVD players and iPods. As I was working my way to the back of the store for my laptop deal, I passed a sales clerk standing on a counter yelling "get back, get back..if you don't get back, ain't no body gonna get any sh**, y'understand. Get back d*mmit!". It was at that point I decided that no deal was worth this craziness (and potential risk of injury) and that this was not the way to kick off the season of good will, so I did a U-turn and fought my way against the crowd to get out.
Hopefully the Hilo crowd is better behaved, but I'm not gonna risk it -- especially since many of the Black Friday deals are already available online today.
Hopefully the Hilo crowd is better behaved, but I'm not gonna risk it -- especially since many of the Black Friday deals are already available online today.