Dreaming of a Green Christmas

The girls in the Merrill Family and I didn’t set the alarm for 4:30 on Black Friday, but we did bravely venture out at a reasonable hour that day. We went up to Garner to take advantage of some of the super specials offered that day.
It was close to 10 a.m. when we got up there. I let the girls out near the front door of the store we had set our sights on. I started looking for a parking place and located one a significant walking distance, but was pleased by getting that.
I ventured into the store and was amazed at how many people were there, not at opening time but several hours afterwards. As I started looking around for items, I saw a line of people, waiting patiently. I wondered what they were in line for, what super special were they waiting to get their hands on.
As I was to soon find out, the line stretched from the front of the store to the back of the store, and there was a like line on the other side of the store. There were 16 cash registers operating, taking money, plastic and real, just as fast as they could.
I spotted a man on his cell phone, apparently trying to find his loved ones in the store. It was a scene I repeated several times that morning before we left the store. I heard that Black Friday is one of the heaviest cell phone usage days for that very reason.
My wife, Marilyn, asked that I find a shopping cart, but those were not available. They were like gold, precious and coveted. You occasionally would see one, but they were well guarded.
Long before we had finished shopping, Marilyn got in line with a half dozen items at the back of the store. I soon joined her, holding our spot as the girls brought their items, and then went out to find more stuff.
I didn’t time it, but I know we were in line to get to the checkout for an hour. You had to believe that the specials were good enough to invest this much time. This certainly was not something you would accept on a normal day.
As we were going back and forth, I spotted a woman across the store who resembled one of my neighbors. When I saw her husband the next day, I asked and he confirmed it was her.
He told me that he had gotten up there an hour before the electronics store opened, lured by one of their super specials. He said the line when he got up there was stretched not just outside the store, but down in front of the half dozen other stores, down the side of the buildings, and all the way down the back. I’m guessing there was a line of people 300 yards long, lined up an hour before the store opened up.
He told me that he and some friends had done this last year. They literally camp out to save hundreds of dollars.
Unfortunately, there were too many others already in line, and the special he came for was gone, sort of. I think he said about 30 minutes before the store opens, employees start down the line, asking people which special they are there for, and hand out vouchers for the special. Once they pass the number of items they have, they tell the people they are sorry.
He said that some people wait in line now to get their vouchers, then go back home or get in their cars for a while to get some sleep, and come back to get their item before the time limit expires. Amazing.
As you can imagine, Marilyn and I are getting pretty well stacked up with items as we are waiting in line. A lady with fewer items behind us takes pity and gives us her cart rather than watching us straining with the burden any longer. She told us how long she had waited to get the cart when she came in the store, but she voluntarily gave it up for us. It was a rather nice touch of kindness on a day when we see images of people running over others for big specials.
We did make a few other stops along the way, but spent most of our time at this one store. I got back in time to catch some more football on Friday, and actually did some work on last week’s paper later that day.
One of the things that I look to regularly, as it directly affects the newspaper business, is the optimism people are about the future. Even more so than how much money people have in their pockets, people’s spending is affected by how optimistic they are about their future earnings. They are willing to jack up credit card balances based on their optimism they will be able to pay things back when the bill comes.
That also affects merchants. If they are optimistic that people will respond when they run advertisements in our paper and other places, they will run advertisements. If they are not optimistic, they won’t.
Black Friday isn’t obviously your normal shopping day, but it is an indication. Certainly our business has been good, and continues to be good. The merchants in the area are optimistic about business, and there seems to be a goodly amount of money flowing out there.
Expectations can change dramatically, as 9/11 showed us, but we seem to have a very green Christmas season ahead. Hopefully that optimism will be borne out by a strong economy which continues to provide plenty of jobs and maybe some extra spending money to fill Christmas dreams for many.