Black Friday was probably my worst idea of the year, though technically it WAS Nick's ideas to begin with.
Last year I did Joann's on Black Friday and it was a success. Yes, I waited in line for like 4 hours or something, but it was the only thing on my agenda so it wasn't
that bad. The year before that, I went to Mervyns (oh how I miss that store) and scored some great deals on sweaters and jeans.
This year, however, Nick and I were feeling lazy. When the ads didn't exactly thrill us, we thought we'd just go out later in the day to get the things we wanted.
Stupidstupidstupid.
We went to Walmart at about 10. It was...insane. I thought all the crazies would be gone since the 5am door busters were gone, but no. It seemed like everyone in the town of Chico was at Walmart, and they all had 1 objective: to cause mayhem. I mean seriously, most people had empty shopping carts and seemed to have no idea where they wanted to go but by God THEY WANTED TO GO THERE RIGHT THAT MINUTE. I was shoved and jostled and had to fight my way down aisles against packs of idiots who, flustered by the crowds and getting separated from their parties, would park their empty carts in the middle of the aisles and make huge road blocks and pile ups.
I believe in the end we spent $10 at Walmart, and none of it was anything super on sale that couldn't have waited.
We then went to Target, thinking that at about 11:30, there had to be less people. Nope.
Target was like a zoo without cages.
Apparently, everyone brings their kids to Target on Black Friday. I had kids running between me and the shopping cart I was pushing (take a moment to imagine that, strange kids running under the handle bars of a cart being pushed by a strangers). I had babies screaming in my ears, adults cursing their worst curse words while wrangling their kids in by their ears. It was madness. There was also a lot of people parking their carts in the middle of the aisles. Ugh.
We spent $11 at Target, again on things that weren't such a big deal.
We thought, ok-we're out and frazzled let's just do a big Christmas shopping spree at Kohl's.
Worst idea of the day.
It seemed really crowded, and I noticed a long line to the registers, but for some stupid reason that didn't faze me. I went ahead and filled my arms with gifts for all those hard-to-buy-for relatives. I was in the process of picking out MORE gifts when Nick insisted I see the check out line.
The store is shaped like a rectangle. The line began at the registers in the front center. It continued to one corner of the store, and then wrapped back down the adjacent wall. Then, at the end of THAT wall, it wrapped around and all along the wall parallel to the one with registers (essentially HALF OF THE STORE) and it was rapidly growing. This may have gone quick, except that Kohl's had a whole 4 checkers. FOUR. Four checkers for more than 200 people in line.
Disgusted, I threw down my Christmas gifts and we decided to go get similar things at JC Penny's since they are similar department stores. JCP is located in the mall, and that was a madhouse. After I swooned a bit over some kittens the humane society was there trying to adopt out, we ran into JCP. Guess what? They had the same stuff as Kohl's, mostly, but all of the sales ended at 1PM and it was 12:48 and the lines were long and we hadn't even picked anything out yet when I noticed the sales were ending.
Horrified, we stomped off to the car and begrudged everyone and their presence in the stores and sulked and came home and are not speaking about what a terrible waste it was.
The worst is that now we have to brave the stores AGAIN since we got hardly any gifts. We'll wait a while and do some shopping online, but I'm highly disappointed.
Also, I am holding the company that runs KOHLS 100% responsible for the fact that I will never do another Black Friday ever again.