Every year I perform a ritual: the annual Black Friday Newspaper Weigh-In. I read two papers, and both of them have different ads in them, but for the Thanksgiving holiday, the soft “thunk” of the paper hitting the ground is replaced by the crash of something resembling a smaller model Dumpster. Each weighs about as much as a bowling ball.
I feel sorry for the folks who have to stuff those monstrosities. I don’t know how it’s done, but it must resemble playing rapid-fire card games, only without winners or losers or pretty face cards. And to think that it is all done in the early morning hours by folks who then have to drive around and hurl them at residences and maybe jam them into the mail slots of multi-unit complexes. Nothing can prepare you for a newspaper that big, unless you are a grateful bird owner.
Sometimes we get six or seven of one ad, probably because the person stuffing them had more of them than papers in which to put them. I always wonder which ads got missed. Probably the ones in which I would actually spend the most money.
These days people are depending more on online shopping than going to an actual store, probably because stores these days look like apocalypse zones within minutes of some poor guy opening the door at 7:00 AM. I do enjoy looking at what will be going on sale, even if I’m not buying it. And I always wonder why stores seem to save up some of the most extraordinary stuff for the last month and a half of the year to put out. Plus, they always put out only twenty when they are going to have 200 shoppers vying for them.
What I really miss about Black Friday is the unveiling of the holiday display windows. When I was a kid, the joy of looking at a festive store window was a treat, but now it is a dying art relegated to major cities like New York and only for high-end clothing in set-ups frozen in time and looking like nothing one would actually experience in the real world. GSN, the Game Show Network, actually had a contest built around window displays. They didn’t bring it back this year, probably because stores are a dying art.
The real winners are the pharmacies like Rite-Aid, Walgreens and CVS. They have everything you don’t want to visit a department store for. Their ads are colorful. Their prices reasonable, and they carry needed items like batteries and the missed half gallon of milk. Even that can appear in a Black Friday ad, and we will actually buy it.
I am working on Black Friday, but at least the stores will open at 7:00 AM, so I can poke my head in and see what a madhouse it is before going to work. And no, I won’t carry the paper with me: it weighs as much as a newborn.
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