Black Friday (part whatever)
I've never known what the term "Black Friday" actually meant, so thanks to all of you who sent this in (from Wikipedia):Theories of origin
Stress from large crowds
The earliest uses of "Black Friday" refer to the heavy traffic on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday or other black days. The earliest known reference is from The New York Times, November 29, 1975:
Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday"--that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army-Navy game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion.
Employees of retail stores have for years referred to Black Friday in a satirical way, to note the extremely stressful and hectic nature of the day. Heavy traffic and customer demands added to the long hours make it a difficult day.
Accounting practice
Most contemporary uses of the term focus instead on the theory that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season. When this would be recorded in the financial records, common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black). This sense has been traced back to a 26 November 1982 broadcast of ABC News's "World News Tonight," although references to the day's heavy traffic and difficult crowds continued to dominate the term's uses for several years afterward.
DQ reader Derrick sends along this story--not about Black Friday in the U.S., but Boxing Day in Canada:
Black Friday is pretty bad, but nothing compared to Boxing Day in Canada.
When I was a young-un, I visited my Aunt's for Christmas, in Vancouver BC. And of course after hitting some dimsum the day after, we all went to the malls for some Boxing Day Deals. Holy Mother of Sweet Jesus. My dad dropped us off, and then spent the next few hour looking for a spot in the parking lot. The place was absolutely PACKED. I don't mean really crowded. I mean wall-to-wall of bodies and stores are only letting in a few customers at a time. It was ridiculous. The funny part, well to me anyway, is that the deals weren't THAT great. I mean, good if you're looking to buy shirts or something. But for a gamer the pickings were relatively slim (I'm sure that's changed nowadays). Funny aside, Vancouver has a huge Chinese population, and so in any mall on Boxing day, there's just this deluge of chinese shoppers. It was near impossible to pick out my chinese relatives in that sea of black haired heads (and I'm taller than the average chinese person too, so I had a good view). My cousins and I had a system where we wore certain hats to distinguish ourselves. The crowds were so huge and the going wherever was so slow you ended up just pissed off at whatever God or parent brought you there. Then you come across a pair of $180 shoes for $50 bucks (and that's in CANADIAN dollars), and suddenly the day is a huge success. I have no idea if it's a good deal or not, but since I always consider Canadian money "play money" anyway, it's a great deal. Like buying a BMW with monopoly dollars.
Back to the U.S., this time with a story from Jesse Leimkuehler:
Thought I should throw in my own Black Friday story.
A friend of mine went to stand with his wife in the Toys 'R' Us line early Friday morning. There were already a couple hundred people in the line when he arrived. As the opening time drew closer, there was an argument in the front of the line. A 'smart' guy (about 170 lbs.
soaking wet) had just showed up and gone up near the front of the line. He proceeded to tell the people in the front of the line that there was no way that they were keeping him out of the store when those doors opened. The people at the front of the line had some choice words for him.
Eventually, the manager of the store showed up on the inside of the front doors to open them. As the doors opened, the 'smart' guy kept his word and headed straight for the front door. One of the ladies who was there with her husband stuck out her arm to keep the guy out. When the 'smart' guy pushed her back, her husband proceeded to lay a punch on the side of the 'smart' guy's head. They ended up rolling around on the ground punching each other and the police who were not far away headed over to break it up.
The amusing part is that the rest of the line seemed relatively unphased about the fight and just kept right on walking around these two guys, still intent on getting the toy that they came for in the first place.
Meanwhile, these two guys ended up getting arrested and didn't end up with any toys, which is why they were there initially.
My Black Friday was far less exciting. I showed up at 3:00 AM and managed to get the last 42" LCD TV despite being 300 people back in the line. I will say that the queue that the employees set up in front of the store along with the tickets that they handed out an hour before the opening helped avoid any massive problems or a rush on the store. Kudos to Best Buy for that move.
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