Normally, Carl and I avoid Black Friday like the plague. We sleep in and go out for brunch, and stay far far away from the crazy people who are sleep deprived, caffeinated, and desperate to get as many deals as possible.
Well, this year, I worked Thanksgiving evening(dinner at 3pm, then a nap from 6 to 8, then work at 9pm), and got off work at 2am. So I had the bright idea, "Hey! I'm awake anyways, might as well hit a store and get a deal!"
We played it smart(as smart as Black Friday can be played) and figured out what ONE item we really wanted to get a good deal on, then found a store that had said item on sale and wasn't such a big name that it would be mobbed before I even got off work. The item we wanted was an HP laptop, and Office Depot had one with Windows 7 and 4GB for $299. It had all the features Carl wanted, and most people think Best Buy or a department store like Walmart or Target if they're buying a computer, so we figured the crowds wouldn't be as bad at Office Depot.
We got over there at 2:30am, fully intending to leave and go home to bed if there were more than 30 people there. We passed Best Buy on the way, and there were so many people it wrapped around the building, and Office Depot was only guaranteed to have 10 minimum of this laptop. Yeah, we pulled up and laughed, there were only 7 people, and none of them were planning to get that particular laptop. I dropped off Carl and went on a run for hot chocolate and something to snack on.
It was in the upper 40's at some point, so I alternated between huddling with Carl and getting into the vehicle and turning on the heat to warm up. We finally got our voucher for the laptop that we wanted, plus one for a Tom-Tom since we've been planning to get one anyways. The doors opened at 6am, and the store filled immediately with crazy people looking to grab as much as possible as quickly as possible.
We picked up an 8MB card for my mom's camera, a couple of 4MB thumbdrives, some large photopaper, since I need to print a physical portfolio anyways and it was buy 1 get 2 free, and a copy of Norton 2010. It's $100, but free after a mail-in rebate, and I need to upgrade mine soon and put it on Carl's new laptop. It's good for 3 computers, so the third one will go on my mom's computer.
This took us all of 6 minutes, so then we got in line to check out and get our laptop and GPS. The line was already 150 people deep. I'm not kidding. It took us 2 hours to get through checkout. Yeah, I'm not kidding. We got out of there at 8am. Fortunately, Carl's mom called us from Walmart and told us she'd found a Tom-Tom for $18 less than the one at Office Depot and it had the same features, so we ended up having her pick that one up for us instead.
After escaping Office Depot with our goods, with Carl on guard for crazy people trying to steal our stuff, we got to the vehicle to find the headlights on. Apparently, the headlights don't turn off when you shut off the vehicle until the driver gets out, and since I'd been getting in and out on the passenger side when I was warming up.... yeah. Luckily, we got someone to jump us within a few minutes, and we were on our way.
We ran through McDonald's to grab a couple BEC biscuits, and devoured them on the way home, then collapsed into bed for four hours before having to get up. Both of us had to work Friday at 2pm at our respective jobs.
Woooooooo! And we don't caffeinate.
All in all, it was worth getting what we did, but I don't see us doing another Black Friday anytime soon. We'll probably end up calculating the saved-money-to-lost-time-and-sleep ratio in the future to determine whether or not to Black Friday shop again.