"To boldly go where no man has gone before" was the opening line in the original Star Trek series. This is how The Sports Freak felt while venturing out for what was to be some light shopping for the first time ever on Black Friday. Big Money Tony entertained notions of shopping at 5 AM, but ultimately decided later in the day would be a better time. After constant prompting by Tony to replace a camera, I ventured out sometime before noon. Expecting to find swarms of people, bustles of packages falling and being taken off of shelves, and the noise of such a large volume of shoppers in stores only part of this was true. Mental preparation is a vital part in sports and as such I was prepared for the high contact sport of shopping on Black Friday. The list was short and so was the misson.
Best Buy had plenty of salespeople able to help customers. The store was packed, but everything was as orderly as possible and not exactly what I had expected. The personnel at the store were helpful and the store very organized. The employee that rang up my electronic purchases seemed eerily familiar. He resembled Timothy Busfield's character Poindexter from Revenge of the Nerds only slightly more robotic and without the poofed up hair and guitar Poindexter. He asked if I'd like to be charged in separate purchases to take advantage of the twenty dollar gift card as he swung his arms and moved his body like Elaine from Seinfeld dancing only to serve a single function. Thanks to his organization I was in and out of Best Buy in a flash. The same could not be said for Circuit City.
As I headed back home, I stopped at a local Circuit City to add to my dvd collection. It's easy to see why Circuit City is in such a financial crisis. The only real competition in electronics would rather run the interior of its store like a Wal-Mart especially regarding dvd's. Circuit City appears dark and gloomy with chaos always looming in the store. There never are enough sales personnel and usually when you find someone available to help they take the opportunity to avoid you and run away. The store is very disorganized leaving patrons to fend for themselves. Dvd's stocked along walls aren't in an order where movies are easily located and letters of the alphabet become blurred with movie titles tossed into different headings and tags.
Sifting through the bins of discounted movies trying to locate a rare gem or great movie value would be far easier at the BuyMorium such as in "Chuck" or at Best Buy. Instead Circuit City reduces individuals much like at Wal-Mart's dvd bins to savages looking for that one movie scurrying through countless dvd's in bins like animals. "I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!" about sums up the experience as I chose to walk away and return home.
Having no prior Black Friday Shopping experience to compare, the expectations of a high volume of consumer shopping seemed faded as reports later that weekend reflect a decline in shopping on this year's holiday weekend. It's an overall experience that's not worth repeating. It was interesting to note that no speed, agility, or stiff arming was needed to avoid the crowds or lines as everyone seemed to be on a mission and very respectful which seems lost on some other incidents that occurred over the holiday weekend.
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