Are you reading this on a half-charged SmartPhone because you've been camped outside a Wal-Mart for days? The cold temperatures, the air mattress and multi-colored lawn chairs, the boredom, the unpaid time off from work, making sure one of your crew stays behind while you search for a bathroom, food and somewhere to brush your sweatery teeth ... all so you can be first in line for some hot, nasty Black Friday action. What's your poison? A big screen TV so you can see Honey Boo-Boo and Kardashian booty in 50" plasma-y glory? Maybe a Hamilton Beach Single Serving Blender and Biggest Loser Food Scale -- it's a bundle! -- so you can finally get in shape because to lose weight you don't need to hit the gym or eat fruits and vegetables, you need to buy something to do the work for you! It's a Christmas miracle!
Instead of rising at the butt crack of dawn on Black Friday, businesses started the craze earlier with Thanksgiving night deals because their employees are dying to wait on rude, crazed, cheapass folk! Is there a death toll this year for how many people will be trampled to death?
But wait! There's more! To further help with your Christmas shopping, there's Cyber Monday with online deals as well as Small Business Saturday so we don't forget the little guys. Deals! Hot! Red hot! The prices are dropping so fast and so hard so they can bring the savings to you! Don't forget the Apple Black Friday Sale with deals on their overpriced, but wonderful, products for one day only. One day! Go! Run! Get there!
What happened to overeating on turkey, sweet potato casserole, corn pudding, stuffing and pumpkin pie with family members you love or love to secretly hate before unbuttoning your "big jeans" and dozing off on the couch? I also refer to these big jeans as my eating pants. Don't judge. Maybe take a walk (more like a waddle) afterwards so you can pretend you burned the 5,000 calories you ingested by lazily frolicking down the street. You typically get Friday off so you can prepare your home for Christmas or relax. You hear that noise? It's the calm before the storm called Christmas. But wait ... what's this? Big business heard you have a day off from work! Oh no! Of course you need to spend that day spending money!
Insert newspaper circulars, e-mailed reminders, television commercials -- spend, spend, spend!
Americans spend the entire year complaining about the economy and how they're broke as the saddest joke ever told and then, come the day after Thanksgiving, they go apeshit and kill each other at midnight over a 50" plasma TV and a $15 toaster. There was a time when I enjoyed visiting the mall in December to get tipsy at the California Pizza Kitchen (word to the wise, they cut you off after three so make yours doubles!) before embarking on my Christmas shopping stumble. I checked everyone off my list just in time to sober up and drive me and my headache home. Nowadays you'd be lucky to find a parking space, let alone get inside that crowded sucker. No thanks. Can't do it. Won't do it. Not gonna do it. It wouldn't be prudent.
Cyber Monday is a ploy for retailers to milk the Black Friday revenue. They want to see how many days they can eek this sucker out because they are fear mongers. They scare us into believing we'll miss out on huge savings on items we want and need if we ignore these few crucial days. They try to make us believe nothing will ever be on sale again so if we don't take advantage we will ruin Christmas for everyone.
This Thanksgiving, what are you thankful for? Family (especially the ones you actually like to be around), food, loved ones, or hot deals at Target? My advice: make a list like you're going to the grocery store so you don't return home with everything you don't need. Impulse buys are not your friend. Check the list twice. Shop around. Items will be on sale after Cyber Monday, I promise. Honestly, I'd rather have a thoughtful gift you found after shopping around on the Internet and in stores than an item you bought Black Friday at 4 a.m. because it was on sale and you were loopy from lack of sleep, six gooey Frappes, binge eating and being a fear mongered loony.
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