After a nice Thanksgiving Dinner, I joined the Black Friday madness, with a twist. I was working, not shopping! My DD 16 recently started a job at a big new "Premium Outlet" center about 15 minutes from our house. The outlet center just opened the first week in November and had a slew of opening week sales. Traffic was insane that first weekend. You would think nobody had ever had a place to shop before (instead of being about 20 minutes from a huge mall - one of the largest on the east coast). Anyway, the stores were opening at 12:00 am on Thursday night/Friday morning and they needed people to help out. DD could not work since she is not allowed to work that late according to PA state child labor laws. Must be over 18. Many employees at many stores are 16 and 17 yo teenage girls so many stores were doing the same thing - recruiting friends/family to help out with the overnight shift. They were offering $10/hour, paid in cash immediately after the shift so I said, what the heck. I figured it would keep me from even being tempted to get up early to join the madness. My plan was work from 12:00 to 8:00 am, go home and sleep til 2:00, thus missing all chances to join the crazy early morning madness.
I was not sure what traffic would be like that night so I got there a bit early and just waited in my car. I got there at 11:30 pm and the stores were not opening til 12:00. I had not trouble parking and the lot was about 1/4 full when I got there. By the time I went into the store at 11:50, the lot was 3/4 full and traffic looked like it was backed up for miles. I worked til 3:30 am and was released to go home early due to the rush dying down and them having over scheduled people. No problem for me since I did not really relish the idea of staying up all night. When I left at 3:30 am there were still plenty of people milling around the mall and the lot was about 1/2 full. Every available space had been taken at one point and people were still parked all over any additional space like grass, islands etc. All I can say is people are crazy. My dd went with me to meet some friends and they left around 1:30 am. She did not even buy anything and said the deals were not really any better than they had been around opening weekend. Yet, people were lined up outside the stores before they opened. The Coach store was apparently having a 20% off sale and people were driving an hour or two just to get there. Wonder if what they spent in gas and coffee, snacks offset any savings they may have gotten? Again, people are crazy. I just found myself saying that over and over on Black Friday watching the madness. I went home at 3:30 and went to bed - I did not even want to be tempted to shop. (Although I must admit to getting up before noon and hitting two sales for holiday gifts that were already planned for.)