Black Friday Research Paper

Black Friday

Black Friday
The Friday after Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday shopping season. Sometime in the 1970’s it was christened “Black Friday". Some say the name refers to the heavy traffic and chaos in the stores. Others contend it is the busiest shopping day of the year and ensures profitability for retailers, putting them in the black. Without question it is a dangerous day to go shopping. All the big stores promise huge, super-fantastic sales. Many open their doors at 5 am with lots of fanfare, colorful decorations and holiday songs booming over loud speakers. Mobs of shoppers with long lists jam store aisles. Jostled by crowds, assaulted by noise and confusion, shoppers face special challenges as they try to keep their
was a symbol of a broken culture of consumerism in which people would do anything for a bargain. The willingness for people to walk over a human being to get at the right price tag raises the question of how they got that way in the first place. ” But Black Friday 's senseless shopper slaughter did not stop there. In Palm Desert, California, two grown men shot each other to death in a Toys "R" Us store following an argument. While the police are still investigating, the possibility that the men died dueling over some coveted merchandise has not been ruled out. Are the maxed-out consumers so hard up for a good deal this blood-stained holiday season that they will resort to random violence, or is our human hardware being programmed to act in such a barbaric
Twenty-something years ago, in the midst of the feel-good Reagan era, a retail store named Glosser Brothers (‘Gee Bees ' for short). That Christmas season, the ‘Cabbage Patch Kids ' - dwarfish-looking fabric dolls that came with certification papers and names - was the insanely popular gift that every kid expected to find under the tree. Gee Bees managed to get 75 dolls, and advertised them heavily in the run-up to Black Friday. That morning when the automatic steel doors creped upwards and people started crawling and sliding like insects on their hands and knees to be the first inside. Workers barricaded themselves behind the service desk, mouths wide open yet totally speechless, as the mob rushed past us like a river that had flooded its banks. A hurricane would have produced less collateral damage. ‘Entrepreneurs ' were re-selling their dolls right in front of us for many times what they had originally paid just minutes before, while police and paramedics, and probably a few lawyers, attended to the less fortunate shoppers. "Where were the safety barriers? Where was the security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe