Black Friday Experience

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! If you went Black Friday shopping, I hope you were able to get everything you wanted. I had a wonderful experience. We moved to New Jersey 3 1/2 years ago and since then I have gone Black Friday shopping by myself. This year my husband went with me and we had a blast.

We started off at Toys R Us. We got there around 7:15PM and were number 25. When they opened the doors at 9:00PM my husband rushed off to the electronics line while I went off to the rest of the store. He was 5th in line and quickly paid and joined me in getting everything else. We found everything we were looking for and were in our cars by 9:30PM.

From there we went off to Walmart. We arrived and were in a long line (there were easily about 300 people in front of us) and it was about 10:15PM. We finally made it in around 10:55PM. With no carts in sight, we ran off to grab what we could. Luckily my husband found a basket (hey! it's better than nothing) and we continued our journey. Somewhere down the store a man gave up and just left his empty cart in the middle of the aisle and my husband grabbed it! We finished getting everything we needed (only one thing was already gone) and then the real fun began...

No one, not even the employees had any idea where or how the checkout line was working. No one new where it ended how to get there. They were so disorganized and there was a major communication gap. People were mad, yelling at each other to get in line, but no one knew how to explain which way the line ran. It was total chaos. We spent 35 minutes trying to decipher who was in line and how to get there. Once we were in line, the line wasn't moving at all.

I was really disappointed because this is my 4th Black Friday shopping at this Walmart and I had never seen such chaos. Luckily, an employee decided to open up a cash register by the auto parts and started pulling some of us to go pay there. We were saved! When we finally got out it was 1:30AM and even though I knew it was a long shot, off to Target we headed. We were in line and in the store in about 10 minutes.

Everything was very organized. We went straight to get what we wanted and were out in about 30 minutes and even had time to go to a different Target for one final look. We got everything except my daughter's Kindle. It was 3:30AM and I was exhausted (having been up since 6:45AM making Thanksgiving food). We headed home.

The best part, however, happened that afternoon around 4PM. My daughter kept searching all day to see where we could get her Kindle (she's stubborn, set in her ways and really wanted to start using it). My husband helped her search and off to Staples we headed. When we arrived, I took her to look at them and quickly found someone to help us.

Just our luck, the one helping us was the day time manager. He went off to get my request and returned to tell me they were all out. He was all set on selling a more advanced (and of course more expensive) model. I said no and he kept insisting telling me all the great features. I didn't want to pay that amount of money, so I said no thank you and was about to go on my way when he said he would knock $20 off the price and with a rebate they were offering, I ended paying less than the one I was about to buy.

So off I went happily with my daughter's new Kindle. All in all we had a great shopping experience, save a lot of money and the icing on the cake: I'm done Christmas shopping!