I worked at Best Buy during Black Friday once--it was a crazy scene. The line stretched all the way around the store. I couldn't have the patience to wait in a line that long--even if I was getting A Deal. But then again, I don't have the patience to wait in line at a McDonald's drive-thru.

One of my coworkers told me Wednesday that he planned on getting in line at Best Buy after work--the day before Thanksgiving. That's like 36 hours waiting in line. He wanted to buy one of the $240 laptops Best Buy was offering. While I will agree that a laptop for under 250 bucks is A Deal, does it warrant two nights of camping out in front of the store? The computer regularly goes for around $500--so he's saving $250. But I don't think $250 is worth 36 hours of your time--at least it's not worth 36 hours of my time.

Lining up for something has sorta become the in-thing of American culture. Those Star Wars idiots are notorious for lining up outside the theater weeks before the movie premieres. For must-see concerts, folks line-up the day before tickets are sold (which apparently not early enough for Hannah Montana shows). Why even the iPhone got people lining up without any sorta special promotions or gimmicks. It's mind-boggling--don't these people have jobs/lives/loved ones/hobbies? It's more than socially acceptable to wait in lines nowadays--some might even say it's the cool thing to do. Thanks but no thanks--I'd rather have a life.

Black Friday became one of the busiest shopping day of the year because it's first day of Christmas season where nobody has to work (except the folks in retail). Stores started competing with each other for customers, so they started offering bargains to get people in the door. The thing is, the stores aren't so eager for your business that they're going to lose money. Those $3 DVDs you can buy at Circuit City are a loss leader--the store loses money on them just to get you in the store. They know you're gonna spend more money than enough money on other things to cover their loss--that's just sorta how it works.

That's what makes the Black Friday sales ironic. Folks line up for days--wake up at the butt crack of dawn--in order to get inside the store to buy A Deal. But they never buy the single item. They'll fork over extra cash for accessories, extended warrantees, and batteries. That sweet deal they were supposed to get ends up costing them a lot more than they planned on spending. Of course it does--the stores have to make their money somewhere. Retailers continue to have massive sales because the customer ends up buying a lot more than the draw item (if Wal-Mart wasn't making money, they wouldn't keep doing it)--folks always buy more than what they set out to buy in the first place. So for all their camping and waiting in line, the deal they thought they were gonna get ends up costing more than people planned. If anything, consumers are just lining up to get fleeced. But what do I know--I just bought a TV at Target.

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