I think I blew Black Friday

On that most peculiar of American holidays, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), I probably did not make the most of my opportunities. When the kids were little, I would head out early in the morning to our favorite toy store and fill my cart with all sorts of great stuff at 25% to 50% off, as they say. This year, I only needed one thing: A Fisher-Price Digital Camera for kids. I had to take Kathy to work that morning, so I didn’t make the 5:00 a.m. opening of Toys R Us. I rolled into the parking lot at 7:30.

There was a line snaking along the main aisles from the front of the store to I’m not sure where. I asked one guy if he was on line for the checkout and he said, “Yes. Impressive, isn’t it?” I asked a worker if she knew where the camera might be, and she said they had had one left when the store opened. So I followed this girl with an impossibly small butt (see why I don’t like the kids reading this?) to a shelf bereft of Fisher-Price Digital Cameras. All that was left was a sign with a price on it that was ten dollars less than the advertised price.

I got out of there, giving thanks that I didn’t have to while away my morning on that line. Later that night I ordered one on line for about thirty dollars more than the toy store wanted. At least it’s on its way. I hope. They were disappearing literally before my eyes. For instance, I consulted with Kathy on a Walmart price, only to find it suddenly out of stock when I tried to order it. Fisher Price is still advertising it on TV, the devils!

After poring over the ads from the Thanksgiving Day paper, there was really not much I was inspired to buy, so I decided to call SanDisk to fight over an Extreme III SD card that had failed in my camera. All that was on the card were about fifty photos from a reception in Chicago. If they were lost, it wouldn’t be a tragedy.

I have to say the support people at SanDisk are really very nice. One guy told me to buy a card reader, so I did and called back on Friday. The computer wouldn’t even recognize the card reader when the faulty SD card was installed, though it worked fine with another card I bought as a back up. I even offered to trade down to a slower card, but the woman on the phone on Friday said they couldn’t do that, but she would be happy to get me another Extreme III card if I sent back the bad one. Good enough.

The weather has been terrific here, with great sunny days and temperatures in the 60’s (15 to our European readers), so I washed the car, then went out to store advertising memory cards for about fifteen dollars. I bought another SanDisk 1 gig SD card, but just a regular old one—nothing fancy. That afternoon I realized for the first time that my PDA takes SD cards—woo hoo—I’ll have to explore that further.

One more foray into retail took me to Sams Club where I bought a big bottle of Advil and picked up some photos they had developed for me.

So I really did try to get into the spirit of Black Friday, but this year I contributed very little to retail’s bottom line. You just wait till after the New Year—then you’ll really see some spending!