Kyle M. Perkins

Although today was a rather good day, I had the hardest time sleeping last night. Can't quite figure out the exact reason, but Keat was up at 7 and stayed up with her dad. Apparently, I slept in, and so did her mom (not in the same room, duh). We spent a lot of the day watching TV and cooking for the evening. We were supposed to go on a hike this morning, but Keat's dad said it was raining, so we didn't go. TV consisted of the Macy's Day Parade until noon, and then we watched Food Network until it got a little boring and had to get ready to leave.

Thanksgiving dinner was fun. I had a lot of intellectual conversations with a lot of Keat's parent's friends. Even though I miss my family on this day of thanks and gathering, it was good to have a little variety instead of the same people and the same food every year. Since I spend last year and this year with Keat's family on Thanksgiving, I'll be going back home next year to liven things up a bit.

While dinner was digesting, the last thing on my mind was......drum roll please.....Black Friday. Sure, the deals are outrageous and you can get a bargain on just about anything. But after actually working one Black Friday at [a certain retail store] back in '04, I never want to be around another black friday again. I mean, people wait outside stores in the freezing cold for hours on end (sometimes days on end; some people actually camp outside of stores for good deals, and there is even a guide to camping for Black Friday! How crazy is that?!), rushing inside as soon as the doors open, the employees shiver at the amount of customers (or the 'newbies' get over-excited), there isn't any room to move for 1-10 hours, the cash registers are ringing off the hook, and everybody is grabbing, talking, asking, demanding, and screaming to get their item they waited so long for. In addition, the stores only get a limited quantity (from 5-100) for certain items, and most stores don't offer rain checks, and most people think that stores do. Sorry, if the store runs out on Black Friday, forget it - you ain't gettin' it, no matter what you do (complain, hold your breath, complain, write/call the president, complain, demand better service, complain, talk to the manager, complain, talk to the manager about firing the employee because the item isn't in stock, complain, ask for a rain check with a "pretty, pretty please....with sugar and a cherry on top", etc........did I mention "complain"?).

I was actually browsing FB after I got back to the house, and found one of my old managers (who doesn't work at [a certain retail store] anymore, thank goodness) posting something about Black Friday. I just had to comment on it.

As I said, after working only one Black Friday, I never want to work it again.

If the stores actually want to create....no, wait. Let me do a comparison list first:

• Current Process = Unhappy Customers
  
  
  • Send a limited quantity of items to stores, offer "Early Bird Prices" from (enter ungodly hour)-8am or noon, have inefficient POS systems, have super-tight aisles, have items placed throughout the store in inconvenient locations so customers have to push through everything and everybody to get what they want, don't have any type of store security for "orderly fashions", etc
  
  


• Process to create Happy customers
  
  
  • Offer their Black Friday prices ALL DAY and offer online ordering for out-of-stock items, therefore someone can actually get up at a DECENT hour, walk in, and ask for the item, place most-wanted items in easy-to-find locations in the front of the store for easy access, have a rope-security system for a "Desktop Defense"-type navigation system, have a limited number of checkout items to there is plenty for everyone, and a few other ideas

....at least they have stores opening up at various times instead of everybody opening at 5am this year. Hopefully, the after-hours traffic (meaning noon) may not be as bad as leaving a sold-out concert while everyone is on RedBull steroids.....just saying.

On to a different topic, I'm not quite sure what the plan is for tomorrow. I think we're visiting an Alpaca farm, but I'll just have to wait and see.

I have a perfect comic for tomorrow to deal with the plague called "Black Friday", but you'll have to wait till either after midnight or tomorrow evening till I post it.

I do miss the kitties. I wonder how they are doing.

Turkey is setting in.
Night world! I'm NOT getting up at 4:30am to work anything. I am sleeping in till a decent hour, then doing something enjoyable.