Always Batya

America is sliding into the toilet. WHY, you ask? Because too many people have an entitlement mentality with complete disregard for ethics and morality. Too many people have decided that they are going to get whatever they can out of life without any regard to who they have to step on.

I witnessed this live and in person doing something I swore that I would NEVER do.

I made the critical error of venturing out Thanksgiving night to camp out all night in hopes of getting an amazing deal on a laptop at Best Buy. NEVER AGAIN. We were planning to go over there about 2AM to get in line. My friends that do this every year assured me that would be early enough to get a good spot. Then, around 10PM Thanksgiving night, one of these so called experts called me to let me know the news was already showing people lined up at Best Buy! Since we were still at my parents celebrating the holiday, we packed everything up (leaving our share of the leftover ham, adding insult to injury!), hurried home to change and let the dogs out, and booked it to BB. We were in line by 11:30PM. Several people directly in front of us had counted and we were about 75 back in line, with the majority of people wanting the new PS3 or Wii gaming stations. I was nervous, but still felt like we were in a good position to get a decent laptop way under the budget I had set for myself.

Around 1:30AM, I decided to head to the car to get some sleep. Within minutes, the car was toasty, and I was out. Around 3:00AM, I woke up very disoriented to a loud ruckus. I stumbled out of the car to see everyone rushing to the front of the line with complete disregard to the people that had camped out, some since Wednesday. Apparently, Best Buy had turned the outside lights on, and everyone decided they were going to jockey for better positioning. Because so many people like us had brought camp chairs, blankets, etc., the people without those things were able to bypass the early arrivers. Brian ran to the car, threw the chairs and blankets in the trunk and ran to the line. (The car was parked parallel to where everyone was lined up.) Needless to say, we lost significant ground in the line and had to stand in line for another hour and a half stewing about it. There were probably 175 people in front of us now, with no way to tell who had been there before us and who hadn't. Eventually 5:00AM rolled around, and we inched our way toward the doors - management only let 25 go in at a time to avoid getting trampled, which was pretty smart. Brian and I both had specific items to look for, so we split up and waded into the fray.

By the time I got within seeing distance of the front of the computer line, the only laptops left were almost double what I was willing to pay. No surprise by then.

Fortunately, Brian had been able to find some amazing deals while I was in line, and had already checked out by the time the sales associates let us know the great deals were gone. I met up with Brian at the front of the store, he ran and got the car, we loaded up and headed to breakfast at Denny's. (Been a LONG time since I've been there! I had forgotten what a great place to people watch!!) After breakfast, we headed home - it was about 7:00AM when we got there, so I headed straight to bed, still tasting disappointment and still sickened by what I had witnessed from people.

The good news is we were able to get 3 family members finished for Christmas gifts. The bad news is this cynism that I cannot seem to shake about mankind in general. Maybe it was a good way to be reminded that there are a lot of unsaved people out there, and every Black Friday in the early hours before the stores open, there are stores all over the country with very captive audiences that have no choice but to listen to the gospel. Anyone got a bullhorn?

posted by Jodi @ 9:24 AM