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 I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and then enjoyed the shopping of what has become known as Black Friday! Enjoyed it? Yeah! It’s a funfest as no other! Lines a mile long, throngs of people in the isles, pushing and shoving—there’s no avoiding any of that, it’s a fact of Black Friday life!
But—when you finally put your hands on the prizes you went shopping for in the first place, then it makes everything worth it! It’s a wonderful feeling, getting that one thing, or two things, or if you’re lucky even more things you really, really wanted and maybe needed. It doesn’t matter though, if you needed them or not, it matters that you went forth, made it through and found items at prices you never dreamed of. There is no accomplishment quite like getting what you wanted on Black Friday!
However, a lot of people and most Adders dread Wicked Friday, the day after thanksgiving. To them ”oh dread” Friday is a curse, they rue the day, it’s a nightmare, it stands for everything they are against and of course, they are the ones who never seem to get those great ‘deals’, they are the ones who don’t really seem to grasp what Black Friday is all about! And that is the issue.
To me THE Friday is a symbol of the way an Adder’s mind works. Black Friday and the shopping mayhem it presents can make us lock ourselves away until the whole darn weekend passes. We can choose to stay at home and shop online in the comfort of our pajamas holding a warm cup of cocoa. We may not get the great deals or the fabulous give-a-ways that the brick and mortar stores offer, but we may get some peace of mind–sort of… sounds good, let’s not get into our social issues…
I have been a retail manager for years now, I have also been a PR spinster for a top 30 retailer—a pretty good one too, winning the highest award available in my field from the company I work for. The reason I am so good at it though, is because I am always thinking of the customer first and what the customer wants—I can do that pretty well, because I can imagine the worst, but what is more important is that I also have a great capacity to imagine the best!
You can hate retailers and you can love retailers, it’s a choice. The thing about it is though, as much as we are here for you, we would not have jobs without you and Black Friday is our day when we give back! Often, those great offers you hear about are costing retailers—it’s not free, the retailer pays the price and yet offers you the best possible price you can hopefully find anywhere! Those special savings, those great prices which may have been previously unheard of are there Wonderful Friday and gone the next day—heck, those items usually don’t even last through THE Friday!
It is easy to avoid Black Friday—just stay at home and stay away from the stores. Use any reason you like, but just stay away. And yet inevitably your friends, co-workers and even family will talk about the great deals they got. A shrug of the shoulders and a casual “I don’t care” should get you by, but does it really?
As an Adder I can completely sympathize with the negative connotation the Glorious Friday brings to us who like to avoid what seems like chaos and yet therein lays the problem: Our view of what it is—mixing and meshing past experiences with things that haven’t happened yet. The meaning we give things. If we want to achieve anything, if we want to go forth and do whatever, it is so easy to get lost in all kinds of ‘what if’ scenarios and create thousands of justifications for not doing whatever.
Keep your mind on the prize. Keep your mind on what you want. Make the end result your focus and move forward towards that goal. As long as you can keep the end goal in mind the prize will always be in front of you and the possibility of achieving it becomes better and better.
The point I am trying to make and using ‘Black’ Friday as a symbol is that we can think of it one way and stay home, or we can think of it another way and go forth. It can be a choice. You’re the one that makes that choice. You can think of it as a day of fun, or you can think of it as a day of dread—whichever way you think of it, you have the great talent of being correct whichever way you think!
Just my thoughts on the matter—peace out!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! They’re here…
~Bryan
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Funny you should mention this, I definitely don’t “get” why people would wake up, so early, to go shopping for these so called incredible deals. I was invited to go with a family member to attend this madness. I tried to explain to this person what a waste of time this is. So what if you can get a DVD player for 5 bucks. In my mind, it’s probably a piece of junk not even worth 5 bucks! Why waste your gas and energy buying some crap you don’t need just because it’s cheap? Thats how my mind works, sorta gloomy huh?
She told me she does it because it’s fun.
FUN?????? This is fun? What am I missing here? Why does that sound like way too much work to me. And Bryan, you hit it right on the nose. Chaos. That is what I feel I live with in my head naturally, I certainly don’t need to manufacture more myself purposely.
Indeed, the holidays are upon us. I’m already wishing they will pass quickly. My routine is already….well I don’t exactly have a routine so you throw in in the holidays and I really get goofed up. I have a family though, so I have to put on a happy face and pretend……
Reply to LisaYour not alone Lisa – it is predicted that online sales will increase in the double digits this year… not everyone is buying that $5 DVD player or waiting in those early morning lines anymore.
But, yeah, for some it really is fun.
Bryan
Reply to Bryan