Ever-earlier openings on Black Friday getting ridiculous

National retailers have dialed the clock back to absurdity.

Absurdity, it turns out, remains a comfort zone for zillions of Black Friday shoppers.

It might even be an improvement.

Fifteen years ago, bargaineers reveled in the silliness of lining up in the middle of the night to make a dash for a $99 TV at 6 a.m.

Next it was 5 a.m., then 4 a.m.

As the televisions got bigger, the hour became more wee and tempers more frail.

On the first morning of the Christmas season of light and love, people punched each other over computers and video game systems.

So maybe it made sense to cut the long, cold night of waiting out of Black Friday’s festivities. Maybe it made sense to cancel the national Big Box Sleepover, and open those doors at midnight or earlier. If people weren’t so cold, maybe they would be nicer to their fellow alpha hunter-gatherers.

Maybe their friends wouldn’t think they’d lost all reason and dignity.

“You couldn’t pay me to do that,” sensible friends have told me each year.

Well, you could pay me.

I’ve covered Black Friday since 1995, arriving early to mine the lines for stories. Spouses of deployed soldiers have talked about managing their kids’ holidays alone. Parents have said they need the bargains if Santa plans to visit.

I, too, have surrendered to the siren sales, which explains our daughter’s vacuum cleaner and sewing machine, and our bread maker and carpet steamer.

But I went sour on the retail tactic the year too few bargain computers turned a crowd into a mob. There was blood, and a disturbing lack of shame on the part of the retailer who planned it all so badly.

This year, I went through the ads and listed what I wanted.

Then I slept in.

Sometime after 6 a.m., KUOW ran a story featuring a retail expert. He said the deals on the big electronics aren’t really that great. He said that, especially if we don’t get the big-screen TV we want, we buy lots of little stuff we don’t need. Those deals are not that great, and it’s a kind of self-medication, because we’re greedy.

Not you. I’m sure he wasn’t talking about you. But I’ll fess up.

I’m greedy, and lazy, and both qualities paid off Friday.

After 9 a.m., Kmart and Fred Meyer had all the half-off socks and gloves, towels, slippers, jammies, jewelry, games, tools and real toys a person, or a holiday drive, could want.

In the daylight, you could see the parking spaces and find the shopping carts. Any stampedes were long gone, and the greeters were gracious.

“Only one grouch all morning,” said the young woman at Kmart.

“Everyone’s been so nice,” said the checker at Fred Meyer.

Put that down to spending the previous evening playing Yahtzee with the family, then getting a good night of sleep.

Put that down to reasonable stocks of good stuff.

At Target, I, being greedy, bought several $5 DVDs I’ve wanted to see. I will wrap them and give them to my husband. The people gathered around the movie displays were critics and advisers. Don’t give your grandmother “The Hangover” unless she was cool with “Hot Tub Time Machine.” If she wants “Get Him to The Greek,” make her get it herself.

Back in the kids’ section, a woman who seemed dazed asked for help finding “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” got it, then tried to explain another classic.

It had a brass bed in it, and World War II, and magic, and, and, and … she trailed off.

The young man helping her had no idea, and she didn’t blame him.

She had cast a vacant gaze on a Lego display when I ran into her later. The movie was “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” she said, but she was too exhausted to go back for it.

She’d made the house ready for guests, made the feast, made the sales.

“I’ve been up since 5 a.m.” she said. “Not today. Yesterday.”

She seemed a sensible, hard-working woman, and not greedy at all. Her comfort zone is nowhere near absurdity.

Was Black Friday worth it? I asked.

“No,” she said. “No.”

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com

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