November 28, 2013 • 39 mins
On the day after Thanksgiving, Americans go kind of crazy for the deep discount sales that kick off the holiday shopping season in stores. So crazy, in fact, at least four people have lost their lives and as many as 63 others have been injured during Black Friday sales. But as profitable as Black Friday is, some retailers are thinking about discontinuing the tradition to find ways to make even more money. Learn all about this bizarre, uniquely American holiday custom in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and with
me is always this Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there,
(00:21):
and that makes this stuff you should have. So you
just checked to make sure Jerry was there. She's very quiet.
You literally turned her head and body right, Yep, she's there.
I did the big foot thing like I had to
turn my whole the whole side of my body to
look over my shoulder. That's how you know that was
real footage. Well, typically when you know Jerry's here, because
you can just smell like miso soup or something emanating
(00:43):
from our right side or my right side, you're right side,
but it's not emanating from you. It's coming from Jerry. Yeah,
she stinks like mi so, which is actually a very
pleasant smell, salty and new mommy. That's right, uh so, Chuck. Yes,
have you ever been to a Black Friday sale? No? No,
(01:05):
And I want to say, h no. Oh yeah, well,
I mean that's not for me. That's a decent qualifier though,
because it's it's not like an average sale, and like,
if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, uh,
it's the pretty good reason why is because you're scared.
Well yeah, and I think this is one of those
very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going or
(01:29):
it's the last thing on earth you would rather do.
I don't know a lot of people are like, maybe
I'll go check out a doorbuster at three am. I
think there are people who who do have that kind
of that idea, but maybe not at three am. Sure,
there's it's almost like a multifaceted creature like it is
for some people, like just in the middle of a
(01:49):
normal shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they'll go
to a store and it's fine and there's some sales
or whatever. But then you know, hours earlier, these hardcore
people you know who would bay in the blood or
their fellow shoppers well sadly, yeah, um had had already
come through and gotten all the best deals. Yeah. But
and then there's those of us like us who are
(02:10):
just like going out. It is literally and I'm not
overstating this because people always say literally when they mean
figurati figuratively, but is literally one of the last things
I would ever ever do in my life. I can't
think of many. I'd rather go to the d m
V than go to a doorbuster the d m V
in between North Korea and South Korea. No, no, no, no,
(02:30):
that's the d m Z. Right, Okay, I always get
this too confused. Now, I'd rather go take the last
ticket from a the d m V and have to
wait all day than go to a doorbuster sale. Yeah. No,
I don't blame you, all right, So that's what we'll
get to. More hate spewing about this layer. But right,
and I should state my opinion. I feel like, if
this is your thing, that's awesome. Well true, true, I'm
(02:52):
not like cast dispurgence on people who disparaging remarks. Is
dispurgence the word? No it is now though you're like
your like an American dictionary the New Chucky. We should
make that up. I like it. Yeah, you could have
like five or six words already. Um. Yeah, agreed. I'm
not saying like poopooing people who do it. If you're
(03:13):
into it, great, as long as you conduct yourself in
a reasonable manner and you don't turn into a monster
like others do. Right, And but there is, Like there
are obvious criticisms of the day too, which we'll get into,
but I think, first, Chuck, we should explain what the
as you would say, h we're talking about to the
people who listen to this podcast and don't live in
the United States, because Black Friday is pretty much a
(03:34):
uniquely American experience. It is I think most people probably know,
but just very quickly. It is the day after Thanksgiving
now in the United States is known as Black Friday.
And we'll get into the pretty interesting history of it.
But um, it's the biggest shopping day of the year,
and there are all these crazy specials that they run,
and we'll get into that as well, but quite simply,
(03:55):
it is the busiest shopping day of the year, day
after Thanksgiving, right, and um, it's it's origins. Well, the
origin of the term Black Friday goes back kind of
a ways, apparently to the the mid twentieth century, but
the idea of going shopping, starting your Christmas shopping on
the day after Thanksgiving actually goes back to the late
(04:16):
nineteenth century early twentieth century. Um, thanks to the department
stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and as a
part of those parades. Accident Macy's Parade, right exactly, you know, yeah,
it's still a good parade though, Um, have you ever been, No,
I haven't. Yeah, I've never been to the parade, but
a couple of times, Emily, I've gone to the day
(04:36):
before when they blow up the which is really neat,
very cool. You mean, I have a friend who's actually
holding one of the floats the balloons. Yeah, it's it's
fun to do. Although we did it like eight or
nine years ago and it was it was really neat
and sort of crowded, and then we did it a
couple of years ago and it is nuts. Now it's Yeah,
(04:57):
it's kind of gone overboard. The word got out. I
think I saw, Yeah, I saw something last year in
the news. Yeah, it's not a place to go if
you don't like strollers. Let's just say that. Oh yeah, yeah,
strollers with altering entires um. So, but the the idea
of going starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving
(05:17):
came from those parades, and they came from those parades
because all of those parades, pretty much to a parade
featured Santa Claus. Yeah, and usually at the end kind
of like bringing up the rear, and that means we're
kicking it off. That's the official start of the holiday season.
That's right, Santa Claus has made his first public appearance.
So Um, from the association of those two came going
(05:39):
holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving. That was in the
late nineteenth century, in the fifties they think, or early sixties. Uh, well,
the fifties, calling the day after Thanksgiving black Friday came about,
but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with shopping
by then. It was from factory owners who apparently coined
the term. Yeah, and there's also the other competing theory
(06:02):
that it was the day that uh stores would go
into the black meaning start to show profit. But um,
that's not quite right as it No, So that's actually
a well, it's a made up fallacy to gloss over
the original meaning of black Friday. Um. And it came
out of Philadelphia in the sixties, and the cops and
the bus drivers and the city workers who worked downtown
(06:27):
came up with calling that day black Friday because apparently
tons of out of towners would leave their homes on
Thanksgiving converge on Philadelphia to watch the army Navy games
on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but they had a day
to kill, so they all started doing their Christmas shopping
because there were sales in downtown Philly every year, and
the place would be nuts. Uh. And this was where
(06:49):
black Friday came from. Apparently the police department wanted to
basically keep people away, so they'd be like, well, you
don't want to go to downtown Philly, it's black Friday.
And uh. That was the original um reason or origin
of the term. Yeah, I see you saw in here
article from the AP in nineteen five, a sales manager
at Gimbal's um was quoted as saying, that's why bus
(07:12):
drivers and cab drivers call today black Friday. Uh. They
think in terms of the headaches that it gives them.
So I learned something new when I read this. Yeah,
and then I had no idea it spread out of Philly.
And then years later the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said,
we've got to come up with a better, a better
origin story for this, because we want this to be
(07:34):
a day that people want to get out of their
house and go shopping, you know. But we should point
out even though it is not the day that companies
go into the black as it were, which by the way,
comes from when they did accounting by hand. You're write
in red ink or black ink, depending on you were
ahead with money or behind red ink. Men, you were
in the hole. Yeah, black man, everything's good exactly, even
(07:54):
though it does not mean that. Um. The holiday shopping
season is when stores make up between of their retail profits.
So it's a lot. Yeah. I mean even Emily small
business like the I don't know about majority, but a
large percentage of her yearly sales or you know a
couple of months, you know. Uh, and it's not just
her apparently. Um. In two thousand thirteen, the National Retail
(08:18):
Federation is predicting that Americans just in November and December, Chuck,
are you ready for this? Americans are going to spend
six and two billion dollars in November and December. That's cray,
that's a lot of cash. Yeah, in two months. Yeah.
I don't spend like I used to on Christmas. Um.
(08:42):
Emily and I sometimes will spend on gifts on each
other or do that like a couple of things where
you like go in and just do something nice for
your house. Uh, and then like the adults on my
side of the family. You don't exchange gifts anymore, Um,
just dirty looks. Yeah, exchange dirty looks. Like my brother
my sister will chip in usually and get my mom
(09:02):
something kind of nice or give her offer her a service,
like last year we replaced her fireplace with like a
gas fireplace, or build her a garden fence, or tile
her kitchen like something like that. Why your mom's got it. Yeah,
she's an easy street is what you call that. But
Emily's family that they all still exchange gifts, So I
still have my Christmas gift swapping Joan satisfied. You know, yes,
(09:28):
you get your Christmas present on Yeah, okay, chuck. So um.
The the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday,
that day being called Black Friday. It's been around for
a while. Um, and it's a really valuable day. Yeah,
you know, it kicks off that two month period where
(09:49):
siwo billion dollars is going to be spent on stuff.
But it was created like Valentine's Day, It was literally
created and then the myth kind of became reality just
because they said everyone's gonna shop today. It's the busiest
day and it became that. Yeah, it wasn't until two
thousand four. Usually the Saturday before Christmas was actually the
(10:10):
busiest shopping day of the year thanks to me. But
the Retail Federation and all the retailers were like, well,
we can't just we can't tout that is the busiest
shopping day of the year. We want to like get
people spending over the course of a couple of months,
not the Saturday before Christmas. So they basically said Black
Fridays the day. And it's, like you said, it just
(10:32):
kind of became true just from people saying it over time.
I'm surprised that they haven't come up with a catchy
name for like Procrastinator's Day or something to like pump
up that last Saturday again or something, or to keep
you from it. So they call it like Shame of
the Nation Day something like that to make you like
go go to Black Friday Saturday. Yeah. Um so, and
(10:57):
there's this website called, um Black Friday archive dot com.
It's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic
ads or whatever. Nostalgic going back to two thousand and seven,
I should say, but it's just like scans of black
Friday print ads from those years, which you're kind of neat.
If you're totally bored out of your mind, go check
out Black Friday archive dot com. But um, so Black
(11:19):
Friday became a smashing success, like two thousand and four,
two five, it's a relatively recent thing that it became
what it is today here in the States, which is
an out of controlled juggernaut shopping in consumeristic frenzy. Right. Um.
But so it was so successful overnight that um, the
(11:41):
retailer said, well, let's figure out ways to extend this
whole week. So they came up with cyber Monday in
two thousand five. Ye, that's pretty recent and it uh
is the online shopping version of Black Friday. Uh, the
Monday after Thanksgiving. And that was another thing they just
made up, another self fulfilling myth. It Um, they said,
that's the the workers go back to their computer after
(12:04):
Thanksgiving on Monday and they do all their online shopping. Well,
that wasn't really true, but now it is because the
retailer said it was in the meeting reported uh. And
not to be outdone, in two thousand and ten, American
Express invented Small Business Saturday, which is when you go
out and support small businesses with your money, especially ones
that take American Express exactly. Uh. So, there's it's interesting
(12:27):
that literally creating days to tell people basically, if you're
not shopping the day, you're missing out on really good deals,
right exactly. Um. And the more days the better as
far as retailers are concerned. Um. But there's only so
many days after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently, like, well,
(12:49):
what if we pushed in the other direction rather from
Friday on what's behind Friday? Oh, yeah, Thanksgiving? We can't
touch that for shame, Well, it's starting in two thousand
and twelve, they started touching it. Walmart actually UM opened
at eight pm on Thanksgiving in two thous twelve, UM,
and there was there was a general strike called that
(13:10):
we'll talk about later because of that, because these stores
are not supposed to be open on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is
its own day. It's a day of being with family
and celebrating and giving up. Until two thousand and twelve,
it was Sacro SANCD. Yeah. This year, Macy's and J. C.
Penny for the first time are opening on Thanksgiving, and
Sears and Toys r Us as well. Thanksgiving evening. Uh.
(13:34):
And Kmart is opening at six am on Thanksgiving, basically
extending Black Friday through the weekends. That's not a day.
That's how long Kmart is going to be open. Black
Friday at Kmart last forty one hours. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Uh.
And at shopping malls, um, you're gonna have some smaller
(13:55):
stores doing the same thing. And estimated will be open
at eight pm on Thanksgiving Day and two thirds will
open at midnight. So essentially what's happening is Thanksgiving evening
is being ruined by retail you know. Yeah. I think
the retailers would say, well, you know, we don't We've
(14:18):
seen that people, right, We've seen that people start lining
up Thanksgiving afternoon, Thanksgiving evening to wait for us to
open like that, you know, the next morning, So why
don't we just open? So, I mean, I think it's
kind of um, it goes both ways, but I pretty
much see where you're coming from. Yeah, well, this year
it's a little trickier two because Thanksgiving comes on November
(14:39):
twenty eight, which is the latest to spend in eleven years. Yeah,
is that right? Uh? Yeah, so weirdly because they still
sort of have to enforce Black Friday. They're actually shortening
their own shopping season a little bit this year, which
is probably why some of them are opening on Thanksgiving.
That's exactly, it's it's six days shorter than usual this year. Um.
(15:03):
So just by the very existence by making up Black Friday,
they screwed themselves this year a little bit. They have
a week yeah, because there's um in other countries like Canada,
the UK, the Netherlands, countries, um that that observed the
Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody gives
everybody else presents and things like that, and they spend money. Um,
(15:27):
but those countries don't have a Black Friday, a day
that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Um. Those
countries spend more over the course of the holiday season
because they have a longer period of time to shop. Um.
So without Black Friday in America, the retailers would possibly
make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a
(15:49):
corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this
year it's really kind of pointing out like we may
be shooting ourselves in the foot here, so what can
we do? Well. Their solution has been well, we'll just
take over Thanksgiving to but that's not necessarily sustainable, and
there's a lot of people are saying Black Friday is
going to go the way of the dinosaur. Yeah. I
read an interesting article in the New Yorker this morning,
(16:09):
finance article. I think it was New Yorker, it might
have been New York Times. But this financial analyst is
basically analyzing how the sales go and sort of saying
that it's really not financially the smartest approach to take
forever shoppers or the retail for the retailers to offer
these huge, deep discounts and sort of blow it out
(16:31):
in one day. A better, smarter financial approach would be
to elongate the seas shopping season at a and not
even discount things, maybe even raise prices. And his contention
is that they're shooting themselves in the foot, But um,
I think he's right. He probably is. But at the
same time, if you were one of those people like um,
(16:52):
like me frankly, who went to the mall the day
after Halloween and saw that the lights were the garland
was out, Santa's workshop was ready to go like the
November one. The place was totally decked out for Christmas
with Christmas carols piping through. See that's that's ridiculous. But
see without but that was the great thing about Black Friday.
(17:14):
It's like you, you you know, you had a month of
just kind of chilling out everything getting ready between between
Halloween and Thanksgiving. Then you had Thanksgiving and in the
holiday season started without Black Friday. It's kind of like this,
um this damn that's holding back the holiday season from
spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out that
(17:36):
it's an impedence to them making money, it probably won't
start the official season any longer. It'll probably be further
back from now on. Yeah, well I think we're in
I don't know, but well, technically slightly in the minority.
Um In two thousand of the population of American adults
said they will shop on Black Friday, So fifty that
(17:59):
puts us in the noority by a bit and two
thousand eleven A hundred and fifty two Americans, uh millions,
just a hundred, but they spent five hundred billion dollars. Yeah,
two really rich Americans. A hundred fifty two million shopped
on that day for an average of three hours at
a time, which is uh, not too long, but that's
(18:23):
I mean, three hours is like ever. But I saw
a woman who did sixteen though, like a sixteen hour
stretch of shopping. She better have gotten it all done
at least, I hope. So you know, yeah, like if
she shopped for sixteen hours and only got like three gifts,
it's not time a well spent um. There's also evidence,
(18:43):
uh that the internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door.
Thanksgiving days the fastest growing online shopping day. Um. And
I think like seventy of the people who said that
they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do
some or most of it online. Um. So the internet
still there for retailers to make money. But the idea
(19:04):
of Black Friday in store sales going extinct is probably
not going to happen because it's its own thing. Like
there's this one consumer psychologist or consumer analysts I think
uh pointed out that it's it's a tradition number one,
uh and number two, there's a certain element of like
(19:24):
sport to it. It's it's more than just getting a
good deal. It's like you know, throwing a fist at
somebody while you get a good dealers something to it
that that transcends the whole thing. So we mentioned door Busters.
It's a central part of the cog that is Black Friday,
and it goes back in print, believe it or not,
(19:45):
to the year nineteen seventeen in anecdotally, where in a
retailer will basically say, you know what, we have one
item or usually it's a few now, but some really deep,
deep and really super great deals on just a few
select items, so like, for example, a good laptop for
a hundred and eighty dollars, and like deals like that,
(20:09):
iPods for half off, for a TV for like really
really like you said, very good discounts. But here's the deal.
It's a scam people. It's a bait and switch. It's
it's a bait and switch. They they've only got a
very limited amount of these select items, which is why
the violence happens, which we'll get to in a minute. Uh.
(20:29):
And then after that they're hoping you get in there.
You don't get that laptop, but you're like, screw it.
I'm at Walmart at five am. I might as well
buy some stuff regular priced or slightly discounted items. Um.
And you know that's how they get you in the store.
That's how they get you. It is, um, and it
is It's true that there these items do exist and
(20:51):
they are for that deal. There there there for that price,
I should say, um, But there's only like ten and
in the fine print and it's like one person and
that deals is for in stock only, like you can't
get a rain check or anything like that. But the
the concept that these deals do exist for those items
that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically gets
(21:15):
their hands on that item first gets that deal, um,
leads to doors actually being busted. It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. Um.
All right, So before we get to the dark days
and the bad stuff that can happen, truly, Uh, let's
do a little message break. All right, Let's go back
(21:39):
a little bit to two thousand eight, and probably the
well House could say the darkest incident, but I think
the Toys r US may be darker. I think this
one's darker because the people were involved. Yeah, yeah, that's true,
all right, two thousand eight in Valley Stream, Long Island. Uh,
it was at a Walmart and it was five pm
on Thanksgiving, So basically people there the day before. Um
(22:03):
it wasn't one of those days where it was open
on Thanksgiving, so they're there to wait until five am.
So at least twelve hours ahead of time, there were
about a thousand people already set up there. Some people
are camping out intents, they're waiting, they got their coffee,
they're probably slugging some jim Beam to warm the belly.
And uh so the police came out and said, you
know what, let's set up a buffer zone a barricade,
(22:26):
which worked till about two am when that was breached
and the cops basically said, we're out of here. This
isn't part of our job. Yeah, the crowd had turned angry.
Um a little bit after that. Um so one of
the store employees had some family members come and like
they took them out of the line and took them
in the store. Not a good idea. Yeah, But even
(22:47):
even if, even if everyone in the crowd would have
been cool with it, I don't think everybody in the
crowd realized that they were family members of an employee.
So the crowd actually turned like ugly. Yeah, they broke
through the barricade. Uh and we're squeezed against you know
how the stores have the entrance and then that little
glass in vestibule area before and then usually a second
(23:08):
entrance right to get into the store itself. So there
was about, um by this time, there was about two
thousand people waiting for the store to open. It was
four am. The store is gonna open at five, and
a couple of hundred were in between this little buffer
zone and those front exterior doors and being pressed up,
literally crushed to death. And there's this fascinating article in
(23:28):
the New Yorker by a guy named John Seabrook called
crush Point, and it's about not just this incident, but
um uh just crushings in general, where somebody, yeah we
covered that like years ago, it seems like it. Yet
you check out that article. Yeah, people literally yelling, pushed
the doors in chanting this, and just before five o'clock,
(23:51):
it's it's a pretty bad scene. And uh, workers in
that vegetablebule area realized that there was a pregnant lady
name uh Leana Lockley being crushed against the doors, and
so they're like, we gotta get this lady in here,
opened the doors enough to squeeze her through she got in, um,
and then the crowd surged forward and it just kind
(24:12):
of went downhill from there, and they still did the
ten nine eight countdown. Isn't that mind boggling. It's mind
boggling that they didn't. Well, first of all, that the
cops left, Yeah, they said, they said, apparently in the
court deposition that the cops when they lets said controlling
this cards not in our job description. Good luck. Walmart
had hired a security force of two for the event.
(24:34):
One person hadn't shown up, the other one was inside
the store not helping. So they got a bunch of
their stock guys, their their biggest dudes that they could find,
and said come staying as vestibule and help anybody who
like falls down or That's when I would have been like, dude,
that's not in my job description exactly. Well, they didn't
say that. Um. And when the doors finally opened after
(24:54):
the festive countdown, while these people were being crushed against
the front, unbelievable, the doors start it to to open, and
right when they opened, they actually gave weight and were
literally busted by this wave of humanity. Yeah. And at
that point the employees um their little red rover line
was completely ineffective. People are getting knocked down, some of
(25:16):
the workers are getting blown out of the way. Some
are jumping on vending machines. It's ridiculous. What. Yeah, A
couple of them like climbed up the coke machine to
like get out of the way first safe harbor. One
guy who was in the in the way of the
crowd when the doors gave way. Um. This article by
John Sebrook puts it that he was blown back. So again,
(25:37):
there's a vestibule, there's the outer doors. There's a vestibule,
and then there's inner doors, and then there's the store.
This guy got blown from the outer doors all the
way through the vestibule, through the inner doors into the
store by this wave of people. Two thousand people. Yeah,
just coming in all at once, all trying to get
their hands on that door buster like an iPod or something.
(25:58):
So that's not the end of the story, sadly, Um,
people are getting crushed. This pregnant woman trips over some
old woman. She's on the ground at this point, pregnant,
yea Leanna Lockley in danger of being you know, trampled
to death. Uh, And then she somehow managed to get
to her knees and saw an employee. Um, do you
know how to pronounce his first name? Uh, Jim ta more,
(26:22):
Jim t de more. He uh was assigned to help
people in case anyone fell fell down next to her.
The doors fell on top of him, and two thousand
people trampled over those doors and killed him. Yeah, he
was trampled to death. He died of asphyxiation being crushed
under the door. And he was a stop guy at
(26:43):
six am, six or three am. He was pronounced dead
one hour after the festive countdown to let people get
into shop, and that was at the hospital an hour later,
so he most likely died on the scene. Um, and
pretty awful. What's crazy, Chuck? If that story is not
bad enough, tramplings are actually really common, and like, somebody
(27:06):
might not die, you might not be asphyxiated, and he
might not have died had he not gotten caught under
the door. Um, but the people getting knocked down. If
you want to see this, just go on to YouTube
and type in black Friday, not even Black Friday tramplings.
Just type in black Friday and you will see tons
of compilations of store security footage of people coming in
(27:28):
right when the store opens on a Black Friday sale,
just climbing over one another, knocking each other down. Some
people help other people up or drag them out of
the way or whatever, but just as frequently people just
climb over the ones who are down for a sale.
It's it's insane. I seriously encourage everybody to go check
out some video of it. Yeah. I can't believe that
after this incident, that there wasn't a law pass outlawing
(27:53):
outright Black Friday sales. You know that is not happening. Well,
but it's ridiculous because there's it's economists and analysts have
proven that you can have like even it's not like
they'd lose money. They would probably make more money if
they didn't have these blockbuster sales. So it's not like
they could say, well, you can't, you're keeping me from
(28:14):
doing my business. I don't know. I just can't believe
they can't outlaw something like this. So that was that
was a pretty horrendous example of a crowd crush and
a trampling um. But other things that happen. You mentioned
the toys r us in Palm Desert, California a couple
of years back, right, Yeah, that was in two thousand
and eight. These two women got in a fist fight
and then their husbands got into it. And basically, first
(28:39):
of all, these two men were carrying guns into a
Toys r Us for the Christmas shop, which is the
weird uh, And they started a shootout with each other,
basically and not a very skilled one apparently. I read
about it like one guy forgot to cock his gun.
The other guy like his didn't work either. So they
start chasing each other through the store through a store,
(29:00):
shooting at each other. Luckily, no one else died, but
those two gentlemen shot each other and died. Yeah, and
the toys are us because of their wife's got in
a fistfight on Black Friday at the toys arrest during
Christmas shopping. I'm surprised no one else if they're running
through the store shooting, uh. I think everybody cleared out
of the their way. Yeah, I I know. I wouldn't
(29:22):
follow them around and be like, hey, guys, what are
you doing? Where's the Doorbusters? In two thousand eleven, a
woman at a Los Angeles walmart, uh Pepper sprayed some
people in the video games. Initially, the cops saw it
while this you know lady was some Black Friday jerk,
which would make her a pretty awful awful person. Yeah,
but apparently the real story is and and she actually
(29:43):
got out of it. Um was that her children were attacked, uh, punched, kicked,
thrown to the ground by shoppers trying to get an
xbox from these children. And so she defended her kids
by pepper spraying these jerks. Right, And if this thing
still hasn't been settled, the most recent thing I saw
was that, Um, I year on so last year, Um,
the cops still hadn't filed charges, so I guess they
(30:05):
believed her story. But she shopped anyway after that happened
and bought her items. So she pepper sprays a bunch
of people, affects twenty people, causes a bit of a
trampling pandemonium. Uh. And then two horrible things happened after that. One,
like you said, the lady took her kids and her
items and went to the store and checked out, bought
(30:26):
her stuff. Uh. Second, the people outside the immediate circle
where she pepper spray, but still in that little area
stuck around, still tried to get their hands on the
sail item and they're like checking out in their eyes
and those are watering, and there's like just just ring
it up, let me get home. Yeah, and of course
took there's um the workers as well. Well, yeah, I mean,
(30:47):
no one wants to work on Thanksgiving, and and this year,
like we said, a lot of retailers are opening on
Thanksgiving and there's really not anything they can do about
it if they want to keep their job, which is
really sad. And Walmart uh employees planned a strike I
think last year in two thousand twelve, and it didn't work.
Only twenty six stores reported striking employees, so for fear
(31:11):
of losing their jobs, probably they had to come to
work anyway. Well, camartin particular was criticized this year for
opening at six am on Thanksgiving, and Camart said, these
people don't have to work like that, we're not forcing
them to work, and uh, their critics are saying, well, actually,
that's not necessarily true because you're using part time seasonal
employees and there's no federal mandate that those people have
(31:33):
to have holidays or time off. So therefore they're in
a position where they either work or you can fire
them legally. Uh, so they kind of do have to work.
There's a lot of ugliness on Black Friday. But chuck,
if you are just the average normal person, like my
brother in law loves to go Black Friday shopping and
he'll he'll like, go at midnight go to the Doorbuster sales,
(31:55):
but he's like, he's not crazy. Well, the majority of
them don't end in violence, because this happens all over
the country and these are isolated incidents, so it's not
like at every Doorbuster sale you're gonna get trampled. But
there is a risk there is, and um, the people
you want to look out for. Apparently there was a
study of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales and it
(32:15):
was a legitimate study. Um it said that you want
to look out for the people who have done a
lot of planning, because they exhibit the most anti social
behavior like shoving, pushing, yelling. They've got their plan in
place and nothing's going to alter that, and they feel
like they've really put the time in and they're not
(32:36):
about to lose that Doorbusters who has never done it
before and just showed up, who just lucked into into
line or whatever. You know that like remember the famous
Who concert in the seventies, where the people were trampled. Yeah,
that's in that um New York article. They got rid
of general emission seating after that, Like, why can't they
do something about this? You know, I think the law
(32:57):
stepped in and said, wait a minute, you can't just
open the doors to a concert venue and say first
one in gets front row. Um, are they still like
general admission not for big arena shows. Yeah, well you
know that there was like just one door open and
like four others locked, and people were getting crushed up
against the locked doors, and the people inside who are
(33:18):
working at that concert like just never opened the doors
even though people were dying. So remember what we cover
that in Man, it is so like vivid in my
mind from way early on because we studied the the
science of crowd surges. I don't know what it was either,
because this article is not that old. It's just like
it definitely wasn't about this. I had to do with
(33:40):
something else. But um, yeah, dirty bad stuff. Or you
can take another approach, Yeah this is this is a
different approach, you could say. In the n an artist
named Ted Dave gave birth to what's now called by
Nothing Day, wherein people are encouraged to not buy anything
for twenty four hours and to fight the power and
(34:00):
consumerism by not showing up at all, and not just
by the power. The guy who created Ted Ted Dave,
he's a Vancouver guy who came up within the nineties. Um,
it was also not just to stick it to the man,
which I can only imagine if nobody bought anything in
America on Black Friday, what kind of crippling effect that
(34:21):
would have on the economy. But he was also saying personally,
it's that's a good day to not buy anything and
be take stock of how much you do maybe waste
or spend or whatever. Just think about your consumer your
consumerism for one day and during that time, like don't
(34:42):
buy anything, and don't guess up your car the night before,
don't get a bunch of milk the night before, Like
just just be normal on one day of the year,
don't buy anything and that's buy nothing Day. And it's
kind of become this big thing ever since Adbusters. The
people who gave us Occupy Wall Street kind of a
found out a about it and adopted it and just
took the whole thing worldwide. It's pretty amazing. It is.
(35:05):
So if you go to a Black Friday sale and
you see a bunch of people dressed as zombies. They're
making fun of you. They're making fun of zombie consumers.
Same with the people who are dressed as sheep. Yeah.
And then there's Zenti clause. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe
I'll dress up as a sheep, yeah and just walk
around and buy and people's faces and then if in there,
might you know, pick up a laptop right. Um. There's
(35:27):
also credit card cut up stations, yeah, yeah, where you
can get rid of your credit card and just shook consumerism.
And then there's the my favorite, the what is it,
the Worldly gig Congo line. Oh I haven't heard of that?
Is that two disrupt shoppers? Uh, the whole the whole
point is it just kind of it serve as a mirror.
(35:50):
I think two people like, look at yourselves. You're ridiculously
You think I look stupid. You're the one that looks stupid.
We're not even buying anything. But yeah, so there's it's
kind of a twofold. It's one like just kind of
reflecting personally slash sticking it to the man as an
individual consumer, like realizing your power in the grand scheme
of things. It's all kind of hinges on you spending
(36:11):
your money and if you don't, then you're taking the
power back or pointing out to other people just how
ridiculous they're being at consumers. As consumers, people probably like,
where'd you get that cheap costume? Write exactly what was
that on? Um? So I've got one last thing. Uh
I noticed the other day. I've never heard of this
(36:31):
before in China. Do you think we liked the shop?
Chinese love the shop And they have something that they
have created called Singles Day and it is on November eleven,
so eleven eleven. The four ones stand for single people
and they're basically like, hey, because in China, I think
you're encouraged to marry, so this is like, hey, be single,
go out and treat yourself to something online and buy
(36:54):
something because it's Singles Day and you should celebrate being single.
And it's a huge deal. They spent uh, well, this
e commerce platform in China called Ali Baba's the one
who really got behind it recently, and they spent five
point seven billion dollars on Singles Day this year, which
dwarfs Cyber Monday by three times almost and it's the
(37:18):
biggest online shopping day in the world, and in the
first six minutes this year, just a couple of weeks ago,
they spent a hundred and sixty million dollars in the
first six minutes online in China just to celebrate being
single and their churches shop for themselves, which I don't think.
We pointed out a lot of people on Black Friday
(37:40):
when um when asked, say that they do some of
the shopping for themselves, not all gifts. It's like, I
want that laptop. I think forty forty seven percent or
forty one of people who said they're gonna stop on
Bike Friday so they'll do most of the shopping for themselves.
They usually do that. Whenever I go out, like genuinely
Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something for myself. Were these
people were saying they're mostly shopping for themselves. Now I
(38:01):
don't mostly, but I'll just I'll just treat myself. And
I want to say, Chuck, we're not. We don't begrudge
anybody going to Black Friday sales. If that's your thing,
enjoy it, that's fine. Just act like a human being. Yeah,
don't take anyone's life no, don't trample over somebody who's
fallen down. Uh. And most importantly, I have a very
(38:23):
nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with, whether they're friends, family,
old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some time to really enjoy
this Thanksgiving day and relax and and just be I agree,
my friend, it's Thanksgiving. Be with your family, turn off
your smartphone, maybe even wow, really get crazy and just
(38:44):
be in the moment. Yeah, how about that? Um, And
we give you permission to shout down anybody who says
that trip to fan is what makes you sleepy. That's
right to you. Go ahead and set them straight. Yep.
So happy Happy Turkey Day, Americans and uh and other
parts of the world. Whatever you're doing, I hope you're
will Yeah, nice, Chuck and Chuck. We should say that
(39:04):
as usual. If everyone wants to send us happy Thanksgiving wishes,
they can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. UM.
They can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
You should know you can, um and if you want
to know more about Black Friday, you can go to
how stuff works dot com. I think there's like a
ten worst moments in Black Friday history. An article up there. Um,
(39:25):
you can send us an email directly to Stuff Podcast
at Discovery dot com, and as always, you can join
us at our very festive and thankful home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works
dot com Brought to you by the all new Toyota
(39:54):
Corolla
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and with
me is always this Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there,
(00:21):
and that makes this stuff you should have. So you
just checked to make sure Jerry was there. She's very quiet.
You literally turned her head and body right, Yep, she's there.
I did the big foot thing like I had to
turn my whole the whole side of my body to
look over my shoulder. That's how you know that was
real footage. Well, typically when you know Jerry's here, because
you can just smell like miso soup or something emanating
(00:43):
from our right side or my right side, you're right side,
but it's not emanating from you. It's coming from Jerry. Yeah,
she stinks like mi so, which is actually a very
pleasant smell, salty and new mommy. That's right, uh so, Chuck. Yes,
have you ever been to a Black Friday sale? No? No,
(01:05):
And I want to say, h no. Oh yeah, well,
I mean that's not for me. That's a decent qualifier though,
because it's it's not like an average sale, and like,
if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, uh,
it's the pretty good reason why is because you're scared.
Well yeah, and I think this is one of those
very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going or
(01:29):
it's the last thing on earth you would rather do.
I don't know a lot of people are like, maybe
I'll go check out a doorbuster at three am. I
think there are people who who do have that kind
of that idea, but maybe not at three am. Sure,
there's it's almost like a multifaceted creature like it is
for some people, like just in the middle of a
(01:49):
normal shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they'll go
to a store and it's fine and there's some sales
or whatever. But then you know, hours earlier, these hardcore
people you know who would bay in the blood or
their fellow shoppers well sadly, yeah, um had had already
come through and gotten all the best deals. Yeah. But
and then there's those of us like us who are
(02:10):
just like going out. It is literally and I'm not
overstating this because people always say literally when they mean
figurati figuratively, but is literally one of the last things
I would ever ever do in my life. I can't
think of many. I'd rather go to the d m
V than go to a doorbuster the d m V
in between North Korea and South Korea. No, no, no, no,
(02:30):
that's the d m Z. Right, Okay, I always get
this too confused. Now, I'd rather go take the last
ticket from a the d m V and have to
wait all day than go to a doorbuster sale. Yeah. No,
I don't blame you, all right, So that's what we'll
get to. More hate spewing about this layer. But right,
and I should state my opinion. I feel like, if
this is your thing, that's awesome. Well true, true, I'm
(02:52):
not like cast dispurgence on people who disparaging remarks. Is
dispurgence the word? No it is now though you're like
your like an American dictionary the New Chucky. We should
make that up. I like it. Yeah, you could have
like five or six words already. Um. Yeah, agreed. I'm
not saying like poopooing people who do it. If you're
(03:13):
into it, great, as long as you conduct yourself in
a reasonable manner and you don't turn into a monster
like others do. Right, And but there is, Like there
are obvious criticisms of the day too, which we'll get into,
but I think, first, Chuck, we should explain what the
as you would say, h we're talking about to the
people who listen to this podcast and don't live in
the United States, because Black Friday is pretty much a
(03:34):
uniquely American experience. It is I think most people probably know,
but just very quickly. It is the day after Thanksgiving
now in the United States is known as Black Friday.
And we'll get into the pretty interesting history of it.
But um, it's the biggest shopping day of the year,
and there are all these crazy specials that they run,
and we'll get into that as well, but quite simply,
(03:55):
it is the busiest shopping day of the year, day
after Thanksgiving, right, and um, it's it's origins. Well, the
origin of the term Black Friday goes back kind of
a ways, apparently to the the mid twentieth century, but
the idea of going shopping, starting your Christmas shopping on
the day after Thanksgiving actually goes back to the late
(04:16):
nineteenth century early twentieth century. Um, thanks to the department
stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and as a
part of those parades. Accident Macy's Parade, right exactly, you know, yeah,
it's still a good parade though, Um, have you ever been, No,
I haven't. Yeah, I've never been to the parade, but
a couple of times, Emily, I've gone to the day
(04:36):
before when they blow up the which is really neat,
very cool. You mean, I have a friend who's actually
holding one of the floats the balloons. Yeah, it's it's
fun to do. Although we did it like eight or
nine years ago and it was it was really neat
and sort of crowded, and then we did it a
couple of years ago and it is nuts. Now it's Yeah,
(04:57):
it's kind of gone overboard. The word got out. I
think I saw, Yeah, I saw something last year in
the news. Yeah, it's not a place to go if
you don't like strollers. Let's just say that. Oh yeah, yeah,
strollers with altering entires um. So, but the the idea
of going starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving
(05:17):
came from those parades, and they came from those parades
because all of those parades, pretty much to a parade
featured Santa Claus. Yeah, and usually at the end kind
of like bringing up the rear, and that means we're
kicking it off. That's the official start of the holiday season.
That's right, Santa Claus has made his first public appearance.
So Um, from the association of those two came going
(05:39):
holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving. That was in the
late nineteenth century, in the fifties they think, or early sixties. Uh, well,
the fifties, calling the day after Thanksgiving black Friday came about,
but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with shopping
by then. It was from factory owners who apparently coined
the term. Yeah, and there's also the other competing theory
(06:02):
that it was the day that uh stores would go
into the black meaning start to show profit. But um,
that's not quite right as it No, So that's actually
a well, it's a made up fallacy to gloss over
the original meaning of black Friday. Um. And it came
out of Philadelphia in the sixties, and the cops and
the bus drivers and the city workers who worked downtown
(06:27):
came up with calling that day black Friday because apparently
tons of out of towners would leave their homes on
Thanksgiving converge on Philadelphia to watch the army Navy games
on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but they had a day
to kill, so they all started doing their Christmas shopping
because there were sales in downtown Philly every year, and
the place would be nuts. Uh. And this was where
(06:49):
black Friday came from. Apparently the police department wanted to
basically keep people away, so they'd be like, well, you
don't want to go to downtown Philly, it's black Friday.
And uh. That was the original um reason or origin
of the term. Yeah, I see you saw in here
article from the AP in nineteen five, a sales manager
at Gimbal's um was quoted as saying, that's why bus
(07:12):
drivers and cab drivers call today black Friday. Uh. They
think in terms of the headaches that it gives them.
So I learned something new when I read this. Yeah,
and then I had no idea it spread out of Philly.
And then years later the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said,
we've got to come up with a better, a better
origin story for this, because we want this to be
(07:34):
a day that people want to get out of their
house and go shopping, you know. But we should point
out even though it is not the day that companies
go into the black as it were, which by the way,
comes from when they did accounting by hand. You're write
in red ink or black ink, depending on you were
ahead with money or behind red ink. Men, you were
in the hole. Yeah, black man, everything's good exactly, even
(07:54):
though it does not mean that. Um. The holiday shopping
season is when stores make up between of their retail profits.
So it's a lot. Yeah. I mean even Emily small
business like the I don't know about majority, but a
large percentage of her yearly sales or you know a
couple of months, you know. Uh, and it's not just
her apparently. Um. In two thousand thirteen, the National Retail
(08:18):
Federation is predicting that Americans just in November and December, Chuck,
are you ready for this? Americans are going to spend
six and two billion dollars in November and December. That's cray,
that's a lot of cash. Yeah, in two months. Yeah.
I don't spend like I used to on Christmas. Um.
(08:42):
Emily and I sometimes will spend on gifts on each
other or do that like a couple of things where
you like go in and just do something nice for
your house. Uh, and then like the adults on my
side of the family. You don't exchange gifts anymore, Um,
just dirty looks. Yeah, exchange dirty looks. Like my brother
my sister will chip in usually and get my mom
(09:02):
something kind of nice or give her offer her a service,
like last year we replaced her fireplace with like a
gas fireplace, or build her a garden fence, or tile
her kitchen like something like that. Why your mom's got it. Yeah,
she's an easy street is what you call that. But
Emily's family that they all still exchange gifts, So I
still have my Christmas gift swapping Joan satisfied. You know, yes,
(09:28):
you get your Christmas present on Yeah, okay, chuck. So um.
The the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday,
that day being called Black Friday. It's been around for
a while. Um, and it's a really valuable day. Yeah,
you know, it kicks off that two month period where
(09:49):
siwo billion dollars is going to be spent on stuff.
But it was created like Valentine's Day, It was literally
created and then the myth kind of became reality just
because they said everyone's gonna shop today. It's the busiest
day and it became that. Yeah, it wasn't until two
thousand four. Usually the Saturday before Christmas was actually the
(10:10):
busiest shopping day of the year thanks to me. But
the Retail Federation and all the retailers were like, well,
we can't just we can't tout that is the busiest
shopping day of the year. We want to like get
people spending over the course of a couple of months,
not the Saturday before Christmas. So they basically said Black
Fridays the day. And it's, like you said, it just
(10:32):
kind of became true just from people saying it over time.
I'm surprised that they haven't come up with a catchy
name for like Procrastinator's Day or something to like pump
up that last Saturday again or something, or to keep
you from it. So they call it like Shame of
the Nation Day something like that to make you like
go go to Black Friday Saturday. Yeah. Um so, and
(10:57):
there's this website called, um Black Friday archive dot com.
It's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic
ads or whatever. Nostalgic going back to two thousand and seven,
I should say, but it's just like scans of black
Friday print ads from those years, which you're kind of neat.
If you're totally bored out of your mind, go check
out Black Friday archive dot com. But um, so Black
(11:19):
Friday became a smashing success, like two thousand and four,
two five, it's a relatively recent thing that it became
what it is today here in the States, which is
an out of controlled juggernaut shopping in consumeristic frenzy. Right. Um.
But so it was so successful overnight that um, the
(11:41):
retailer said, well, let's figure out ways to extend this
whole week. So they came up with cyber Monday in
two thousand five. Ye, that's pretty recent and it uh
is the online shopping version of Black Friday. Uh, the
Monday after Thanksgiving. And that was another thing they just
made up, another self fulfilling myth. It Um, they said,
that's the the workers go back to their computer after
(12:04):
Thanksgiving on Monday and they do all their online shopping. Well,
that wasn't really true, but now it is because the
retailer said it was in the meeting reported uh. And
not to be outdone, in two thousand and ten, American
Express invented Small Business Saturday, which is when you go
out and support small businesses with your money, especially ones
that take American Express exactly. Uh. So, there's it's interesting
(12:27):
that literally creating days to tell people basically, if you're
not shopping the day, you're missing out on really good deals,
right exactly. Um. And the more days the better as
far as retailers are concerned. Um. But there's only so
many days after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently, like, well,
(12:49):
what if we pushed in the other direction rather from
Friday on what's behind Friday? Oh, yeah, Thanksgiving? We can't
touch that for shame, Well, it's starting in two thousand
and twelve, they started touching it. Walmart actually UM opened
at eight pm on Thanksgiving in two thous twelve, UM,
and there was there was a general strike called that
(13:10):
we'll talk about later because of that, because these stores
are not supposed to be open on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is
its own day. It's a day of being with family
and celebrating and giving up. Until two thousand and twelve,
it was Sacro SANCD. Yeah. This year, Macy's and J. C.
Penny for the first time are opening on Thanksgiving, and
Sears and Toys r Us as well. Thanksgiving evening. Uh.
(13:34):
And Kmart is opening at six am on Thanksgiving, basically
extending Black Friday through the weekends. That's not a day.
That's how long Kmart is going to be open. Black
Friday at Kmart last forty one hours. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Uh.
And at shopping malls, um, you're gonna have some smaller
(13:55):
stores doing the same thing. And estimated will be open
at eight pm on Thanksgiving Day and two thirds will
open at midnight. So essentially what's happening is Thanksgiving evening
is being ruined by retail you know. Yeah. I think
the retailers would say, well, you know, we don't We've
(14:18):
seen that people, right, We've seen that people start lining
up Thanksgiving afternoon, Thanksgiving evening to wait for us to
open like that, you know, the next morning, So why
don't we just open? So, I mean, I think it's
kind of um, it goes both ways, but I pretty
much see where you're coming from. Yeah, well, this year
it's a little trickier two because Thanksgiving comes on November
(14:39):
twenty eight, which is the latest to spend in eleven years. Yeah,
is that right? Uh? Yeah, so weirdly because they still
sort of have to enforce Black Friday. They're actually shortening
their own shopping season a little bit this year, which
is probably why some of them are opening on Thanksgiving.
That's exactly, it's it's six days shorter than usual this year. Um.
(15:03):
So just by the very existence by making up Black Friday,
they screwed themselves this year a little bit. They have
a week yeah, because there's um in other countries like Canada,
the UK, the Netherlands, countries, um that that observed the
Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody gives
everybody else presents and things like that, and they spend money. Um,
(15:27):
but those countries don't have a Black Friday, a day
that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Um. Those
countries spend more over the course of the holiday season
because they have a longer period of time to shop. Um.
So without Black Friday in America, the retailers would possibly
make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a
(15:49):
corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this
year it's really kind of pointing out like we may
be shooting ourselves in the foot here, so what can
we do? Well. Their solution has been well, we'll just
take over Thanksgiving to but that's not necessarily sustainable, and
there's a lot of people are saying Black Friday is
going to go the way of the dinosaur. Yeah. I
read an interesting article in the New Yorker this morning,
(16:09):
finance article. I think it was New Yorker, it might
have been New York Times. But this financial analyst is
basically analyzing how the sales go and sort of saying
that it's really not financially the smartest approach to take
forever shoppers or the retail for the retailers to offer
these huge, deep discounts and sort of blow it out
(16:31):
in one day. A better, smarter financial approach would be
to elongate the seas shopping season at a and not
even discount things, maybe even raise prices. And his contention
is that they're shooting themselves in the foot, But um,
I think he's right. He probably is. But at the
same time, if you were one of those people like um,
(16:52):
like me frankly, who went to the mall the day
after Halloween and saw that the lights were the garland
was out, Santa's workshop was ready to go like the
November one. The place was totally decked out for Christmas
with Christmas carols piping through. See that's that's ridiculous. But
see without but that was the great thing about Black Friday.
(17:14):
It's like you, you you know, you had a month of
just kind of chilling out everything getting ready between between
Halloween and Thanksgiving. Then you had Thanksgiving and in the
holiday season started without Black Friday. It's kind of like this,
um this damn that's holding back the holiday season from
spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out that
(17:36):
it's an impedence to them making money, it probably won't
start the official season any longer. It'll probably be further
back from now on. Yeah, well I think we're in
I don't know, but well, technically slightly in the minority.
Um In two thousand of the population of American adults
said they will shop on Black Friday, So fifty that
(17:59):
puts us in the noority by a bit and two
thousand eleven A hundred and fifty two Americans, uh millions,
just a hundred, but they spent five hundred billion dollars. Yeah,
two really rich Americans. A hundred fifty two million shopped
on that day for an average of three hours at
a time, which is uh, not too long, but that's
(18:23):
I mean, three hours is like ever. But I saw
a woman who did sixteen though, like a sixteen hour
stretch of shopping. She better have gotten it all done
at least, I hope. So you know, yeah, like if
she shopped for sixteen hours and only got like three gifts,
it's not time a well spent um. There's also evidence,
(18:43):
uh that the internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door.
Thanksgiving days the fastest growing online shopping day. Um. And
I think like seventy of the people who said that
they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do
some or most of it online. Um. So the internet
still there for retailers to make money. But the idea
(19:04):
of Black Friday in store sales going extinct is probably
not going to happen because it's its own thing. Like
there's this one consumer psychologist or consumer analysts I think
uh pointed out that it's it's a tradition number one,
uh and number two, there's a certain element of like
(19:24):
sport to it. It's it's more than just getting a
good deal. It's like you know, throwing a fist at
somebody while you get a good dealers something to it
that that transcends the whole thing. So we mentioned door Busters.
It's a central part of the cog that is Black Friday,
and it goes back in print, believe it or not,
(19:45):
to the year nineteen seventeen in anecdotally, where in a
retailer will basically say, you know what, we have one
item or usually it's a few now, but some really deep,
deep and really super great deals on just a few
select items, so like, for example, a good laptop for
a hundred and eighty dollars, and like deals like that,
(20:09):
iPods for half off, for a TV for like really
really like you said, very good discounts. But here's the deal.
It's a scam people. It's a bait and switch. It's
it's a bait and switch. They they've only got a
very limited amount of these select items, which is why
the violence happens, which we'll get to in a minute. Uh.
(20:29):
And then after that they're hoping you get in there.
You don't get that laptop, but you're like, screw it.
I'm at Walmart at five am. I might as well
buy some stuff regular priced or slightly discounted items. Um.
And you know that's how they get you in the store.
That's how they get you. It is, um, and it
is It's true that there these items do exist and
(20:51):
they are for that deal. There there there for that price,
I should say, um, But there's only like ten and
in the fine print and it's like one person and
that deals is for in stock only, like you can't
get a rain check or anything like that. But the
the concept that these deals do exist for those items
that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically gets
(21:15):
their hands on that item first gets that deal, um,
leads to doors actually being busted. It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. Um.
All right, So before we get to the dark days
and the bad stuff that can happen, truly, Uh, let's
do a little message break. All right, Let's go back
(21:39):
a little bit to two thousand eight, and probably the
well House could say the darkest incident, but I think
the Toys r US may be darker. I think this
one's darker because the people were involved. Yeah, yeah, that's true,
all right, two thousand eight in Valley Stream, Long Island. Uh,
it was at a Walmart and it was five pm
on Thanksgiving, So basically people there the day before. Um
(22:03):
it wasn't one of those days where it was open
on Thanksgiving, so they're there to wait until five am.
So at least twelve hours ahead of time, there were
about a thousand people already set up there. Some people
are camping out intents, they're waiting, they got their coffee,
they're probably slugging some jim Beam to warm the belly.
And uh so the police came out and said, you
know what, let's set up a buffer zone a barricade,
(22:26):
which worked till about two am when that was breached
and the cops basically said, we're out of here. This
isn't part of our job. Yeah, the crowd had turned angry.
Um a little bit after that. Um so one of
the store employees had some family members come and like
they took them out of the line and took them
in the store. Not a good idea. Yeah, But even
(22:47):
even if, even if everyone in the crowd would have
been cool with it, I don't think everybody in the
crowd realized that they were family members of an employee.
So the crowd actually turned like ugly. Yeah, they broke
through the barricade. Uh and we're squeezed against you know
how the stores have the entrance and then that little
glass in vestibule area before and then usually a second
(23:08):
entrance right to get into the store itself. So there
was about, um by this time, there was about two
thousand people waiting for the store to open. It was
four am. The store is gonna open at five, and
a couple of hundred were in between this little buffer
zone and those front exterior doors and being pressed up,
literally crushed to death. And there's this fascinating article in
(23:28):
the New Yorker by a guy named John Seabrook called
crush Point, and it's about not just this incident, but
um uh just crushings in general, where somebody, yeah we
covered that like years ago, it seems like it. Yet
you check out that article. Yeah, people literally yelling, pushed
the doors in chanting this, and just before five o'clock,
(23:51):
it's it's a pretty bad scene. And uh, workers in
that vegetablebule area realized that there was a pregnant lady
name uh Leana Lockley being crushed against the doors, and
so they're like, we gotta get this lady in here,
opened the doors enough to squeeze her through she got in, um,
and then the crowd surged forward and it just kind
(24:12):
of went downhill from there, and they still did the
ten nine eight countdown. Isn't that mind boggling. It's mind
boggling that they didn't. Well, first of all, that the
cops left, Yeah, they said, they said, apparently in the
court deposition that the cops when they lets said controlling
this cards not in our job description. Good luck. Walmart
had hired a security force of two for the event.
(24:34):
One person hadn't shown up, the other one was inside
the store not helping. So they got a bunch of
their stock guys, their their biggest dudes that they could find,
and said come staying as vestibule and help anybody who
like falls down or That's when I would have been like, dude,
that's not in my job description exactly. Well, they didn't
say that. Um. And when the doors finally opened after
(24:54):
the festive countdown, while these people were being crushed against
the front, unbelievable, the doors start it to to open, and
right when they opened, they actually gave weight and were
literally busted by this wave of humanity. Yeah. And at
that point the employees um their little red rover line
was completely ineffective. People are getting knocked down, some of
(25:16):
the workers are getting blown out of the way. Some
are jumping on vending machines. It's ridiculous. What. Yeah, A
couple of them like climbed up the coke machine to
like get out of the way first safe harbor. One
guy who was in the in the way of the
crowd when the doors gave way. Um. This article by
John Sebrook puts it that he was blown back. So again,
(25:37):
there's a vestibule, there's the outer doors. There's a vestibule,
and then there's inner doors, and then there's the store.
This guy got blown from the outer doors all the
way through the vestibule, through the inner doors into the
store by this wave of people. Two thousand people. Yeah,
just coming in all at once, all trying to get
their hands on that door buster like an iPod or something.
(25:58):
So that's not the end of the story, sadly, Um,
people are getting crushed. This pregnant woman trips over some
old woman. She's on the ground at this point, pregnant,
yea Leanna Lockley in danger of being you know, trampled
to death. Uh, And then she somehow managed to get
to her knees and saw an employee. Um, do you
know how to pronounce his first name? Uh, Jim ta more,
(26:22):
Jim t de more. He uh was assigned to help
people in case anyone fell fell down next to her.
The doors fell on top of him, and two thousand
people trampled over those doors and killed him. Yeah, he
was trampled to death. He died of asphyxiation being crushed
under the door. And he was a stop guy at
(26:43):
six am, six or three am. He was pronounced dead
one hour after the festive countdown to let people get
into shop, and that was at the hospital an hour later,
so he most likely died on the scene. Um, and
pretty awful. What's crazy, Chuck? If that story is not
bad enough, tramplings are actually really common, and like, somebody
(27:06):
might not die, you might not be asphyxiated, and he
might not have died had he not gotten caught under
the door. Um, but the people getting knocked down. If
you want to see this, just go on to YouTube
and type in black Friday, not even Black Friday tramplings.
Just type in black Friday and you will see tons
of compilations of store security footage of people coming in
(27:28):
right when the store opens on a Black Friday sale,
just climbing over one another, knocking each other down. Some
people help other people up or drag them out of
the way or whatever, but just as frequently people just
climb over the ones who are down for a sale.
It's it's insane. I seriously encourage everybody to go check
out some video of it. Yeah. I can't believe that
after this incident, that there wasn't a law pass outlawing
(27:53):
outright Black Friday sales. You know that is not happening. Well,
but it's ridiculous because there's it's economists and analysts have
proven that you can have like even it's not like
they'd lose money. They would probably make more money if
they didn't have these blockbuster sales. So it's not like
they could say, well, you can't, you're keeping me from
(28:14):
doing my business. I don't know. I just can't believe
they can't outlaw something like this. So that was that
was a pretty horrendous example of a crowd crush and
a trampling um. But other things that happen. You mentioned
the toys r us in Palm Desert, California a couple
of years back, right, Yeah, that was in two thousand
and eight. These two women got in a fist fight
and then their husbands got into it. And basically, first
(28:39):
of all, these two men were carrying guns into a
Toys r Us for the Christmas shop, which is the
weird uh, And they started a shootout with each other,
basically and not a very skilled one apparently. I read
about it like one guy forgot to cock his gun.
The other guy like his didn't work either. So they
start chasing each other through the store through a store,
(29:00):
shooting at each other. Luckily, no one else died, but
those two gentlemen shot each other and died. Yeah, and
the toys are us because of their wife's got in
a fistfight on Black Friday at the toys arrest during
Christmas shopping. I'm surprised no one else if they're running
through the store shooting, uh. I think everybody cleared out
of the their way. Yeah, I I know. I wouldn't
(29:22):
follow them around and be like, hey, guys, what are
you doing? Where's the Doorbusters? In two thousand eleven, a
woman at a Los Angeles walmart, uh Pepper sprayed some
people in the video games. Initially, the cops saw it
while this you know lady was some Black Friday jerk,
which would make her a pretty awful awful person. Yeah,
but apparently the real story is and and she actually
(29:43):
got out of it. Um was that her children were attacked, uh, punched, kicked,
thrown to the ground by shoppers trying to get an
xbox from these children. And so she defended her kids
by pepper spraying these jerks. Right, And if this thing
still hasn't been settled, the most recent thing I saw
was that, Um, I year on so last year, Um,
the cops still hadn't filed charges, so I guess they
(30:05):
believed her story. But she shopped anyway after that happened
and bought her items. So she pepper sprays a bunch
of people, affects twenty people, causes a bit of a
trampling pandemonium. Uh. And then two horrible things happened after that. One,
like you said, the lady took her kids and her
items and went to the store and checked out, bought
(30:26):
her stuff. Uh. Second, the people outside the immediate circle
where she pepper spray, but still in that little area
stuck around, still tried to get their hands on the
sail item and they're like checking out in their eyes
and those are watering, and there's like just just ring
it up, let me get home. Yeah, and of course
took there's um the workers as well. Well, yeah, I mean,
(30:47):
no one wants to work on Thanksgiving, and and this year,
like we said, a lot of retailers are opening on
Thanksgiving and there's really not anything they can do about
it if they want to keep their job, which is
really sad. And Walmart uh employees planned a strike I
think last year in two thousand twelve, and it didn't work.
Only twenty six stores reported striking employees, so for fear
(31:11):
of losing their jobs, probably they had to come to
work anyway. Well, camartin particular was criticized this year for
opening at six am on Thanksgiving, and Camart said, these
people don't have to work like that, we're not forcing
them to work, and uh, their critics are saying, well, actually,
that's not necessarily true because you're using part time seasonal
employees and there's no federal mandate that those people have
(31:33):
to have holidays or time off. So therefore they're in
a position where they either work or you can fire
them legally. Uh, so they kind of do have to work.
There's a lot of ugliness on Black Friday. But chuck,
if you are just the average normal person, like my
brother in law loves to go Black Friday shopping and
he'll he'll like, go at midnight go to the Doorbuster sales,
(31:55):
but he's like, he's not crazy. Well, the majority of
them don't end in violence, because this happens all over
the country and these are isolated incidents, so it's not
like at every Doorbuster sale you're gonna get trampled. But
there is a risk there is, and um, the people
you want to look out for. Apparently there was a
study of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales and it
(32:15):
was a legitimate study. Um it said that you want
to look out for the people who have done a
lot of planning, because they exhibit the most anti social
behavior like shoving, pushing, yelling. They've got their plan in
place and nothing's going to alter that, and they feel
like they've really put the time in and they're not
(32:36):
about to lose that Doorbusters who has never done it
before and just showed up, who just lucked into into
line or whatever. You know that like remember the famous
Who concert in the seventies, where the people were trampled. Yeah,
that's in that um New York article. They got rid
of general emission seating after that, Like, why can't they
do something about this? You know, I think the law
(32:57):
stepped in and said, wait a minute, you can't just
open the doors to a concert venue and say first
one in gets front row. Um, are they still like
general admission not for big arena shows. Yeah, well you
know that there was like just one door open and
like four others locked, and people were getting crushed up
against the locked doors, and the people inside who are
(33:18):
working at that concert like just never opened the doors
even though people were dying. So remember what we cover
that in Man, it is so like vivid in my
mind from way early on because we studied the the
science of crowd surges. I don't know what it was either,
because this article is not that old. It's just like
it definitely wasn't about this. I had to do with
(33:40):
something else. But um, yeah, dirty bad stuff. Or you
can take another approach, Yeah this is this is a
different approach, you could say. In the n an artist
named Ted Dave gave birth to what's now called by
Nothing Day, wherein people are encouraged to not buy anything
for twenty four hours and to fight the power and
(34:00):
consumerism by not showing up at all, and not just
by the power. The guy who created Ted Ted Dave,
he's a Vancouver guy who came up within the nineties. Um,
it was also not just to stick it to the man,
which I can only imagine if nobody bought anything in
America on Black Friday, what kind of crippling effect that
(34:21):
would have on the economy. But he was also saying personally,
it's that's a good day to not buy anything and
be take stock of how much you do maybe waste
or spend or whatever. Just think about your consumer your
consumerism for one day and during that time, like don't
(34:42):
buy anything, and don't guess up your car the night before,
don't get a bunch of milk the night before, Like
just just be normal on one day of the year,
don't buy anything and that's buy nothing Day. And it's
kind of become this big thing ever since Adbusters. The
people who gave us Occupy Wall Street kind of a
found out a about it and adopted it and just
took the whole thing worldwide. It's pretty amazing. It is.
(35:05):
So if you go to a Black Friday sale and
you see a bunch of people dressed as zombies. They're
making fun of you. They're making fun of zombie consumers.
Same with the people who are dressed as sheep. Yeah.
And then there's Zenti clause. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe
I'll dress up as a sheep, yeah and just walk
around and buy and people's faces and then if in there,
might you know, pick up a laptop right. Um. There's
(35:27):
also credit card cut up stations, yeah, yeah, where you
can get rid of your credit card and just shook consumerism.
And then there's the my favorite, the what is it,
the Worldly gig Congo line. Oh I haven't heard of that?
Is that two disrupt shoppers? Uh, the whole the whole
point is it just kind of it serve as a mirror.
(35:50):
I think two people like, look at yourselves. You're ridiculously
You think I look stupid. You're the one that looks stupid.
We're not even buying anything. But yeah, so there's it's
kind of a twofold. It's one like just kind of
reflecting personally slash sticking it to the man as an
individual consumer, like realizing your power in the grand scheme
of things. It's all kind of hinges on you spending
(36:11):
your money and if you don't, then you're taking the
power back or pointing out to other people just how
ridiculous they're being at consumers. As consumers, people probably like,
where'd you get that cheap costume? Write exactly what was
that on? Um? So I've got one last thing. Uh
I noticed the other day. I've never heard of this
(36:31):
before in China. Do you think we liked the shop?
Chinese love the shop And they have something that they
have created called Singles Day and it is on November eleven,
so eleven eleven. The four ones stand for single people
and they're basically like, hey, because in China, I think
you're encouraged to marry, so this is like, hey, be single,
go out and treat yourself to something online and buy
(36:54):
something because it's Singles Day and you should celebrate being single.
And it's a huge deal. They spent uh, well, this
e commerce platform in China called Ali Baba's the one
who really got behind it recently, and they spent five
point seven billion dollars on Singles Day this year, which
dwarfs Cyber Monday by three times almost and it's the
(37:18):
biggest online shopping day in the world, and in the
first six minutes this year, just a couple of weeks ago,
they spent a hundred and sixty million dollars in the
first six minutes online in China just to celebrate being
single and their churches shop for themselves, which I don't think.
We pointed out a lot of people on Black Friday
(37:40):
when um when asked, say that they do some of
the shopping for themselves, not all gifts. It's like, I
want that laptop. I think forty forty seven percent or
forty one of people who said they're gonna stop on
Bike Friday so they'll do most of the shopping for themselves.
They usually do that. Whenever I go out, like genuinely
Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something for myself. Were these
people were saying they're mostly shopping for themselves. Now I
(38:01):
don't mostly, but I'll just I'll just treat myself. And
I want to say, Chuck, we're not. We don't begrudge
anybody going to Black Friday sales. If that's your thing,
enjoy it, that's fine. Just act like a human being. Yeah,
don't take anyone's life no, don't trample over somebody who's
fallen down. Uh. And most importantly, I have a very
(38:23):
nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with, whether they're friends, family,
old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some time to really enjoy
this Thanksgiving day and relax and and just be I agree,
my friend, it's Thanksgiving. Be with your family, turn off
your smartphone, maybe even wow, really get crazy and just
(38:44):
be in the moment. Yeah, how about that? Um, And
we give you permission to shout down anybody who says
that trip to fan is what makes you sleepy. That's
right to you. Go ahead and set them straight. Yep.
So happy Happy Turkey Day, Americans and uh and other
parts of the world. Whatever you're doing, I hope you're
will Yeah, nice, Chuck and Chuck. We should say that
(39:04):
as usual. If everyone wants to send us happy Thanksgiving wishes,
they can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. UM.
They can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
You should know you can, um and if you want
to know more about Black Friday, you can go to
how stuff works dot com. I think there's like a
ten worst moments in Black Friday history. An article up there. Um,
(39:25):
you can send us an email directly to Stuff Podcast
at Discovery dot com, and as always, you can join
us at our very festive and thankful home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works
dot com Brought to you by the all new Toyota
(39:54):
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