Hey, everyone, it's been quite a few years since we dusted off our classic episode on the insanity that is Black Friday, so we thought we put it out there for you again. I'm glad we made this episode when we did, because Black Friday's nearly gone away since then, so we kind of inadvertently came up with a document on a fading cultural phenomenon, and I assume historians of the future will rely heavily on this. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this episode.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhoustuffworks dot com.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there, and that makes this stuff you should have.
That's 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 bigfoot thing like I had to turn my whole the whole side of my body. Yeah, 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 from our right side, yeah, or my right.
Side, your right side, but it's not emanating from you, it's coming from Jerry. Yeah. She stinks like miso, which is actually a very pleasant smell, salty and new mommy. That's right, So Chuck, Yes, have you ever been to a Black Friday sale?
No? No, 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 not like an average sale, and like, if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, it's a pretty good reason. Why is because you're scared.
Well yeah, and I think this is one of those a very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going or 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 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 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 had bathed in the blood or their fellow shoppers well sadly, yeah, yeah, we'll see had already come through and gotten all the best deals.
Yeah.
But and then there's those of us like us who are just like going out.
It is literally, and I'm not overstating this because people always say literally when they mean figured it figuratively. But it is literally one of the last things I would ever ever do in my life. Yeah. I can't think of many. I'd rather go to the DMV than go to a doorbuster.
The DMV, yeah, in between North Korea and South Korea.
No, no, no, no, that's the DMZ.
Right. I always get this too confused.
Now, I'd rather go take the last ticket from at the DMV 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 not like cast dispergence on people who disparaging remarks is dispurgence a word.
Nope, it is no though you're like your own like an American dictionary, the New Chuck Dictionary.
We should make that up.
I like it. Yeah, you get had like five or six words already chuckisms.
Yeah, agreed. I'm not saying like poopooing people who do it. If you're 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, 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 podcasts and don't live in the United States, because Black Friday is pretty much a 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 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, it is the busiest shopping day of the year, day after Thanksgiving.
Right, and it's origin, well, the origin of the term black Friday goes back kind of a waste apparently, to 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 nineteenth century early twentieth century, thanks to department stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Yeah, and as a part of those parades.
No accident, it's a Macy's parade.
Right exactly, you know. Yeah, it's still a good parade.
Though. Have you ever been.
I haven't.
Yeah, I've never been to the parade, but a couple of times, Emily, and I've gone to the day before when they blow up the.
Oh yeah, which is really neat, very cool. You mean, I have a friend who's actually holding one of the floats the balloons.
Oh cool.
Here.
Yeah, 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, is it. It's yeah, it's kind of gone overboard.
Gotcha.
The word got out.
I think I saw yeah, I saw something last year in the news.
Yeah. Yeah, it's not a place to go if you don't like strollers. Let's just say that.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, strollers with alternating tires. Yeah. So, but the idea of going starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving 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. Santa Claus has made his first public appearance. So from the association of those two came going holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving. That was in the late nineteenth century, in the fifties they think, or early sixties, 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 that it was the day that stores would go into the black meaning start to show profit. But that's not quite right as it No, so that's fallacy.
That's actually a well, it's a made up fallacy to gloss over the original meaning of black Friday. And it came out of Philadelphia in the sixties and the cops and the bus drivers and the city workers who worked downtown came up with calling that day black Friday because apparently tons of out of towners would leave their homes on Thanksgiving, Yeah, converge on Philadelphia to watch the Army
Navy game. Sure, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but they had a day to kill, so they all started doing their Christmas shopping because there was sales in downtown Philly every year, and the place would be nuts. And this was where 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 that was the original reason or origin of the term.
Yeah, I see you saw in here. An article from the AP in nineteen seventy five, a sales manager at Gimbals was quoted of saying, that's why bus drivers and cab drivers call today black Friday. Yeah, they think in terms of the headaches that it gives them. So I learned something new when I read this. Yeah, and then had no idea.
It spread out of Philly, And then years later the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said, we got to come up with a better origin story this because we want this to be 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'd write in red ink or black ink, depending up that you were ahead with money or behind.
Red ink meant you were in the hole. Yeah, black meant everything's.
Good, exactly, even though it does not mean that. The holiday shopping season is when stores make up between twenty and forty percent of their retail profits. So it's a lot. Yeah, I mean, even Emily's 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, yeah, you know.
And it's not just her. Apparently. In twenty thirteen, the National Retail Federation is predicting that Americans just in November and December. Chuck, are you ready for this? Yeah, Americans are going to spend six hundred and two billion dollars in November and December. That'skray, that's a lot of cash. Yeah, in two months.
Yeah. I don't spend like I used to on Christmas. Emily and I sometimes will spend on gifts on each other or do that like a couple things where you like, go in and just do something nice for your house. And then like the adults on my side of the family, we don't exchange gifts anymore.
Just dirty looks.
Yeah, you exchanged dirty looks now, Like my brother my sister will chip in usually and get my mom something kind of nice or give her offer her a service, like last year we replaced her fireplace with like a gas fireplace nice or build her a garden fence or tile her kitchen like something like that.
Wow, your mom's got it. Yeah, she's an easy street is what you call that.
Yeah, but Emily's family they all still exchange gifts, So I still have my Christmas gift swapping. Joan satisfied.
You know, yes, you get your Christmas present on Yeah, okay, Chuck. So the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday, that day being called Black Friday, it's been around for a while and it's a really valuable day. Yeah, you know, it kicks off that two month period where six hundred and two 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. Yeah, just because they said everyone's going to shop the day, it's the busiest day, and it became that.
Yeah, it wasn't until two thousand and four. Yeah, usually the Saturday before Christmas was actually the 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 Friday's the day. Yeah, and it, like you said, it just kind of be came 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 do Black Friday Friday Saturday. Yeah. So, and there's this website called Black Friday Archive dot com. It's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic ads or whatever, nostalgia 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 are kind of neat. If you're totally bored out of your mind, go check
out Black Friday Archive dot com. So Black Friday became a smashing success, like two thousand and four, two thousand and 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 and consumeristic frenzy. Right. But so it was so successful overnight that the retailer said, well, let's figure out ways to extend this whole week. Yeah, so they came up a cyber Monday in two thousand and five.
Yep, that's pretty recent and it is the online shopping version of Black Friday, the Monday after Thanksgiving.
And that was another thing they just made up, another self fulfilling myth that they said, that's the the workers go back to their computer after 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 and the media reported it.
And not to be outdone in 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.
So there's it's interesting literally creating days to tell people basically, if you're not shopping to day, you're missing out on really good deals.
Right exactly. And the more days the better as far as retailers are concerned. But there's only so many days after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently, like, well, 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, starting in twenty twelve, they started touching it. Walmart actually opened at eight pm on Thanksgiving in twenty twelve, and there was there was a
general strike called that we'll talk about later. Yeah, 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 thanks Up until twenty twelve, it was sacrisanct.
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 on Thanksgiving evening, and Kmart is opening at six am on Thanksgiving, basically extending Black Friday through the weekend.
Forty one hours.
That's not a day.
That's how long Kmart's going to be open. Black Friday at Camart lasts forty one hours. Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
And at shopping malls you're going to have some smaller stores doing the same thing. And estimated twenty to twenty five percent 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.
Yeah, you know, yeah, I think the retail would say, well, you know, we've 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 it goes both ways, but I pretty much see where you're coming from.
Yeah, Well, this year it's a little trickier too, because Thanksgiving comes on November twenty eighth, which is the latest suspend in eleven years.
Yeah, is that right? Yeah, two thousand and two. Yep.
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, right, which is probably why some I am are opening on Thanksgiving.
That's exactly why it's six days shorter than usual this year. So just by the very existence by making up Black Friday.
They've screwed themselves this year a little bit.
They have by a week, yeah, because there's in other countries like Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, countries that observe the Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody gives everybody else presents and things like that, and they spend money. But those countries don't have a Black Friday, a day that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Those countries spend more over the course of the holiday season because they have a longer period of time to shop.
So without Black Friday in America, the retailers would possibly make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a 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 too, but that's not necessarily sustainable, and there's a lot of people who 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, finance article. I think it was New Yorker, it might have been New York Times, but this financial analy was basically analyzing how the sales go and sort of saying that it's really not financially the smartest approach to take for the over shoppers or the retail for the retailers to offer these huge, deep discounts and sort
of blow it out in one day. A better, smarter financial approach would be to elongate the Sea's 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, right, But I think he's right.
He probably is.
But at the same time, if you were one of those people like me Frankly who went to the mall the day after Halloween, yeah, and saw that the lights were up, the garland was out, Santa's workshop was ready to go, like Halloween November one, Wow, the place was totally decked out for Christmas with Christmas carols piping through.
Yeah. See that's that's ridiculous.
But see without but that was the great thing about Black Friday. It's like, 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 then the holiday season started. Without Black Friday, It's kind of like this this dam that's holding back the holiday season from spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out that it's an impedance 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 about well, technically slightly in the minority. In twenty thirteen, fifty three percent of the population of American adults said they will shop on Black Friday.
So fifty three percent.
Yeah, that puts us in the minority by a bit.
Yeah.
And in twenty eleven, one hundred and fifty two Americans.
Fifty two million. Oh yeah, just one hundred, but they spent five hundred billion dollars.
Yeah, one hundred and fifty two. Really rich Americans. One hundred and fifty two million shopped on that day for an average of three hours at a time, which is not too long, but that's I mean, three hours is like it's longer weever.
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, yeah, it's not time we'll spend.
There's also evidence that the Internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door. Thanksgiving Day is the fastest growing online shopping day. Yeah, and I think like seventy percent of the people who said that they're going to shop on Black Friday, said they'll do some or most of it online. So the Internet's still there for retailers to make money. But the idea 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 psychologists or consumer analysts i think pointed out that it's a tradition number one nowadays and number two, there's a certain element of like sport to it. It's more than just getting a good deal. It's like, you know, throwing a fist at somebody while you're getting a good Dealer's something to it that transcends the whole thing.
So we mentioned Doorbusters. It's a central part of the cog that is Black Friday, and it goes back in print, believe it or not, to the You're nineteen seventeen and anecdotally to eighteen ninety five, 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 one hundred and eighty dollars. Yes, then like deals like that iPods for half off or a TV for yeah, like two hundred, 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 a bait and switch. 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. 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. And you know, that's how they get you in the store.
That's how they get you.
It is, and it is. It's true that these items do exist, and they are for that deal. They're there there for that price, I should say, but there's only like ten and in the fine print it's like one per person, and that deals is for in stock only,
like you can't get a rain check or anything like that. No, no, no, But the concept that these deals do exist for those items that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically gets their hands on that item first gets that deal yeah, leads to doors actually being busted.
It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. All right, So before we get to the dark days and the bad stuff that can happen, truly, let's do a little message break.
Okay, fish, fish.
All right, let's go back a little bit to two thousand and eight and probably the well, I was going to say the darkest incident, but I think the Toys r US may be darker.
I think this one's darker because d yeah.
Yeah, that's true, all right. Two thousand and eight and Valley Stream, Long Island. It was at a Walmart and it was five pm on Thanksgiving, so basically people there the day before. It wasn't one of those days where it was open on Thanksgiving, so they're they're to wait till five am. So at least twelve hours ahead of time, there were about one thousand pe already set up there.
Some people are camping out in tents, they're waiting, they got their coffee, they're probably slugging some jim Beam to warm the belly. And so the police came out and said, you know what, let's set up a buffer zone a barricade, 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 a little bit after that, 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 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. Sure, so the crowd actually turned like ugly.
Yeah, they broke through the barricade and were squeezed against You know how the stores have the entrance and then that little glassed and vestibule area before, and then usually a second entrance right to get into the store itself.
So there was about by this time, there was about two thousand people waiting for the store to open. It was four am, the store's going to open at five, and a couple 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 The New Yorker by a guy named John Seabrook called crush point, and it's about not just this incident, but
just crushings in general. Where yea a crowd on that crush somebody.
Yeah, we covered that like years ago.
It seems like it, Yeah, totally, But anyway, you check out that article.
Yeah, people literally yelling, pushed the doors in chanting this, and just before five o'clock, it's it's a pretty bad scene. And workers in that vestibule area realized that there was a pregnant lady named Leanna Lockley being crushed against the doors, and so they were like, we got to get this lady in here, open the doors enough to squeeze her through.
She got in, and then the crowd surged forward and it just kind of went downhill from there, and they still did the ten, nine to 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 left said, controlling this crowd's not in our job description. Good luck. Walmart Hood hired a security force of two for the event. 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, ye, and said, come stand as vestibule and help anybody who like falls down or.
That's what I would have been liking, dude, that's not in my job description exactly.
Well, they they didn't say that. And when the doors finally opened after the festive countdown, while these people were being crushed against the front, unbelievable, the doors started to open and right when they opened, they actually gave way and were literally busted by this wave of humanity.
Yeah, and at that point, the employees, their little roverline was completely ineffective.
Yeah.
People are getting knocked down, some of the workers are getting blown out of the way. Some are jumping on vending machines. It's ridiculous.
Well, 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. This article by John Sebrook puts it that he was blown back.
Yeah.
So again, 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 doorbuster.
Yeah, like an iPod or something. Yeah, So that's not the end of the story. Sadly, people are getting crushed. This pregnant woman trips over some old woman. She's on the ground at this point, pregnant. Yeah. Leanna Lockley in danger of being, you know, trampled to death. And then she somehow managed to get to her knees and saw an employee. Do you know how to pronounce his first name? Jim Ta de Moore, Jim T de Moore. He 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 six am, six oh 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 yeah, he most likely died on the scene, and pretty awful. What's crazy, Chuck? If that story is not bad enough, tramplings are actually really common. Yeah, and like, somebody might not die, you might not be asphyxiated, and he might not have died had he not gotten caught under the door. 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 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 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 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, like, you can't, you're keeping me from doing my business. I don't know. I just can't believe they can't outlaw something like this.
So that was a pretty horrendous example of a crowd crush into trampling. Yeah, but other things do 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 fistfight and then their husbands got into it. And basically, first of all, these two men were carrying guns into a Toys r Us a Christmas shop, which a little weird, and they started a shootout with each other basically, yeah, 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 the store, shooting at each other. Yeah, luckily no one else died, but those two gentlemen shot each other and died, and it Toys r Us because of their wife's got in a fistfight.
On Black Friday at a Toys Arrus during Christmas shopping.
I'm surprised anyone else if they're running through the store shooting.
I think everybody cleared out of their way. Yeah, I know, I wouldn't follow them around and be like, hey, guys, what are you doing? Where's the Doorbusters.
In twenty eleven, a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart pepper sprayed some people in the video games. Initially, the cops sought, well, this lady was some Black Friday jerk.
Which would make her a pretty awful person.
Yeah, But apparently the real story is, and she actually got out of it, was that her children were attacked, 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 this thing still hasn't been settled. The most recent thing I saw was that a year on. So last year, the cops still hadn't filed charges, so I guess they believed her story.
But she shopped anyway. After that happened, Yeah, and bought her items.
So she pepper sprays a bunch of people, affects twenty people, causes a bit of a trampling pandemonium. And then two horrible things happen after that. One, like you said, the lady took her at kids and her items and went to the store and checked out. Yeah, bought her stuff. 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 sale item and they're like checking out and their eyes and those are watering. Yeah, there's like just just ring it up. Let me get home.
Yeah, And then of course took there's the workers as well.
Well, yeah, I mean, no one wants to work on Thanksgiving. 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, right, which is really sad. And Walmart employees planned a strike I think last year in twenty twelve, Yeah, and it didn't work. Only twenty six of the forty two hundred stores reported striking employees. So for fear of losing their jobs. Probably they had to come to work anyway.
Well, Kmart in particular was criticized this year for opening at six am on Thanksgiving. Yeah, and Kmart said, these people don't have to work, like we're not forcing them to work, and 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 to have holidays or time off. So therefore they're in a position where they either work or you can fire them legally,
so they kind of do have to work. So 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 a Black Friday shopping and he'll go at midnight, Yeah, go to the Doorbuster sales. 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. He's are isolated incidents, so it's not like at every Doorbuster sale you're going to get trampled.
But there is a risk, there is, and the people you want to look out for, apparently, is a study of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales, and it was a legitimate study. Sure. 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 exactly and nothing's going to alter.
That, and they feel like they've really put the time in and they're not about to lose that doorbuster.
Some jerk who's never done it before and just showed up.
Who just lucked 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 New Yorker article too.
They got rid of general emission seating after that. Like, why can't they do something about this? You know, I think the law 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. They still have general admission, not for big arena shows.
Oh yeah no, yeah, Well you know that there was like just one door open and like four others locked. Yeah, and people were getting crushed up against the locked doors, and the people inside who are 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 science of crowd surges.
I don't know what it was either, because this article is not that old.
It's just like, no, it definitely wasn't about this. I had to do with something else. But yeah, dirty bad stuff. Or you can take another approach.
Yeah, this is a different approach, you could say.
In the nineteen nineties, an artist named Ted Dave gave birth to what's now called Buy Nothing Day, wherein people are encouraged to not buy anything for twenty four hours and to fight the power and consumerism by not showing up at all.
And not just fight the power. The guy who created ted ted Dave, he's a Vancouver guy who came up with it in the nineties. 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 would have on the economy. But he was also saying personally, that's a good day to not buy anything and be take stock sure of
how much you do maybe waste or spend or whatever. Yeah, just think about your consumer your consumerism for one day, dirty hippie, and during that time, like, don't buy anything, man, don't gass up your car the night before, don't get a bunch of milk the night before, like, just be normal. And 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 ab Busters. The people who gave us Occupy Wall Street kind of found out about it and adopted it and just took the whole thing worldwide.
It's pretty amazing.
It is. 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 zenta clause. Maybe I'll do that.
Maybe I'll dress up as a sheep.
Yeah and just walk around and buy in people's faces.
Yeah. And then if I'm there, I might you know, pick up a laptop. Right.
There's also credit card cut up stations.
Yeah, yeah, where you can get rid of your credit card and just shoot his consumerism.
Yeah. And then there's the my favorite, the what is it the wordly gig conga line?
Oh, I haven't heard of that? Is that to disrupt shoppers?
Uh? The whole the whole point is it just kind of serve as a mirror I think to people like, look at yourselves.
You're ridiculous. You think I look stupid. You're the one that looks stupid.
Right, we're not even buying anything. But yeah, so there's it's kind of a twofold thing. 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 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 be like, would you get that cheap costume? Right? Exactly?
What all was that on? So I've got one last thing I noticed the other day. I'd never heard of this before. In China. You think we like the shop. Chinese loved the shop and they have something that they have created called Singles Day, Okay, and it is on November eleventh, so eleven eleven. The four ones stand for single people, and they're basically like, hey, cause 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 something because it's Singles Day and you should celebrate being single. Really, and it's a huge deal. They spent well, this e commerce platform in China called ali Baba is 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 Wow. And it's the biggest online shopping day in the world. And in the first six minutes this year, just a couple of weeks ago, they spent one hundred and sixty million dollars in the first six minutes wow online in China, geez, just to celebrate being single, and they're encouraged the shop for themselves, which I don't think. We pointed out a lot of people on Black Friday when when asked, say that they do some of the
shopping for themselves. Yeah, all gifts. It's like I want that laptop.
I think forty forty seven percent or forty one percent of people who said they're going to stop on Black Friday so they'll do most of the shopping for themselves.
I usually do that whenever I go out, like genuinely Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something for myself.
But these people are saying they're mostly shopping for themselves.
I don't mostly, but I'll just I'll just treat myself to something modest.
And I want to say, Chuck, we're not. We don't begrudge anybody going to Black Friday sales. If that's your thing, yeah, 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. And most importantly, I have a very nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with, whether they're friends, family of old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some time to really enjoy this Thanksgiving day and relax and just be I.
Agree, my friend. Yeah, it's Thanksgiving. Be with your family, turn off your smartphone, maybe even wow, really get crazy and just be in the moment. Yeah, how about that.
And we give you permission to shout down anybody who says that trip to fan is what makes you sleepy.
That's right.
Do you go ahead and send them straight?
Yep? So Happy Happy Turkey Day Americans in other parts of the world.
Whatever you're doing, I.
Hope you're well.
Yeah, nice, Chuck and Chuck. We should say that as usual. If everyone wants to send us happy Thanksgiving wishes, you can send us an email directly to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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