Black Friday Madness

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I wasn't even certain I was going to go black Friday shopping until around 5pm yesterday. I didn't really have any specific items in mind, I just wanted to go look at the sales and see if anything interested popped out at me. So, I showed up at Toys R Us at 8pm, doors opened at 9. At 8, the line to get in started at the front door, went to the left edge of the parking lot, all the way to the back edge, and when I got there I was basically across the parking lot from the front door. By the time the doors opened at 9 the line followed the rest of the edge of the back of the parking lot, out the driveway, and back down the road past where the store even started. And still more people kept showing up. They let people in 50 at a time so the store didn't get too cluttered. They didn't necessarily wait for more people to come out, it was just a few minutes in between each group of 50. When I got to the door I was stopped and had to wait for the next group of 50 to be let in. The sherriff patrolling the front door began talking to me and the people behind me, asking what time we got here etc. He told me that the first people in line got to the store at 6pm Wednesday night and stayed all night and all day Thursday. I don't think a few deals are worth it to completely miss out on Thanksgiving!! While I was waiting in line a few interesting things happened. First, a girl behind me kept talking about a $75 laptop she wanted. The entire line knew she wanted this laptop. She was worried they would be gone before she got in the store. She was right, about the time the doors opened she went up to the door and came back saying the laptops were already gone. So we were still in line waiting to get in when the first person came out with their purchases. The girl behind me shouted to the woman asking if she bought the laptop. The woman said yes. The girl in line offered to buy it from her for more than she paid. She started at $100 and went up to $150. At $150, double the sales price, the woman was sold.. so she made out well. But the woman who bought it, all I could think was $150 for a laptop is not really a great deal! The other interesting thing that happened in line was a group of about 4 people tried to cut their way into line a bit ahead of me. Someone else who'd already been in line went up and got the sherriff. The sherriff came over and had an argument with the line cutters. I didn't hear it all because they were a little ahead of me, but I did hear the Sherriff say that if he saw them try to enter the store he would arrest them! They take line cutting very seriously! So I think I finally entered the store at about 9:30. I ran around grabbing this and that, anything that looked interesting and had a good price tag. Found my way to the end of the check out line at 10pm.. where I waited another full hour before I reached the register. But while waiting in line I kept picking up more things that other people had set down.. one of the things was something I was very interested in. I actually sort of had come for this item. It was a Spider-man toy, but the sale was buy 1 get 2 free! When I entered the store they only had 1 left, so I couldn't get the deal, but while standing in line someone had set 3 down, so I grabbed them up and got the deal! I had also picked up a couple of Monster High dolls that someone had set down, but I did not know how much they were. So I finally got up to the register at 11pm. I asked the cashier about the Monster High Dolls. The first one was $25.. I said no and put it back. The second was $15, and apparently the deal was you got a $5 gift card when you bought a Monster High Doll. Well $15 isn't terrible, so I said yes to that one. But then she finishes my order and scans the gift card and it added another $5 to my total. Well, that doesn't make it free, does it? (I think what really happened, though it didn't dawn on me at the time, was that the register took $5 off the doll so I had to pay for the gift card.. but I was tired so didn't think of that). So I raised a little fuss about the gift card adding $5. The supervisor came over and instead of attempting to explain anything, she just voided the whole thing! So all my stuff had to be rung up all over again! So, the second time around I said not to bother with the doll, so that should have taken $15 off my total... but it didn't! Instead my total was $1 more than it had previously been with the doll and gift card! So the supervisor came back over and said that what had most likely happened was that something hadn't gotten rung up the first time. They counted the items to make sure they had gottene everything and hadn't rung something twice.. and all they said was that they could ring it up again to be certain. Well no, the people behind me were getting irritated by now, so I just paid for it. After I paid I went off to the side to check my receipt to make sure I got the right price for everything, and I had. I was just upset. I should have left well enough alone! So I finally left the store at 11:30. I was exhausted, mentally and physically.. and I was broke! So I ended up going home with my $200 worth of purchases.. and none of those were big ticket items. My most expensive item was $25 (a Transformer Lego set, buy one get the second half off). Some of the best deals I got were the spiderman toy buy one get 2 free, $15 MP3 players, 5 zhu zhu pets for $10 ($2 each, normally closer to $10 each), and Nintendo DS games buy one get one free. The problem now is that my 9 year old son has quite a few more gifts than any of the other kids (He has 17 now, the other kids have between 10 and 13 each), and I like to try to keep their # of gifts even. I am going to try to rearrange things a little bit to give him a bit fewer so I don't have to get so much for the rest to catch them up to him. Did you go Black Friday shopping? Do you have any stories to share about interesting things that happened? What were your most impressive deals?