My Black Friday Experience!

Well, everyone knows how crazy I am, but my Black Friday shopping just confirms it all. My sister was suppose to go with me, but of course she was too chicken to brave the cold with us and didn't want to leave Ben. Lee and I wanted to get in line for Best Buy and there computer deals. I had read on my forums that the lines had already started to form outside of the Best Buys around the country. So we leave my parents house at 9 or so to get in line. Yes, that's 9PM. We get to the Hoover BB and there were 20 people or so in line. We decided to check out the other 2 BB's to see how long their lines were. Oh yeah, word was out, one had 40 and the other had too many to count. So we went off to the original BB. By the time we got there there were 75 people in line.

So in the 30 degree weather we settled in with our lawn chairs for a long winters night. We befriended the ladies behind us and the girl behind us. I don't have a winter coat and was freezing my booty off. Lee volunteered to go to WalMart to get me some gloves and a blanket. Well... the man was gone forever. I was standing there freezing to death so I call him to find out where he is. He tells me he's at WalMart trying to find out what the good deals are, etc. I ask him to hurry b/c I'm freezing my tush off. The nice ladies behind me let me use one of their sleeping bags, so I stepped in it and zipped myself up and snuggled in my chair. Lee finally comes back after being gone for what felt like forever. He ended up stopping at Comp USA too!?!?!?!?! I was freezing my butt of and he was strolling around for deals. Now I can appreciate the bargain shopper but man I was cold and waiting for my mittens and blanket.

Once he got there we all settled in. Then I had to pee. The girl behind us and I went to the gas station and went potty. There was a crazy wacko woman who was trying to get me to give her $1.75 in cash in exchange for a $1.75 coupon for cigarettes. I lied and told her I didn't have any cash on me but also opened my big mouth and told her that if she can't afford to pay full price for cigarettes she didn't need to be smoking. She was the epitome of white trash, dressed in flip flops, torn up jeans and a holy t-shirt in 30 degree weather. Yeah, crazy. This is at midnight. When we were leaving she got mad because no one would give her money and she pitched a fit about people not helping out and then sped off in her pinto. Gotta love Alabama.

Okay, so I went back to our wonderful camping spot and settled in for the night. I laid down on the ground in the sleeping back and used the blanket Lee got for my pillow. I totally submerged myself in the bag and fell asleep. I woke up around 2:20 and had to pee so bad. I think it was the cold ground making me have to go potty. My feet were frozen, let me tell you it wasn't fun. I woke up so disoriented it wasn't funny. I got in the car and went looking for a bath room. The first gas station I had gone to earlier was closed for restocking and so I ventured down US31. I finally found a place and man it felt great to go potty. I took off my toboggan and oh my! My hair was a sight to see.

So I get back to the home base and 3:30 rolls around and everyone is packing up their bags, chairs, etc. and getting closer in line. Employees started arriving and everyone started getting excited. The man came out w/ a bullhorn talking about how a piece of paper for each limited quantity item would be passed out starting at the front of the line and once they were gone they were gone. People from the back started getting to the front of the line and cutting in and acting like they were just asking questions to the BB employees. There was one lady in particular. I call her the "Money Grubbing Whore". Yes, she was so nasty. She was this black lady who was in her mid 30's to 50's (it was hard to tell) and had on tight tight tight leggings. You could see ever roll she had ever eaten. **I am not bashing fat people, only her, she was just nasty and well, just... I don't know** People kept telling her to go back to the end of the line. She'd get an attitude and say she was just trying to ask a question. Whatever.

So, we were there for the $400 HP laptop and $400 HP desktop. I don't think either of us really thought we'd get one. I don't know what we thought. Anywho... the ticket lady came around for the desktop computers and stopped 2 people in front of us and said she ran out of tickets but would be back with the last bit she had. Well, she had another lady pass those same tickets back out and I'll be darn if she didn't start back at the beginning of the line. Yeah, we should've gotten a ticket but no, we didn't. Lee and I tried to talk to the associated but it was bedlam and no one wanted to help us and kept saying they didn't know what was going on and that it didn't matter if someone got 2 tickets because they could only buy 1 per person. I tried to explain to them that they could give it to another person or even sell it as people were doing. We finally got them to get the store manager.

Jason, the manager, came over and we explained to him what happened and if his employees had started where they left off then we would have gotten a ticket and it wasn't fair the way they did it. We had been waiting in the cold, blah blah blah. At first the said the same spill about only 1 per person then he finally understood where we were coming from. He said he'd come back and he did. He was a man of his word. He came back and told us to go inside where the computers were and find Carolyn in the pink shirt.

The doors opened a little before 5. Oh my gosh! It was so exciting. We were getting all ready. Lee rushed to the computers and I rushed to find the $20 Canon Picture printers. There were people all over the store. It was INSANE!!! Lee started talking to Carolyn and she was only told there was 1 of us and not too. I had to find Jason but he got it all taken care of. They were out of the Black Friday Compaq computers so we got to pick out a comparable one. They tried to tell us we had to take a Compaq even though there wasn't one that had the same specs or near the same specs but I reminded them that HP and Compaq are the same company. We ended up getting some really sweet computers. Athlon AMD 64 x2 3800ghz processor, 1024MB Ram, 200GB hard drive, 15" flat panel monitor, free printer. I mean it wasn't a bad deal.

We loaded our 2 computers onto the cart we had and looked for more loot. We picked up two 250GB hard drives to store our data on for $69.99 a piece and they retailed for $199.99. Then I picked up two HP Photosmart 385 Printers for $79.99 that retail for $149.99. Let me tell you I already used one and it is really good. Definitely worth the money. We got the 2 Canon Photo printers I mentioned earlier for $20 that retail for $79.99. Oh... they had the new $250 XM Radio's for $99.99 and came w/ a $50 mail in rebate. Well the guy told us that they would ring up for $50... when we got to the cashier and they rang up 99.99 we told her she called back there and they had to adjust them. So I've got one essentially for free and one to sell on ebay. They had 100 packs of the DVD-R's for $4.99 and they retail for $69.99. I got Mackenzie the High School Musical DVD game, 4 1GB SD cards for $14.99, 2 2GB Micro Cruzer for $29.99 and... I can't think what else. Oh yes. The mackdaddy of them all. We had a ticket for the $899.99 HP Laptop. We handed them our ticket to see if we could get the $397.99 HP Laptop oh yeah, it worked. They let us have it. It retailed for $899.99. It is smooth too. I like it better than our other laptop. It's smaller, lighter, has a 120MB hard drive, AMD Turion 64 x2 processor, DVD R/RW, Lighscribing (oh, it's so freaking cool), 1024MB of RAM. It's not as powerful as our "gaming" machine but it's perfect for me.

Oh, we got a 17" flat panel monitor for $79.99 and a 15" LCD TV for $129.99 and it retails for $299.99.
I think we got a few more things but wow! We made out great. We decided to keep one of the desktops and put it in our bedroom. We're going to give Mackenzie the old desktop for Christmas but put the new flat panel monitor with it. We're going to clean up all of the hard drives and move everything to the new hard drive and make it so we can access it wirelessly. We are keeping the laptop so each of us can have one. I put the other HP Photosmart Printer, XM Radio, hard drive, SD cards, desktop and Canon printer on ebay. The desktop is up to $630 right now and has a few hours left. I've got 25 people watching it. Not too bad, huh? That's $230 I made off of it without doing any work. Not too shabby.

Okay, so while we were in line to check out (people buying computers had to check out at customer service) the Money Grubbing Whore came back. I was the next in line to check out and she was standing next to me. I very nicely asked her if she was trying to get a computer. She told me yes. I gently told her that if she was getting a computer she needed to get in line for customer service and I pointed where the line ended. She started going off about me to the man next to her and said "I don't know why she has to be all up in my bidness, she must think I'm trying to cut in line but I've already checked out" (and she pulled out her receipt) and some other derogatory comments. I of course opened my big mouth and said to her "I saw you cutting in line while you were outside and don't act like you didn't b/c you have a $250 laptop in your cart and there were only 8 given out and I know you didn't sleep outside like the rest of us. People like you are the reason I moved from Alabama." Yeah, she was nasty. She gives Money Grubbing Whores a bad name.

We finally check out and it was an ordeal but it was all okay. I went to go pull the car around and Lee was talking to a lady when I pulled up. She was taking notes and I was thinking to myself "oh no, what'd he do now?". It was a reported. Yes, a report talking to him about our purchases. It was quite funny. She talked to me while he loaded up the car. I told her that we might have to rent a u-haul trailer to make it home. I'll be durn if we didn't make the front page of the Birmingham newspaper. Now she quoted me in a way that made me sound like a stupid person but other than that it was quite funny. And guess what. We did rent a u-haul.

After we left Best Buy we stopped a few other placed. ToysRUS, Walmart, CVS and Staples. I got a few other good deals but not as good as Best Buy. I just need to make sure all my stuff sells on ebay so I can pay for it all. haha

Now who wants to come with me next year? I'll save you some money. Or you can give me your list and I'll do your shopping for you. It was fun. I can't wait for next year.