I have never done the ‘Black Friday’ thing of going to a store at midnight, but there was a pretty nice deal on bedding that my girlfriend wanted, and I was curious to see this for myself.  So we went to Macy’s at around 11:30 expecting to see a line and there was around 100 people or so will more arriving every min.

We cued up and chatted with the other people in line which was fun.  By the time the doors opened, I would guess there was around 200-250 total at all the entrances. Once they opened the door, a few people took off running.. not so much because you are afraid they are going to run out, but more for the fun of it and to buy your item before the lines grow… and they grow Fast!  But that is not the part I wanted to write about..

When the doors opened, we headed to the 3rd floor and grabbed what we wanted.  Then after 20 min as the store started to really fill up, the power went out.  For the first few seconds, it was a true black friday, there was NO LIGHT, pitch black. Then one by one, people took out their cell phones and either used the screen, or turned the LED flash on and used it as a flash light. There was just enough people with cameras and a few employees with small LED flash lights that everyone went back to shopping like nothing was wrong.

It felt kind of odd for some reason.  Sure, what else are you going to do when the power goes and you can still ‘kinda’ see, keep shopping, but for some reason, this really summed up the whole competitive shopping experience for me, walking around looking at various things with my phone LED.  Black Friday indeed!