AAAAAAAtttention, shooooppers!!!
Black Friday is upon us, shoppers! Black Friday is war, Black Friday is hell, Black Friday is chills, thrills and occasional kills, and I, drill sergeant X, am here for the drills! I am here to make lean, mean shopping machines out of your sorry just-browsing rookie asses!!
Did I say something funny?? DID I SAY SOMETHING FUNNY, SHOPPER?!?!? Drop and give me twenty! Now you look at this twenty-bill very carefully, shopper!! Do you want to save those twenty dollars? DO YOU??? Do you want to save twenty dollars AND LIVE, shopper?? Then shut up and listen to what I have to say, unless you want your dead body to be found covered with packing peanuts and stuffed in a cardboard refrigerator box marked for in-store pickup for your family’s convenience!!!
Anyone here who’s weak and doesn’t feel they’re up to the task? Anyone here who’s having second thoughts?? Anyone here with heart conditions, who’s trample-intolerant, or allergic to stab wounds??? If you as much as had to think about it, I’m gonna give you 20 seconds to pack your stuff and crawl back home to your wussy Amazon shopping – and I do mean Amazon, because even eBay’s online auctions would pose too much danger for you, weaklings!
Now, those of you who stayed… at ease, shoppers. I see a few scarred faces of seasoned Black Friday veterans, but I see newbies, too. Why do you need to shop, you ask? You need to do this for your country, shoppers. You need to buy stuff to support the economy – Chinese economy, Indian economy, Indonesian economy, all the world economies! The fate of the entire world hangs in balance on your shoulders, shoppers! Remember what President George Bush said after 9/11 – by going shopping is how we shall defeat the terrorists.
Why on Black Friday, you ask? Because this is the day when you get the most bang for your buck! You’ll spend a buck and you’ll get banged up so hard in the process that your mama won’t recognize you! But you follow my cues, shoppers, and you just might live to see the daylight on Saturday!
Rule Number one! Do NOT go shopping on Black Friday! Yes, you heard me right, shopper! You take your positions AT LEAST a week before, otherwise you might as well drag your asses back to your basement and try your luck next year! You take positions right here in line in front of the store, yes, right here at the front lines, and you take advantage of the high ground – so no lounging up in the parking lot, you get your asses all the way up on the sidewalk!
Rule Number Two! You’ll need provisions, you’ll need supplies, you’ll need rifles and shotguns. They don’t call it “hunting for bargain” for nothin’! You’ll need a tent. What? You DON’T own a tent, shopper? This means that you gonna have to buy one this Black Friday, so you could pitch a tent for the next Black Friday! Add that to your shopping list – and I better see it tattooed on your ass, shopper! Take your cell phone with you so that you could call for reinforcements, and don’t forget the phone charger cord, because you never know when you may have to strangle somebody to move up one spot in the line!
Rule Number Three! No matter what, you DO NOT give up your position, shopper! Not rain, not wind, not fire are to deter you from completing your mission!!! But what about Thanksgiving, you ask? What about family, turkey, cranberry sauce cylinders, you say? Forget about it, shopper. Do you realize that Thanksgiving Day is a made-up holiday, and was invented by professional Black Friday shoppers who wanted to weed out as much competition as possible! A day to get together with people you try to avoid 364 days a year, and to eat a bird-shaped blob of tasteless chewy paste, that you would never in your right mind order at a restaurant? You call THAT a holiday, shopper???
Engage your Target, shoppers!
Rule Number Four! Preparation is half the battle! Prior to BF-Day, scour the target store, familiarize yourself with the floor (getting a job at the store can help), map the shortest route to the shelf you need to get from the door, and practice, practice, practice some more! Do practice runs from the entrance to the target shelf at least ten times a day, and time yourself each time, until you are satisfied. Then run, run, run again, until you can get from the entrance to the shelf, then to the checkout, then clear out to the parking lot in under 15 seconds wearing a blindfold!!!
And keep one final thing in mind, shoppers: on Black Friday, all people fall into two categories: cashiers and obstacles!
Are you ready, shoppers?? Are you ready to crush and trample your fellow man to save five bucks?? Are you ready to wreak havoc and devastation in your path when the store doors open at precisely oh-two-hundred hours?? ARE? YOU?? READY???
Three! Two! One! ATTAAAAAAAAACK!!!!
The Official How To Blog 
That last point. I’ve seen that in action a time or two.
It is scary. I hope the experience did not give you PTSD.
The professor would prefer refraining. Perhaps Schwartz would be the man for the job. Do you know him?
No, I don’t know him, but if this Schwatrz, or anyone else for that matter, is willing to risk his life to do the Black Friday shopping for me, it would make me a happy man.
Are you really going out?
No, I just can’t think of anything that I need that much to deal with these crowds.
Yes, the professor can’t either. Of course, if you took a katana with you…
It was confiscated when I brought it with me to the airport to handle the holiday travel crowds.
Be gentle, shoppers. My son will be working. Beginning at 4 a.m. At Victoria’s Secret. Because sometimes you just need panties.
My condolences to your son. At least he could still get most of the Thanksgiving, unlike those people working in the stores that open on Thursday.
Although I think that the middle of the night is about the most appropriate time for someone to come to realization that they need new underwear.
Wanda Sykes says she used to carry a spare pair of panties in case she got lucky. Now she carries a spare in case she sneezes.
Of course I have no such issues …
haha! Oh, how I love that Wanda..
Feel like there’s a follow-up to this post, “How to Return the Crap You Bought On Black Friday and Absolutely Hate”.
There really should be. But it would be more appropriate as the “How To Return the Crap Other People Gave Your For Christmas and You Absolutely Hate” post.
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Great post! I dropped out with that first bunch! 😀 LOL!
Thank you! That was the smart and safe thing to do.
As pushy as you are, sergeant, I still sit here in my bathrobe at 6 am. I did look at all the sales last night from the newspaper (which was taxing enough) and thought, “Hm…so if I get at the store at 5 am, I’ll save 30 bucks on a iPad? Still not worth it, sorry.”
Good thinking, private. I wouldn’t go for any Black Friday sale unless I would save at least as much as my likely co-payment for the emergency room visit.
What’s “Thanksgiving”? Is that another name for Black Thursday?
Yes, and it’s also called “the Unhappy Turkey Day”.
Reblogged this on Cloudy With a Chance of… .
Definitely one of the more humorous posts. I appreciate the reinforcement to practice practice practice the routes and pathways until we’re familiar even blindfolded. I always check out the stores a couple weeks in advance so I know what kind of stuff they have as well as the online store. It pays to know which stores I need to go by for certain items. Once I know which stores offers the items I need, I map out my itinerary of which stores I will hit on BF and when. Ranking importance of items needed also helps with this process.
Wow, you have it all thought out and planned out. You can lead the next drill, sergeant. 🙂
What’s so ironic is that as funny as this post is, there are people who take this stuff freaking seriously. The stores even help them by providing maps of the store so they can look at the ads and the maps and plan out freaking battle strategies. Then there are the extreme couponers who do this on EVERY SHOPPING TRIP. If I were a spouse of one of these people, I would probably stab them with their coupon cutting scissors and run like hell.
True, there are definitely people who take this seriously.
But just think, if we spent even half of our blogging time on extreme couponing instead, we’d own yachts by now. Or we may have had to spend all the savings on medical treatments for scissor stab wounds – this could go either way.
Post idea: top ten reasons you should or should not extreme coupon!
Except in the spirit of extreme couponing, I’d probably cut this list down to about 3 items.
Yes, make sure and ask if maybe they can give you items 2 and 6 for free.
Now that’s funny! I would love to read about the top 10 reasons one should or should not extreme coupon
I can’t really think of any other reason beyond “saving tons of money”. But that’s a very, VERY compelling reason.
Although we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in my contry, the black friday sale has started to make an entrance. Lucily it’s not nearly as crazy as the one you have in the U.S.
Funny post, I enjoyed reading your blog.
Thank you! I would expect that in every country the retail industry would try to make up any excuse for a day to get more people into stores to buy more stuff.
Very true!
Haha… good post. Did you see all the crazy videos on black friday? Walmart raids…
Thank you! I’ve seen a couple of crazy black Friday videos, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to watch more of them.