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The first time I noticed this was last year. I suppose it may have been creeping up for a few years, but it was never a British thing.

A few weeks ago, the business papers were saying what a bad idea Black Friday was for retailers, because it's juts pissing away a lot of Christmas money and profits, and that it looked like it was not going to happen this year.

And now here we are -- loads of retailers are doing named Black sales, or at least doing special offers available only this weekend. For example, Amazon are doing the Paperwhite Kindle for £30 off, very tempting.

Next year I shall be ready.

It's always weird for me talking about Friday. i worked at FedEx (Ground that is, not Home Delivery... They have it easy) and for two years moved all this crap (you're welcome America). I think one day four of us spent a half hour loading something like, 2 dozen 72" flat screens onto a truck. I hate flat screens so much now. Flat screens and cheap unassembled couches/shelves.

That said, when I worked at Fed Ex, we actually dreaded Cyber Monday far more than Black Friday. Retailers in the US start stocking up after Independence Day, and use all that time to keep their stock high and prepared for Black Friday. Then on the Thanksgiving (we usually worked the morning to load the trucks for Friday morning which we don't work), we'd stack most boxes outside because retailers were already fully stocked and wanted us to hold everything...

Till Monday. Worst day on the job period. 8-9 hours of loading, and eventually you just run out of room in the trucks and have to stack everything outside and it just keeps coming. Many drivers have to make 2 trips to move it all, and more often than not we come in Tuesday and load a good chunk of the leftovers all over again.

You should cut this crap at the knees UK. Think of the children!

Isn't it just "consumerism: the "holiday""?

I don't like it that much, but then I rarely utilize sales. I guess I dislike the feeling of being prodded into getting something within a certain timeframe. Probably also why only back kickstarters rarely.

Black Friday is defined in relation to Thanksgiving, which is something else that is not widely celebrated in the UK. It makes no sense.

I have Kerrang playing on my headset at work and you should hear some of the Black Friday ads that have been playing. There are those that are looking down their nose at it, even though they were involved with it last year, telling listeners that everyday id Black Friday due to how cheap they are. Or selling the idea of picking up some cheap plonk / food instead.

The best ones are those starting Black Friday early... it's not Black Friday then is it you plonkers!!! What happens next year, do we see Black Fiday weeks a week before Black Friday weeks?

Thanksgiving isn't celebrated in the UK at all, except by ex-pat Americans. My local butcher puts a sign out for them to special order their meat at the same time as everyone starts ordering their Christmas meat, poultry etc. Maybe you can get a bulk deal, or at least a Black Pudding Friday special.

It's a bit of a surprise really considering Brits normally don't pass up an excuse for a knees-up but I suppose we have Bonfire Night and Diwali in early November, then the Christmas party season starts in late November and continues for weeks, so there isn't any time.

I've always found the whole event kind of pathetic, when you see videos of people fighting and trampling over people for some cheap tat that will be used for a month and then thrown away.

It seems in the news they are saying how the whole Black Friday here in the UK hasn't been like the previous year, with most shops not having crowds and the like. People mostly staying home and ordering online.

That's Cyber Monday.

As someone who just finished a twelve hour ship in the outbound dock of an Amazon fulfilment centre, Black Friday is really really popular.

It'll be nice to add some dry British wit to the Black Friday threads on customerssuck.com.

https://industrialbfd2.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/b007l7wt8g.pdf

Allowing for the zoofest Black Friday is in the US I hope it doesn't become a tradition over here.

I wonder what would happen if you have a horde of bargain zombies outside a major department store waiting for opening time and the mad rush; only for a bomb scare to be called in and the police try to disperse the crowd.

It would actually be a very effective target for ISIS, its western decadent consumerism at its worst, lots of people in blast radius etc

I would rather see a fake bomb scare than this:

 LordofHats wrote:
It's always weird for me talking about Friday. i worked at FedEx (Ground that is, not Home Delivery... They have it easy) and for two years moved all this crap (you're welcome America). I think one day four of us spent a half hour loading something like, 2 dozen 72" flat screens onto a truck. I hate flat screens so much now. Flat screens and cheap unassembled couches/shelves.

A good buddy who's a supervisor at walmart spent a week unloading 70" tvs for this black friday.

 Orlanth wrote:

That gak is just appalling to me. People stampeding and ripping things away from each other, especially an adult taking something out of a kid's hands. I don't think anything like that went on at the Walmart where I work (I was working during the big sale), but I was at the front of the store, so I don't know.

All I can say is, a few dollars is not worth losing your humanity over. Not at all.

I often buy spares, bike parts and shoes when they're on sale as it's cheaper in the long run. But the whole buying into the sales is dumb. There's so much of it which really isn't a deal, i found nothing worth buying a quick internet browse.

UK needs to accept it's following it's bigger brother and getting fatter, dumber and more arrogant. (I think that last trait is a UK special though)

 Valres wrote:
I've always found the whole event kind of pathetic, when you see videos of people fighting and trampling over people for some cheap tat that will be used for a month and then thrown away.

I have similar feelings towards this kind of snobbery.

We live in a culture that hammers us, 24/7/365, with the idea that consumption is the highest virtue, that without private ownership of the minimum number of "luxury" items you are an actually inferior person. Then, we define "luxury" items to include things like computers, most types of home appliances, most toys for children etc etc, which would cause immediate strokes in most middle-class+ people if you suggested they should do without them. We price much of the working class and virtually all the unemployed and disabled out of what most consider to be the baseline acceptable standard of living in society, and then when they're offered one single opportunity each year, in circumstances which are engineered by the retailers to generate the kind of behaviour you're talking about(because how better to convince people that you're the best place for deals the next time 'round than with images of people literally stampeding to buy stuff from you?), to actually achieve some semblance of the lifestyle that literally almost our entire media is dedicated to telling people only failures and layabouts can't afford, some people take that as license to sneer and belittle.

It's disgusting.

The funny thing, at least in the US, is that the Black Friday deals aren't actually all that good, but they are certainly advertised as if they are.

Thing is, retailers start bumping prices up in early to mid-spring, and continue to do so throughout the year, so that by the time Black Friday rolls around, when they offer it at 10-30% off, they're still selling it at an inflated price. You would have paid less for it if you had purchased it in, say, June.

Americans, though, being the consumerist pigs they are, trample one another underfoot in order to buy whatever it is, because they are, largely speaking, stupid.

Wait, do people really step on one another for Black Friday ?

Thought it was just a cliché about American consumerism.

 LethalShade wrote:
Wait, do people really step on one another for Black Friday ?

Thought it was just a cliché about American consumerism.

There is actually a website that tracks Black Friday's kill count the last decade. So far 7 Kills and 98 Assists. People getting hurt in the mad rush is pretty common, but rarely results in serious injury.

I may need to step back on the macabre humor one of these days...

 LordofHats wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:
Wait, do people really step on one another for Black Friday ?

Thought it was just a cliché about American consumerism.

There is actually a website that tracks Black Friday's kill count the last decade. So far 7 Kills and 98 Assists.

Monster Kill!


+ it reminds me of this :

 Kilkrazy wrote:
For example, Amazon are doing the Paperwhite Kindle for £30 off, very tempting.

Next year I shall be ready.

As a quick aside, I've owned like 4 Kindles. I'd consider the Paperwhite to be the second best one they make. It's got the great screen and visibility of the e-ink kindles, and the backlight is terrific. That being said, one thing that sort of sucks is lack of hardware buttons. With previous (non-fire) Kindles, there was a button on the side and if you held it just right, you could rest a finger on the button and go to the next page that way. With the Paperwhite, it's 100% a touchscreen, so you need to tap anywhere on the right side to go to the next page. To be frank, it's a step back. When I'm laying in bed (on my back, which is when I tend to read) I like to hold it with one hand holding it over my head, and having to keep touching the screen sort of sucks. It looks like the bottom tier Kindles are that way too now, from looking.

The Voyage has a pressure-sensitive button on the side, and I think that's probably the one to get. While $100USD for the Paperwhite is nice, I sort of wish I had ponied up for the $200 for the Voyage. If you tend to read sitting in a chair, then it might not be as much of an annoyance for you as it is for me.

If this is the way people act over this kind of crap, imagine what things would be like in a food shortage.

Relapse wrote:
If this is the way people act over this kind of crap, imagine what things would be like in a food shortage.

They would kill each other. But that's not only the US. I'd kill someone if I was starving to death.

 LethalShade wrote:
They would kill each other. But that's not only the US. I'd kill someone if I was starving to death.

I hear some parts of the world call that 'Long pig'

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Valres wrote:
I've always found the whole event kind of pathetic, when you see videos of people fighting and trampling over people for some cheap tat that will be used for a month and then thrown away.

I have similar feelings towards this kind of snobbery.

We live in a culture that hammers us, 24/7/365, with the idea that consumption is the highest virtue, that without private ownership of the minimum number of "luxury" items you are an actually inferior person. Then, we define "luxury" items to include things like computers, most types of home appliances, most toys for children etc etc, which would cause immediate strokes in most middle-class+ people if you suggested they should do without them. We price much of the working class and virtually all the unemployed and disabled out of what most consider to be the baseline acceptable standard of living in society, and then when they're offered one single opportunity each year, in circumstances which are engineered by the retailers to generate the kind of behaviour you're talking about(because how better to convince people that you're the best place for deals the next time 'round than with images of people literally stampeding to buy stuff from you?), to actually achieve some semblance of the lifestyle that literally almost our entire media is dedicated to telling people only failures and layabouts can't afford, some people take that as license to sneer and belittle.

It's disgusting.

I don't always exalt a post, but when I do I use dos manos.