[quote name='Pyramid Head']Got in line for a TV at my Super Walmart in Mesa, AZ at about 8:30 AM for my parents yesterday. They arrived to take my place, so I decided to go take a look at the video games! I was just hoping to get the LEGO games for the 360 and was hoping that maybe they would be in their own little display while the Maddens and the Call of Duties and stuff were big enough to garner THEIR own displays. And then maybe ticket taking or lines or SOMETHING for the bigger games like that.
Nope!
What do we get instead? Picture the big broad "action aisle" that forms the border between the grocery section and apparel, about maybe 90 feet long 15 feet wide, dotted with palettes covered with big cardboard boxes. At the front of the store is the ONLY Xbox 360 game display, followed by 4 or 5 DVD/Bluray displays, then in the middle the ONLY Wii game display, followed by 4 or 5 more DVD/Bluray displays, and then ending with the ONLY PS3 game display. The cardboard covers are scheduled to be removed at 7PM, and the games available to be bought at 8PM, but until then we all line up at... where's the line? Oh, there is no line, we're supposed to just sort of crowd around and press into the grocery aisles and the women's clothing and the bad watches on display and wait? Oh...
As it gets closer to 7, more and more people come, confused as to whether or not Halo 4 and Black Ops 2 is part of the sale, confused as to where Assassin's Creed 3 is going to be, etc. The crowd is three people deep and 30 feet around by the time they remove the cardboard, and I find out that each side of this palette is dedicated to a specific price range, and I'm on the 360 controller side of the palette.
. I move from the
front of the crowd on the controller side to the
back of the crowd on the $15 game side in front of my precious Lego Batman 2.
I end up in front of two giant 6'3", 225lbs+ dudes and next to a twelve-year-old girl and her 4'10" twenty-year-older sister and shoot the shit with all of them about what we want. Everybody wants MW3, Black Ops, AC3, Madden13... I just want to see LEGO Hermione turn LEGO Ron into a rubber frog!
The crowd grows more and more as it gets closer to 8PM, the cops are there and it's one cop + one worker to a palette. The cops keep yelling at people to press further into the grocery aisles to make way for traffic, eventually putting tape down, but the line keeps getting pressed bit by bit over the tape until we get yelled at again. Finally, over the intercom, the voice of Walmart thanks us for showing up, and announces to let the shopping begin! A beat passes, everybody leans in, poised to make an immediate grab for what they want, and a customer in the crowd yells out "GO!" In that instant, I make an evaluation, and I decide not to "go."
When you see Black Friday as depicted on YouTube or the news, you always see people diving and being crushed and tripping and falling and bare asses hanging out, but it has to be the worst of it, rare and infrequent, right? Maybe not. Immediately everyone closes in on the display like every zombie movie you've ever seen, and I see the 4'10" girl go down. Three seconds in the cardboard display gives way under the weight and everyone goes down, someone throws games into the air and people scream. I see one of the 6'3" dudes on top of everyone with his bare ass hanging out of his jeans. A dude has to be pulled up as he scoots away from the crowd on his back. Cardboard from the display is thrown from the center and into the crowd and strikes a little girl. A woman crawls away on her knees with a copy of NCAA2k13. 30 seconds later the employees and cops have cleared everyone away and EVERYTHING is gone, including half of the
ing CARDBOARD from the DISPLAY. The little twelve-year-old girl runs up to me out of breath, shoves a copy of LEGO Batman 2 into my hands, with the plastic wrap ripped and tattered, and says "YOU WANTED THIS, RIGHT? HERE YOU GO!" Holy shit. Everyone is trading what they got in their mad scramble so I call out asking if anyone has an Xbox LEGO Harry Potter they don't want, and a nine-year-old boy with fresh bruises on his arms hands me one. Jesus Christ!
I ended up finding LEGO Batman 1 in a less traumatizing way just discarded in an aisle, but I still had to get a new soundbar for my parents' new TV, and that meant braving the 10PM electronics reveal in the exact same smash and grab format as the video games. I knew what to expect this time, so I asked someone next to me in the crowd if I could stand in front of their (turned sideways) cart right before it hit 10PM... and it was like hiding behind a rock as a dam gave way. Everyone slammed into the cardboard displays and each other with a sound that I could only compare to the Michael Bay-exaggerated sound of football players slamming into each other after the ball is snapped.
I actually ended up getting everything I wanted, but all either from waiting in line with tickets or after the struggle is already over. Incredibly dangerous, I don't think I'll be doing that shit again.[/QUOTE]
Holy crap, that's embarrassing that people get that crazy over saving money, especially on things that aren't necessities! That little girl was a boss though! :lol:
Lego Batman 2 back in stock for shipping.
