Jan 012014
 

You read right folks, today is not Thanksgiving, it is Black Friday Eve.  If you haven’t, read Ralph’s post from yesterday, he explains things well.   So is this the first step to abolishing Turkey Day?  I was driving around the other day trying to get the last of the stuff for Thanksgiving, I mean Black Friday Eve, and all I saw was Christmas stuff and Black Friday sales.

It was Monday of this week and Wal-Mart had already discounted what little Thanksgiving stuff (napkins, plates and the like) they had.  I didn’t see one “Happy Thanksgiving” banner or anything that didn’t have to do with the mighty and all powerful Black Friday.  Commercials on the TV are toting the virtues of black Friday and opening up stores at midnight, if they even are closed for Thanksgivng Black Friday Eve.

I have to say this MUST be the beginning of the end.  Soon the turkey tradition will be gone, replaced with Black Friday specials at Burger King, Chick-Fil-A and Sizzler (just 3 places that I saw who were open on Black Friday Eve.)  We will soon grab a whopper and go home to not watch football games, but whole hour long blocks of commercials sponsored by Toys-R-Us and Wal-Mart.

Amazon.com will probably join in and offer Black Friday Eve promotions that start at 10 AM  on the Thursday that used to be Thanksgiving.  Like Ralph said yesterday, there is no differentiation between holiday’s anymore.  I try very hard to keep Christmas separate from everything else.  I fight tooth and nail in order to keep Christmas from invading until after Thanksgiving.

It still trickles in not long after the Halloween decorations go down.  I am accepting this little by little but I will be damned if that tree is up and decorated before the turkey carcass is cooled.  But there are deals and presents available sometime around election day.  Bah.  Humbug.  Even the bell ringers were out on that Monday BEFORE Thanksgiving, er Black Friday Eve.

POMPANO BEACH, FL - OCTOBER 08:  Wal-Mart empl...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I for one will not be participating in Black Friday festivities this year.  Despite the lack of money to participate, I have lost the desire to brave the cold and crowds for a few good deals that are mostly gone by the time I get there.  On the news last Saturday, there were already people camping out at Best Buy.  What a load of, well, this is still supposed to be a PG-13 blog so I had better save that line.  You get the gist of it.  Plus, if you want a secret, MOST of the deals you can get on Black Friday are also available online.  Many you can get at Amazon for nearly the same price right now.

Speaking of Amazon, if you like this blog and would like to help Ralph, Bob and myself spread some Christmas cheer, please link to Amazon with our affiliate link over there in the right sidebar.  It will take you to Amazon.com where you can shop to your hearts content and not pay anymore than you normally would.  We just get a small portion for sending you there.  Enough commercial.

Are you planning on hitting the sales this Black Friday or even this Black Friday Eve?  Are you giving up?  Are you going to attempt to hang onto tradition and have THANKSGIVING?!?!?  I am.  I would like to hear your plans down in the comments.

for now, I have to check some ads and try to figure out what to get people for Christmas.  I did just get an email about quality fake ids…

Have a good one,

-Justin

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Take that Food and Shove it!

 Posted by at 10:41  rants
Aug 282013
 

A Shopping Rant

I seem to be recovering some

English: Interior of a Sam's Club in California.

English: Interior of a Sam’s Club in California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

of my cantankerosity which went AWOL when I got back from my trip.  Once I got my worries about becoming nothing but a mellow old geezer off my chest last week, it slipped blissfully from my mind. (It is one of the blessings of getting older.  I start thinking about something and ten minutes later it’s gone.)

Anyway I was doing some shopping at Sam’s, blissfully alone so all I had to do was find the items on my list.  There were no distractions to slow me down.  (When I go with my wife, it’s like she had never been there before in her life.  She has to look at everything and apparently she has never seen any of it before.  I have to write off a whole morning.   It is a whole different experience that I can’t control so I turn off my mind and follow her lead)  -but back to the point.

I was moving methodically through the store picking off the items on my list, only slightly handicapped by Sam’s insistence on constantly moving items around.  I had picked up the laundry and dishwasher detergents and was rounding the corner into meat when it started.  I saw a lady standing behind a cart looking at me expectantly.  I shuddered when she made eye contact.  She looked me square in the eyes, held up a pill cup and said,

“Try some Ranch dip?”

“No thanks,” I told her staring at the floor and moving quickly toward the vegetables.  My steely focus was broken.  I forgot the next item on my list and I could feel her eyes burning into my back as I rushed by.  And that was just the beginning.   It was like running the gauntlet.  Every aisle I found another stalker trying to get me to taste chili, oranges, nuts- you name it.  I was able to avoid a few so I can’t tell you everything else being offered.  Finally, I reached the registers and safety.  They never offer you anything once you make it to the registers.  They only want your money  and let me say that I am ok with that.  It’s the reason I came to Sam’s today anyway-to give Sam some of my money and take home supplies.

So what’s my problem?

Some of you may wonder why I complain about free food.  Some of you may think that it is great when a store offers you something to eat without making you pay for it.  And if that is you, then you can stop reading right now.  If you are the kind of person that will eat anything offered, even at Sam’s Club then you clearly aren’t the discriminating reader that we love here at COC.  Heck, if you will eat anything that somebody sticks in your face, then you will probably read anything you find also.  Take yourself right over the Huffington Post rig and we will forget you ever visited.  No one will ever know.

No, it’s not the food that sets me off.  It’s not the fact that the food is free either.  I’m fine with food and I have the figure to prove it.  I like free also.  You won’t ever catch me passing up a freebie.   There is just one proviso that I insist upon.  It’s got to be something that I want and it has to be first rate.  I don’t want imitation crab.  I don’t want low fat sour cream.  I don’t want a pig in a poke.  I don’t want mystery meat. (I had enough of that in the Army.)  I want something good!  If you are going to give me something for free, then let me pick it out.  And while you are at it, make it more than a taste.  Let me have all I want.  Deep down I know that if what they are offering me is any good, they wouldn’t have to give it away.

But there is more to my dissatisfaction than the food being offered and the piddly portions.  It is also distracting.  When I am cruising the store, efficiently  picking off the items on my list, I get in the zone.  With deadly focus and precision, I move from one item to the next.  My mind is a steel trap, intently concentrating on the task at hand.  I don’t chat with neighbors.  I don’t hob nob with employees.  I don’t muse and daydream about places I would rather be.  I take care of business and there is the problem.

Those annoying hawkers of free food demand my attention and divert my focus.  They waste precious minutes while forcing me to respond to their demands.  Even worse they take it as a challenge to overcome my resistance.  They won’t give up.  It is as if they get a reward when I take their food.  They refuse to believe that I don’t want the stuff and keep nagging.  They won’t accept no for an answer.  They can’t believe that I really don’t want it.   “After all,” they seem to be thinking “Who doesn’t want free food.”  And they

won’t believe that I am that who.

So why do I go back?

So why don’t I just give up on the brick and mortar stores?  Why don’t I take my shopping to the web and avoid all those frustrations?  I try but it isn’t easy.  You have to plan ahead in order not to run out of something important.  There is also the ability to compare products and prices in real time and actually see what you are buying when you go to the real store.  Finally, I guess I’m an old fashioned guy who just likes to get out of the house once in a while even if it does mean dealing with annoying people.  Life isn’t easy.  For now, I guess those annoying food hawkers are just something I will have to deal with as best I can.  Nobody ever told me that life would be easy.

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Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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