Just got back from Wal-Mart, in search of my $128 Blu-Ray player. I got there at 3:45 AM and there was already a line about 25-30 people deep in the electronics department. Anyone that wanted any of the big ticket sale items was told to stand in it.
Over the next hour, I slowly witnessed the store descend from quiet late-night shopping into OMG WTF craziness. In the main aisles, on the outskirts of the electronics department, they had pallets of products covered in black plastic. Slowly but surely mobs began to crowd around them, waiting for the clock to strike 5 AM. As the magic hour approached, the sounds of the store went from eerily quiet to a deafening cacophony. Once the veils were finally lifted on the wrapped pallets, throngs of crazed shoppers began to descend on them. They devoured everything within minutes, loading shopping carts full of $50 portable DVD players, $10 DVDs, and cheap digital cameras. Stacks of merchandise were reduced to little more than cheap packing cardboard faster than I could blink an eye.
All the while, I stood patiently in a slow-moving but well-organized line. By the time the sale started the number of people in line had easily tripled. As the store got louder and louder and the aisles got more and more clogged, I became palpably afraid. I don't know exactly what I was fearful of.....a riot breaking out when they ran out of some highly prized sale item? The line disintegrating as everyone decided to mob the electronics register? All I really knew is that with this many people and this much energy, it wouldn't take much to make things go awry.
The cheapass Garmin GPS seemed to be what most people wanted; I didn't hear anyone else in line mention the words "Blu-Ray" at all. But I watched people leaving the line, and several of them had purchased the Magnavox Blu-Ray player I desired. Some of them had 2-3 players in their cart -- why didn't they have a 1 per customer limit for this sort of thing? I moved up in line and found myself in an aisle where my view of the registers was obscured. I couldn't tell when or if they would run out of players, but could only hope they'd tell me when they ran out so I wouldn't get stuck waiting on something that was out of stock.
Eventually I reached the register and asked for "the Magnavox". The clerk reached under the counter, pulled one out, and rang me up quickly. I loaded it into my cart and all I wanted was to get the hell out of there as fast as possible. I spent 5-10 minutes navigating my way behind people who randomly stopped and inspected useless baubles, blocking the aisle with their massive shopping carts. Eventually I made it out the front door and made away safely into the night.
One present down. Ten to go.
