Sunday, November 27, 2011

They've Madoff with Black Friday.

Every Black Friday, I give it the Old College Try. I come an hour early, stay a couple hours late. Wait for the crowds to appear.

And every year I'm disappointed.

The funny thing is, I had a huge Wednesday, and I would be happy to do, say, 75% of that. It's hard to resist the Hype, even for me. I still remember how big a day this used to be.

Thing is, I think the mass market has effectively Madoff with Black Friday. Give the devil his due, they've been very effective in co-opting this day. But I still get a little excited by the prospect of B.F. and then -- well, I say, next year I won't be such a knucklehead.


Oh, well. I had some of my normal Thursday work to do, so nothing lost.

I'm writing this before the day, so we'll see how it turns out.


O.K. I made in the first hour 10:00 to 11:00, when I'm usually not open as much as I hoped to make the first two hours. So this time, coming early worked. Most of it to one customer.


So not a great result at the end of the day. Did about 60% of Wednesday total. Which I believe happened last year, too. Cameron said he didn't do much business between 5:00 and 7:00 but did some in the last hour, 7:00 to 8:00; the tree lighting?


I think I'll hold off posting this until we see what happens on Saturday. "Small Business Saturday." We'll see. I'm going to open an hour early, again, at 10:00 and do some paperwork.

(By the way, looking at pictures of the mad rush, I'm not sure that I'm sorry that corporate America Madoff with Black Friday. Wow. Maybe we should just let them have it... It's not like one day out the year should make that much difference if you are doing a good job the rest of the year...)


Came an hour early on Saturday, and it was an effective hour. Did about the same Sat. as Fri.: so much for "Small Business Saturday."

So, not a great weekend, not a disaster. I had pretty low expectations, and we came in a little below those expectations, unless Sunday is unexpectedly good.

Nevertheless we are going to beat last year for the month, which will make it 5 months in a row we've beaten last year.

6 comments:

H. Bruce Miller said...

You need to offer waffle makers for $2. They'll be breaking the doors down (literally).

Anonymous said...

One last comment on OWS that drives me crazy.

This thing about 'consensus', you see opinion is not tolerated by OWS.

But where pray-tell does the 'consensus' come from? Well of course it comes from the OWS leaders who don't exist.

All I can say about OWS is that they have made 'double think' look like a comic book shop. Only children can buy into such intellectual positions as letting other people set your opinion. History of course is NOT tolerated in OWS, and strangest of all 'liberty' is a 4 letter word. Freedom you see is the cause of all our problems.

The 1% is never defined, left to when the OWS comes into full political power and occupy's our gubmint, then and only then will the let us know. You see 'names' are not allowed in the OWS, but the names will be given at a later date.

Unions are loved, and especially the cop, prison, and teachers unions. Everything MUST be unionized.

Where pray-tell will the money come from to create this perfect world? Well by robbing the 1% of course, but as of yet we don't know who they are. Because OBAMA & DIMON are not on the list, nor is any forture 10 CEO, or prez.

The OWS makes alice in wonderland look like a fairy-tale, or too even quote Twain for the 100th time, "Reality is always stranger than fiction, fiction must make sense", ... nothing in OWS makes sense except Fascist power making one last grab during the economic collapse. Now that easy money is gone, all that is left to steal is the minds of gullible children.

Duncan McGeary said...

"Bloomberg's lawsuits and investigations into the Federal Reserve's secret emergency lending program to America's largest banks are done, and they're able to reach the conclusion "that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates" during this period."

Shit like this happens and you write an anti-OWS comment, Buster?

Anonymous said...

Yep, credit the tree lighting. We stopped in and bought a few things on the way back to our car.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"The 1% is never defined"

The 1% is very clearly defined. It's people in the top 1% of incomes -- about $386,000 a year currently.

I'm much more concerned about the 0.01% -- those with incomes of $11 million or more. That cohort includes only 14,000 families and reaps 5% of the nation's total income.

Here's an interesting graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/30/nyregion/where-the-one-percent-fit-in-the-hierarchy-of-income.html

"Where pray-tell will the money come from to create this perfect world?"

Nobody thinks he's going to create a perfect world. The idea is to create a better economy -- one in which everybody can make a living, instead of just a handful making a killing.

H. Bruce Miller said...

Buster thinks he's a 1-percenter, Dunc. Or maybe even a 0.01-percenter.