In sharp contrast to the relaxation of Thanksgiving, some students like Tom Oppermann, a junior in the College of Business Administration, struggle to get the best Black Friday deals among the rush of other shoppers trying to do the same. For two years now, Oppermann was able to get almost everything on his list when hitting the mall on Thursday night and Friday.
Compared to last year, Oppermann’s Black Friday experience this year went much smoother. Last Black Friday, he found himself eyeing the same products as other people more than once.
“Last year there were a couple of times when I reached for the same Calvin Klein shirt as someone else looking for the same size and it got kind of awkward,” Oppermann said. “For me there was a lot less of that this year for some reason, but I was happy about it.”
Conversely, Skylar Clark, a junior in the College of Health Sciences, said she had much more trouble this year than in previous years, as shoppers became competitive trying to get the best deals on clothes and electronics. There was one special item she had her eye on, but she had complications reaching it.
“When I went to the mall on Friday, I was trying to get an expensive pair of headphones that I wanted for a while, but there was a huge crowd around the shelves that they were on,” Clark said.
Clark said she then had to wait what felt like 20 minutes to reach the front of the crowd. By then she was sweating.
“Thank God there were a few left when I got there,” she said.
Clark said she always has these types of problems on Black Friday, but still loves going every year. She said she often finds herself among tons of shoppers who want the same products, and as the years go on, the trending products repeatedly cause her to face the most competition.
And while veterans of Black Friday know to plan for anything, new and unseasoned Black Friday shoppers are often faced with unexpected conflicts. Will Godfrey, a junior in the College of Engineering, went Black Friday shopping for the first time this year, and he had a Black Friday brawl he said he will always remember.
Godfrey said all week he had his eye on a video game, but he knew that others his age did as well. However, he said he assumed he would have an easy enough time getting a hold of it.
Godfrey said he was shocked when he got into an altercation over a video game. He said he did not know what to expect because his only prior experience taking advantage of holiday deals came from ordering products on Cyber Monday.
“Me and this kid sort of made eye contact and we could both just tell we were going for the same game because there were already a ton of people near the stack, ” Godfrey said. “After that, we both power-walked over to it and ended up sort of shoving each other to grab it first.”
In the end, Godfrey said the shoving was completely unnecessary. They had not realized that there was more than one game left, and both were able to get their hands on a copy.
