Connections: Shopping Frenzy
Bargain-hunting is a hallowed American pastime. Despite the recession and widespread joblessness, most Americans are generally well-enough off to be able to plunge into the fray to buy whatever it is they’re coveting, especially when there’s a hefty discount.
With Black Friday — the ballyhooed beginning of the winter shopping season — upon us, I’ve been pondering why it is that I not only ignore our annual American spree but consider it somehow out of bounds, a breach of tradition. A whole month of holiday shopping? At least the British have the good taste to leave the bargain-hunting to Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.
Of course, I like bargains, too. I’m really not much of a shopper, but have been known to take pleasure in showing off a few items of clothing I bought for $6 or so at the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society Bargain Box. Everybody likes a deal, even the rich — or perhaps I should say especially the rich. I bet some scholar could prove that the richest among us at least partly accumulated their wealth by making purchases, from pots and pans to properties and private planes, at a discount. (Or that their forebears did the bargain-hunting for them.)
It’s possible that I am averse to Black Friday because I have an almost perverse suspicion of whatever the crowd is doing. Perhaps I am simply afraid of being caught doing something everyone else is doing.
Readers of The New York Times undoubtedly are familiar with its approach to feature stories, which is to hook readers with specific, personal details about individuals who epitomize the crux of the trend or cultural moment that is about to be revealed. So it was with fascination that I spied a piece in Saturday’s Business Day section about a super-shopper named Derek De Armond, who began camping in a tent outside a Best Buy in Florida more than two weeks before the doors were to swing open for the Black Friday pandemonium.
Did I think he was nuts? I did. I read the report with the kind of avid, creeping horror others might feel when reading a tale of true-crime gore.
The Times reported that Mr. De Armond was having a grand old time and thinking — with sportsmanlike bonhomie — of others, too, not just himself. Because he stood to lose his place in line if the tent weren’t occupied 24 hours a day, he had rounded up his sons and a passel of “teammates” to rotate through the campsite. “It’s like a tailgate party at a football game,” he told the paper. “We barbecue every night. We invite people in; we’ve made new friends.”
Mr. De Armond said he planned to spend $399 on an iPad Air 2 that ordinarily costs $499, and that he also had his eye on a 50-inch LED TV that he was going to nab for $199, well below the list price of $799.99. The kicker? To quote from The Times: “He plans to donate the television to a local children’s hospital for a fund-raising raffle.”
The example of good Mr. De Armond certainly flies in the face of my anti-shopping radicalism, but, still, I seriously doubt that most Black Friday warriors are out there to do charitable works.
I don’t plan to succumb. Instead, I have pledged to hit the L.V.I.S. Bargain Box before Christmas. It has three pluses going for it: shopping at home, finding a bargain, and doing some real good all at the same time.