Blame technology on a less frantic Black Friday
Nov 30, 2015, 5:14 AM | Updated: 7:16 am
(AP)
I know there are people who feel that it’s not really Christmas unless there’s at least some risk of concussion during the shopping process.
Black Friday seemed muted this year, even to the professional retail analysts.
“Black Friday was solid, but not great because so many people started shopping Thanksgiving night,” analyst Burt Flickinger said.
Related: Why Dori Monson will not go to downtown Seattle
Oh, there were still fights, which were typically over TV sets, but spreading out the sales seemed to help. I’d like to think another reason there was less chaos was because we’ve already seen so much violence in the past couple of weeks that it made fighting over a really good TV seem dumber than usual. But that’s probably naive on my part.
I’d also like to think that the head of REI deliberately closing all his stores on Black Friday had something to do with it. But that’s probably just as naive.
It’s more likely because people have finally figured out that you’re not going to miss the last cheap TV on earth just because you wait a day. Plus, the stuff is sometimes even cheaper online.
Once Amazon gets its fleet of drones is in the air there will be even fewer people in the stores. You’ll place an order and in 30 minutes a drone will lower itself to the ground and deliver your package. No more fighting. Just a lot of buzzing.