What's with the Rush?

Last week was full of advertisements and hype about upcoming big sales and the oddity that is Black Friday.  This week has been all about the new IKEA opening up in Winnipeg and the rush to be first in line or just part of the first rush.

I don’t get it. 

While black Friday is a rather new thing in Canada, in the US its so called purpose is to mark the first shopping day before the holidays and coincides with US thanksgiving.  In Canada it admittedly has nothing to do with any holiday what so ever (really neither does the US version) and is all about getting consumers to spend their money in one spot or another.

What always gets me about all this is that out of all these so called amazing sales have I ever actually heard something really special.  I’ve yet to know anyone who has gotten a once in a life time price that couldn’t have been found during a regular sale another time of the year.   I’ve never heard of someone being hit with a great revelation or epiphany by being the first to buy a new item rather than second or 1000^th. 

What I have heard are the stories showcasing the worst of humankind in reports of black Friday, grand openings and door buster sales gone wrong. I’ve seen videos of literal mobs who appear more like looters than shoppers.  I’ve been baffled to see people lining up in freezing cold, pouring rain and other terrible weather conditions just to be the first shopper inside a new store or to buy the first of an item.  

In short I haven’t heard anything so special about participating in these type of events to want to do so myself.     

I see greed and displays of animalistic instinct that make one question what we are capable of. Is this after all really what we are becoming?  Animals so obsessed over the acquisition of things that the people around you whether stranger or friend is irrelevant?  A world where common-sense and basic decency are less important than our most base instincts to gather?

Perhaps I’m being dramatic but it’s undeniable that these sales often bring with them stories of stomach-turning events as well.  It’s something that really turns me off against these types of events and gives me a mild feeling of disgust simply to contemplate them. 

All these sales and events make me want to do is remind others of the importance of people over things, time over items and love over money.       

Grocery Mishaps

What a comedy of errors last night grocery shopping was, Murphy’s Law was in full effect.  It wasn’t any big things just a lot of little mess ups that converged into one giant cluster of idiocy.

Started out with the carts, first thing I did was drop my cart coin in a puddle, then it took 3 different rows of carts to find one that would actually work and sure enough it had a wonky wheel.  How fun left turns only.

Checking out the clothing section for jeans for E I found the older age set has the choice of flowery patterned jeans or ones with tears. I don’t care what the fashion is if I wanted her to wear pants with holes I’d just let her keep her current jeans, as for the flowers those ones would end up in the bottom of a drawer avoided at all costs.

I then headed to produce where a lot of items were out of stock or had to be picked through. No baby carrots, sacrilege now I have to cut carrot sticks. I also managed to knock over a half dozen apples, why do they need to stack them so high.  Pick up one apple from the top, the side collapses and it’s an avalanche of easily bruised fruit.

 I also knocked over an olive oil while going through the aisles which of course cracked. I looked both ways saw no witnesses and got the heck out of there.  I did tell a clerk that “someone” had spilt oil however.  Oops.

Seeing as I could only take left turns and rather than consulting my shopping list before leaving each section and waiting till the end I did a lot of backtracking, got to love going back for just one more item. Five minutes after getting home I remembered a couple of things that should have been on the list as well but that is pretty much standard fare, I always forget something.

After standing in checkout for a good twenty minutes, loading the car which I’d also managed to park right above a nice big puddle and returning my cart I discovered my keys were nowhere to be found.  I’d had them to unlock the car so that means……yep sure enough buried under the groceries.  It was a big shop last night so digging to the bottom in search of my keys without knocking anything into said puddle was a nice challenge.

I just wasn’t paying attention to anything I was doing last night and I readily admit complicity in the events that occurred while shopping.  Once I found my keys and got into the car I had to shake my head at my own idiocy and have a bit of a laugh.  I attribute last night’s shopping experiences to a series of unfortunate blonde moments.