I’ve never participated in black Friday, it always seemed silly freaky to me. People waking up early to fight crowds, ugh. This year I decided to do it though, my first time. Walmart’s prices couldn’t be beat, they were great, so I figured I’d go before the sale started and get some deals. I hate Walmart, I absolutely won’t shop there, never have after learning about 10 years ago about their business model and seeing how Walmart sucks the life out of their employees and the towns they are in. But, we needed to save some money, so off I went…

Horrific, that’s all I can say. Where do these people come from, the freaking zoo? We showed up at around 4:45 in the morning. The Walmart by me is open 24 hours a day, so we got a cart and walked in, ready to wait until they unwrapped the palates that lined the aisles. I just wanted one thing really, their DS bundle for my daughter, that’s it, really! So back I went. I went to the DS case (where I thought they’d be), no DS’s. So I asked an employee where they were, he said they were in the back of the store. So I made my way to a layaway looking area, only to see people who seemed to be waiting in a line, A LINE THAT I REALIZED STRETCHED FROM ONE END OF THE STORE TO THE OTHER!!!

No way was I waiting in that line, no WAY. I figured I’d just pay more somewhere else and skip the line. So I made my way to the toys, with the other 2,000 people waiting for 5am to hit. 5 am must have hit, because this loud roar started and people started grabbing everything they could, everything. They were ripping boxes out of other peoples arms, seriously just filling carts to the top with any items they could, they would probably buy Phentermine if they could. It was insane. People were pushing and shoving. Someone rammed their cart into my pregnant belly, nice Walmart folks, I hate that store. Ugh.

I got like 4 things from there. Everything I wanted to truly get were sold out within minutes. Honestly, I heard that the DS’s were sold out “before” 5 am. Almost all of their other good buys were sold out within 5 minutes. Then it took us like 40 minutes to checkout! I got up at 3:45 in the morning for 4 items? Ya, that won’t happen again.

So completely disenchanted, we decided to go to Target, just because I love Target. We walked in 15 minutes after they opened and I expected to see the same chaos. Surprisingly, no chaos. There were a lot of people in there, but nothing like crazymart. I decided to check on the DS bundles there, they were $10 more expensive than Walmart, but whatever. I walked to the case, no DS’s. So I go and ask a guy at the electronics counter. “Would you like red or blue?”, that was his reply! They had a ton of them, plus they were giving away a $10 gift card as well, so guess what, it cost the same as Walmarts, but I didn’t have people pushing and shoving, instead just a nice guy handing me a DS bundle and smiling as he checked me out.

I love Target. I ventured back in toys as well, were there were no massive traffic jams, just people getting what they needed and moving on. They said things like “excuse me” and had smiles on their faces. Not to mention there were no lines at the checkout!

I ended up with two of their early bird great items and spent a chunk of our Christmas budget there. Walmart, you’re lucky you got $40 of my money this morning, cause you’re not going to get anymore of it.

Amazon finished up a big portion of my list, even though they didn’t have very good sales this year. Free shipping and no tax, that’s what I like!