Bells are ringing, all right,
but they’re not Christmas bells. No, sir, they’re telephone bells as every
telemarketer that you’ve ever heard of—and some you probably haven’t—are trying
to meet their Christmas quotas.
My phone rings several times a
day with eager, dare I say determined people placing those calls, anxious to
sell me something—anything! No, I don’t usually listen long enough to know what.
I generally tell them I’m not interested, and sometimes I repeat that several
times before I just hang up. These last few days, if call display shows a 1-800
number, I simply don’t answer.
The media refers to the day
after the U. S. Thanksgiving as Black Friday. I understand why that is, of
course. That one day is when retailers, who’ve been operating in the red all
year long, supposedly sell enough to pull themselves out of debt, and if not
firmly in the profit column, at least onto even ground.
But it’s “black” for other
reasons, in my estimation. There were times in years past when I thought it
should be called, “black eye Friday”, as in, people behaving badly gives all of
the rest of us a black eye.
Fortunately I didn’t read of
any truly horrific incidents of moms trying to beat each other to death over the
latest Star-Wars toys, Barbies, or iPhones. There doesn’t seem to be any planned
shortages this year of “must have” toys to make people frantic to have a
particular item, as I suspect happened in years past(remember Tickle Me Elmo and
Cabbage Patch Kids?).
That doesn’t mean that the
Black Friday shopping experience was necessarily completely without peril. But I
did hear on the news that the actual dollars spent in brick and mortar stores
was down several billion over years past—and that the answer to Black
Friday—Cyber Monday—was most definitely a hit, bringing in several billion
more.
Gosh, I hope no one sprains a
brain trying to figure that one out, but I suspect they will. Can you just see a
meeting of great marketing minds? They’re sitting around a table, wondering why
people would rather stay home, save gas, order from the comfort of their den,
living room, or home office as opposed to joining the general melee known as the
Black Friday in-store shopping experience.
Well, the answer is simple. A
lot of us would much rather stay home, save gas, order from the comfort of our
den, living room or home office as opposed to joining the general melee known as
the Black Friday in-store shopping experience.
Generally speaking, I prefer
shopping on line, primarily for all of the above twice mentioned reasons. Not to
be dismissed from the equation is the fact there are no commission-paid sales
staff following you around, asking you every two minutes if they can help you.
Not, of course, that the online browsing experience is without the cyber version
of those facilitators. Actually, in some ways, the cyber version
is much scarier.
Let me tell you what I mean.
Are you on FaceBook? If you are, then I invite you to go to Amazon and browse
something—but make it something specific, maybe something unusual. I recently
went looking online for a new feather pillow. The one I’ve been using for the
last 4 or 5 years lost its “umph”. I can only sleep on feather pillows (the
other kind tend to give me headaches). Not too many stores have feather pillows
anymore, and I wanted one, specifically, that had added down. If you don’t know,
a pillow boasting “down” has the hard quill part of the feather
removed.
The day after I was looking at
feather pillows from a specific company through Amazon, low and behold, the ads
that began appearing on FaceBook as I was going over my news feed were for the
exact same brand of pillows! Coincidence? I think not.
I do sometimes worry about all
the metadata that Amazon generates, and how they use it. But I guess I don’t
worry about that nearly as much as I want to avoid, whenever possible, going to
stores during peak shopping seasons.
No, it’s much quieter and much
more pleasant to shop from my home—even if big brother really is watching
me.
Love,
Morgan
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