Black Friday sale 2008

Ever since Wal-Mart arrived, Rensselaer has had real, albeit small, Black Friday Sales. Today I headed out to Wal-Mart fifteen minutes before 7:00. Along the way I noticed that there was a line at the Walgreens store. I think that they normally open at 9:00, but today they opened a bit before 7:00. I am not sure what the great deals were there, but they must have had something special.
By the time I got to Wal-mart, the doors had already been open for two hours. There were still lots of cars in the parking lot. There were also a couple of RVs over where people park overnight. I wonder if some people had camped out overnight to be first in line.The cash registers were ringing up sales. I think all the checkout lanes were open, and there were short lines at each.
I got into the line by the camera area because I wanted a couple things there. Terra, a colleague of mine, was in line ahead of me and told me that there had been lines when the store opened at 5:00. I guess she must have had a great time shopping because it was two hours later and she was ready to check out. The camera model that I was hoping to get was sold out even though there were about twenty boxes of them on the shelf. Terra told me that the way the system worked was that if you wanted a camera, you got a ticket for it and then did the rest of your shopping. When you checked out, you would pick up the camera. So maybe I should have gotten up a little earlier. Instead I paid $10 more for a similar camera from a different manufacturer that was also on sale. (But since it had not sold out, it probably was not as good a deal.)

The shopping cart of the lady ahead of me in line was pretty typical of what most of the shopping carts looked like. If the Rensselaer Wal-mart is typical of other Wal-marts, Wal-mart is having a good day.
Update: Give thanks that Rensselaer shoppers were not as enthusiastic as some shoppers in New York.