(Image credit: Mel Rothenburger)

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Annual Black Friday frenzy just isn’t what it used to be

Nov 26, 2022 | 7:55 AM

I WENT IN SEARCH of Black Friday yesterday. Couldn’t find it anywhere. There were lots of signs, just no people. Some announced simply, “Black Friday Sale Now On,” while others were more direct — “ENTIRE STORE 50% OFF” proclaimed one in red and green letters on a black background.

But there were no determined shoppers wrestling over the very last available Magical Misting Crystal Ball toy (because, OMG, their child will be devastated if it’s not under the tree this year). Nobody was throwing punches in the aisles over big-screen TV sets, or frantically rooting around for the perfect pair of ripped jeans for a son or daughter.

Maybe it had to do with the pouring rain, or with the time of day — I went on my quest during the morning and afternoon hours; it might have been busier last night. Or, just maybe, it’s because Black Friday sales have been going on for weeks already and are likely to continue pretty much right up until Christmas. As a day of frenzied shopping and smashing deals, Black Friday has lost its panache.

One associate store manager was on me like a blanket offering assurances that sale prices were good only for that one day, and “what you see is what we’ve got” for stock. That’s not to say his store can’t come up with some “Black Friday Sale Extended” marketing by tomorrow, if it hasn’t already.

For my sampling, I visited a clothing store, a book store, an electronics store (where I enjoyed a full-body massage in some kind of deluxe TV-watching chair), a drug store and a few places in a mall. It was the same at all of them — modestly busy but not at all crazy. A source tells me it was pretty busy the night before, which means people were shopping the Black Friday Eve (technically, Red Thursday) sales with no worries about having to be there on the actual day. It’s true that a lot of these sales are pretty good. Some smaller stores are offering only 10 or 15 per cent but many offer genuinely good savings of 40, 50 per cent or more. Or, as some qualify, “up to.”

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E-mail, Facebook and flyer promotions have dominated my inbox lately. None of them says,“Get ready for Black Friday because that’s the only chance you’ll get.” No, buy now, save now. I’ve been offered 50 per cent off the regular price for slippers and pillow cases, 40 per cent off an induction cooker, 70 per cent off work boots, and 60 per cent off some kind of cleansing facial wash that’s supposed to make me look 20 years old.

This post-COVID, inflation Christmas has a practical feel to it. For some, finding an induction cooker (I don’t even know what that is) in their stocking would be just the thing. Those pillow cases, designed not to mess your hair, apparently used to be a thing and have made a comeback. I, for one, would be pretty excited if a shiny new chainsaw showed up on Christmas morning.

’m not as sure about snow shovels, light bulbs and extension cords, even at a “door crasher” 65per cent off, but it’s not for me to judge. However, all of this makes the point that Black Friday, Red Thursday and Black Friday Month aren’t really about Christmas shopping at all. They’re about looking for deals, Christmas or not.

That, in turn, is about manufacturers and merchants trying to bring people into stores to buy a whole bunch of stuff in a short time, and making up for slow sales the rest of the year.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Consumerism isn’t the totally evil thing some make it out to be, even though, yes, lots of people simply can’t afford Christmas anymore, if they ever could. It’s called Black Friday, by the way, because that’s the day stores hope to get out of the red and into the black on their balance sheets. It’s an American thing, designed to start Christmas shopping right after the U.S. Thanksgiving but, of course, we Canadians had to copy it out of self-preservation.

There’s an irony in this year’s sales — after months of getting whacked with huge inflationary increases in the price of just about everything, we hope we might be able to balance the books with all that 70-percent-off stuff. The experts told us we were going to do less online shopping and go back to the stores this year, now that COVID isn’t such a big deal. Based on this correspondent’s somewhat limited investigation yesterday, it hasn’t happened.

Maybe Buy Nothing Day — the protest against consumerism held on Black Friday, is on the upswing but somehow I doubt it. Today is Small Business Saturday, tomorrow is, well, the Sunday after Black Friday, Monday is Cyber Monday and Tuesday is Giving Tuesday, so the beat goes on.

And Boxing Day Week will be here before we know it.

But Black Friday just ain’t what it used to be.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, former TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.