Black Friday Sagas

Do you have any hellish Black Friday stories? If so, we'd love to hear them. This year, though, we recommend staying home and using Amazon.com. Carey Hart of BLASTmedia in Indianapolis tells a hellish – yet typical – Black Friday tale.

A couple years ago, I made the mistake of being a Black Friday shopper, and dragging my boyfriend along with me. Poor guy, it was our first major holiday together and I nearly ruined it!

We live in Indianapolis, and there is a big outlet mall about 40 minutes south of the city. I normally NEVER go shopping on Black Friday, and have no idea what was going through my head that year. Regardless, I had heard that the outlet stores were having amazing sales that day, and they opened at the ungodly hour of 3 am. So we made the trip down the interstate.

We ended up getting stuck in the absolute worst traffic of all-time, in the middle of a winter night. We were stuck on the interstate, with no opportunity to turn around and no exits for at least 3 hours. It was absolutely awful.

When we finally made it to the mall, the parking lot was equally insane and we had to walk really far. I didn't want all our suffering to be for nothing, so I still shopped – and waited in even more lines! The line for the Coach store was out the door and down the sidewalk, but I persisted. The bargains were OK, but not that great. What was I thinking? I still have no idea, and three years later, the thought still makes my boyfriend and me both cringe. It was, by far, the worst shopping trip of our lives!