The ads inform me that a whole bunch of stores and malls plan to open their doors at midnight on November 25, i.e. about ten hours after people finish cramming themselves full of turkey.
As ludicrous as this sounds, the specimens you see on TV busting doors on the day after Thanksgiving are relatively disciplined people. They are able to get up at 4:00 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving, and get themselves to the front of a Wal-Mart or wherever in the predawn cold. And people still get killed.
Do door busters bust doors for bargains, or do they do it mainly for the camaraderie and the thrill of it? Either way, this midnight-opening thing is going bring a lot of new busters to the doors. Formerly, you needed to be relatively disciplined (see above). Now, all you’ve got to do is sober up a bit from Thanksgiving dinner. Most people don’t find staying up until midnight all that hard.
Speaking of which: how many of these people won’t sober up? How many parties of shoppers will be made up of people who’ve been awake for eighteen hours, who’ve just eaten their largest meal of the year, and who’ve been drinking since noon?
This is going to be priceless.
