Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Black Friday Works

Episode Date: November 24, 2018

On the day after Thanksgiving, Americans go kind of crazy for the deep discount sales that kick off the holiday shopping season in stores. So crazy, in fact, at least four people have lost their lives and as many as 63 others have been injured during Black Friday sales. But as profitable as Black Friday is, some retailers are thinking about discontinuing the tradition to find ways to make even more money. Learn all about this bizarre, uniquely American holiday custom in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody, it's me, Josh, and to get you in the holiday spirit, I've selected for this week's SYSK Selects, our episode on Black Friday, a classic episode that I'm hoping you'll enjoy because it's apparently the most deadly time of the year. Get in the grinchy spirit and listen to us basically demolish the most made-up sub-holiday ever invented. It's as good as the day it dropped. Enjoy.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there and that makes this Stuff You Should Know. You just checked to make sure Jerry was there. She's very quiet. You literally turned your head and body. Right.

Yep, she's there. I did the big foot thing. Like I had to turn my whole side of my body to look over my shoulder. That's how you know that was real footage. Well typically when you know Jerry's here because you can just smell like miso soup or something emanating from our right side or my right side. Your right side. But it's not emanating from you.

It's not emanating from Jerry. Yeah. She stinks like miso. Which is actually a very pleasant smell, salty and umami. That's right. So Chuck. Yes. Have you ever been to a Black Friday sale?

No. No. And I want to say H-No. Oh yeah. Well I mean that's a decent qualifier though because it's not like an average sale and like if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, there's a pretty good reason why is because you're scared. Well yeah.

And I think this is one of those, a very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going or it's the last thing on earth you would rather do. I don't know. A lot of people are like, maybe I'll go check out a door buster at 3 AM. I think there are people who do have that kind of idea but maybe not at 3 AM. Sure. It's almost like a multi-faceted creature.

It is for some people, just in the middle of a normal shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving. They'll go to a store and it's fine and there's some sales or whatever but then hours earlier, these hardcore people who had bathed in the blood of their fellow shoppers. Well sadly yeah. Yeah. We'll see. Had already come through and gotten all the best deals.

And then there's those of us like us who are just like, I'm not going out. And I'm not overstating this because people always say literally when they mean figuratively but it's literally one of the last things I would ever, ever do in my life. I can't think of many. I'd rather go to the DMV than go to a door buster. The DMV? In between North Korea and South Korea? No, no, no.

That's the DMZ. Right. Okay. I always get those too confused. Now I'd rather go take the last ticket from the DMV and have to wait all day than go to a door buster sale. Yeah. No, I don't play me.

All right. So that's, we'll get to more hate spewing about this later, but. Right. And I should state my opinion. I feel like if this is your thing, that's awesome. Well, true, true. I'm not like cast Dispargents on people who disparaging remarks. Is Dispargents a word?

Nope. It is no though. You're like your own like American dictionary, the new Chuck dictionary. We should make that up. I like it. Yeah. We could have like five or six words already. Chuckisms.

Yeah. Agreed. You're like poopooing people who do it. If you're into it, great. As long as you conduct yourself in a reasonable manner and you don't turn into a monster like others do. Right. And, but there is like, there are obvious criticisms of the day too, which we'll get

into. But I think first Chuck, we should explain what the, as you would say, H we're talking about to the people who listen to this podcast and don't live in the United States because Black Friday is pretty much a uniquely American experience. It is. I think most people probably know, but just very quickly. That is the day after Thanksgiving now in the United States is known as Black Friday and we'll get into the pretty interesting history of it, but it's the biggest shopping

day of the year. Right. And there are all these crazy specials that they run and we'll get into that as well. But quite simply, it is the busiest shopping day of the year, day after Thanksgiving. Right. And it's, it's origin, well, the origin of the term Black Friday goes back kind of a ways, apparently to the mid 20th century, but the idea of going shopping, starting your Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving actually goes back to the late 19th century,

early 20th century. Thanks to department stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And as a part of those parades, Santa Claus, no, it's a Macy's parade. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's still a good parade though. Have you ever been?

No, I haven't. I've never been to the parade, but a couple of times, Emily and I have gone to the day before when they blow up the floats, which is really neat. Very cool. You mean I have a friend who's actually holding one of the floats, the balloons this year. Oh, cool. Yeah. It's fun to do, although we did it like eight or nine years ago and it was, it was really

neat and sort of crowded. And then we did it a couple of years ago and it is nuts now. Is it? It's, yeah, it's kind of gone overboard. Gotcha. The word got out. I think I saw, yeah, I saw something last year in the news. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not a place to go if you don't like strollers. Let's just say that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Strollers with altering tires. Yeah. So, but the idea of going, starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving

came from those parades and they came from those parades because all of those parades pretty much to a parade featured Santa Claus. Yeah. And usually at the end kind of like bringing up the rear and that means we're kicking it off. But the official start of the holiday season, that's right, Santa Claus is made his first public appearance. So, from the association of those two came going holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving.

That was in the late 19th century in the fifties, they think, or early sixties, well the fifties calling the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday came about, but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with shopping by then. It was from factory owners who apparently coined the term. Yeah, and there's also the other competing theory that it was the day that stores would go into the black, meaning start to show profit, but that's not quite right is it? No. So, that's a fallacy.

That's actually a, well it's a made up fallacy to gloss over the original meaning of Black Friday and it came out of Philadelphia in the sixties and the cops and the bus drivers and the city workers who worked downtown came up with calling that day Black Friday because apparently tons of out of towners would leave their homes on Thanksgiving, converge on Philadelphia to watch the Army-Navy game on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but they had a day to kill so they all started doing their Christmas shopping because there were sales in downtown Philly every year and the place would be nuts and this was where Black Friday came from. Apparently the police department wanted to basically keep people away, so they'd be like,

well you don't want to go to downtown Philly, it's Black Friday. And that was the original origin of the term. Yeah, I see you saw in here an article from the AP in 1975, a sales manager at Gimbles was quoted as saying that's why bus drivers and cab drivers call today Black Friday. They think in terms of the headaches that it gives them. So I learned something new when I read this, I had no idea. It spread out of Philly and then years later the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said we got to come up with a better origin story for this because we want this to be

a day that people want to get out of their house and go shopping. But we should point out even though it is not the day that companies go into the Black as it were, which by the way comes from when they did accounting by hand, you would write in red ink or black ink depending on if you were ahead with money or behind. Red ink meant you were in the hole, black meant everything's good. Exactly, even though it does not mean that, the holiday shopping season is when stores make up between 20 and 40% of their retail profits. That's a lot.

Yeah, I mean even Emily's small business like the, I don't know about majority, but a large percentage of her yearly sales are the couple of months. And it's not just her, apparently in 2013 the National Retail Federation is predicting that Americans, just in November and December, Chuck, are you ready for this? Americans are going to spend $602 billion in November and December. That's cray. That's a lot of cash in two months. Yeah, I don't spend like I used to on Christmas.

Emily and I sometimes will spend on gifts on each other or do that like couple thing where you like go in and just do something nice for your house. And then like the adults on my side of the family, we don't exchange gifts anymore. Just dirty looks? Yeah. You exchange dirty looks. No, like my brother and my sister will chip in usually and get my mom something kind of nice or give her, offer her a service like last year we replaced her fireplace with like

a gas fireplace or build her a garden fence or tile her kitchen, like something like that. Wow, your mom's got it. Yeah. She's on Easy Street is what you call that. But Emily's family, they all still exchange gifts. So I still have my Christmas gift swapping, Joan satisfied, you know? Yes. You get your Christmas present on.

Yeah. Okay, Chuck, so the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday, that day being called Black Friday, it's been around for a while and it's a really valuable day. Yeah. You know, it kicks off that two month period where $602 billion is going to be spent on stuff. But it was created like Valentine's Day, it was literally created and then the myth kind of became reality.

Just because they said everyone's going to shop today, it's the busiest day and it became that. Yeah, it wasn't until 2004. Actually the Saturday before Christmas was actually the busiest shopping day of the year. Thanks to me. But the retail federation and all the retailers were like, well, we can't just, we can't tout that as the busiest shopping day of the year. We want to get people spending over the course of a couple of months, not the Saturday before

Christmas. So they basically said Black Friday's the day. And like you said, it just kind of became true just from people saying it over time. I'm surprised that they haven't come up with a catchy name for like procrastinator's day or something to like pump up that last Saturday again or something. Or to keep you from it. So they call it like shame of the nation day, something like that to make you like go do Black Friday and not wait until the Saturday.

So and there's this website called blackfridayarchive.com that's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic ads or whatever, nostalgia going back to 2007, I should say, but it's just like scans of Black Friday print ads from those years, which are kind of neat. If you're totally bored out of your mind, go check out blackfridayarchive.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and non stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment

I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

So Black Friday became a smashing success, like 2004, 2005. It's a relatively recent thing that it became what it is today here in the States, which is an out of control juggernaut of shopping and consumeristic frenzy. So, it was so successful overnight that the retailer said, well, let's figure out ways to extend this whole week. So they came up with Cyber Monday in 2005. Yeah, that's pretty recent and it is the online shopping version of Black Friday, the Monday after Thanksgiving.

And that was another thing they just made up, another self-fulfilling myth that they said that the workers go back to their computer after Thanksgiving on Monday and they do all their online shopping. Well, that wasn't really true, but now it is because the retailer said it was and the media reported it. And not to be outdone in 2010, American Express invented Small Business Saturday, which is when you go out and support small businesses with your money. Especially ones that take American Express.

Exactly. So it's interesting that literally creating days to tell people basically, if you're not shopping today, you're missing out on really good deals. Right, exactly. The more days the better as far as retailers are concerned, but there's only so many days after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently like, well, what if we pushed in the other direction rather from Friday on?

What's behind Friday? Oh, yeah, Thanksgiving. We can't touch that. For shame. Well, starting in 2012, they started touching it. Walmart actually opened at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving in 2012. And there was a general strike called that we'll talk about later because of that because these stores are not supposed to be open on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is its own day. It's a day of being with family and celebrating and up until 2012, it was sacrosanct. Right. Yeah, this year Macy's and JCPenney for the first time are opening on Thanksgiving. And Sears and Toys R Us as well on Thanksgiving evening. And Kmart is opening at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving, basically extending Black Friday through the weekend. 41 hours.

That's not a day. That's how long Kmart's going to be open. Black Friday at Kmart lasts 41 hours. That's pretty crazy. And at shopping malls, you're going to have some smaller stores doing the same thing. An estimated 20 to 25% will be open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving day. And two thirds will open at midnight. So essentially what's happening is Thanksgiving evening is being ruined by retail.

Yeah. You know? Yeah, I think the retailers would say, well, you know, we've seen that people start lining up Thanksgiving afternoon, Thanksgiving evening to wait for us to open like that, you know, the next morning. So why don't we just open? So I mean, I think it's kind of, it goes both ways, but I pretty much see where you're coming from.

Yeah. Well, this year it's a little trickier too because Thanksgiving comes on November 28th, which is the latest has been in 11 years. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. 2002. Yeah.

And weirdly, because they still sort of have to enforce Black Friday, they're actually shortening their own shopping season a little bit this year, which is probably why some of them are opening on Thanksgiving. That's exactly why. Yeah. It's six days shorter than usual this year. So just by the very existence, by making up Black Friday, they've screwed themselves this year a little bit.

They have. By a week. Yeah. Because there's in other countries like Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, countries that observe the Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody gives everybody else presents and things like that and they spend money, but those countries don't have a Black Friday a day that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. Those countries spend more over the course of the holiday season because they have a

longer period of time to shop. So without Black Friday in America, the retailers would possibly make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this year, it's really kind of pointing out like, oh, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot here. So what can we do? Well, their solution has been, well, we'll just take over Thanksgiving too, but that's not necessarily sustainable.

And there's a lot of people who are saying Black Friday is going to go the way of the dinosaur. Yeah. I read an interesting article in The New Yorker this morning, a finance article. I think it was New Yorker. It might have been New York Times, but this financial analyst was basically analyzing how the sales go and sort of saying that it's really not financially the smartest approach to take.

For the... Shoppers or the retailers? For the retailers to offer these huge, deep discounts and sort of blow it out in one day. A better, smarter financial approach would be to elongate the shopping season and not even discount things, maybe even raise prices. And his contention is that they're shooting themselves in the foot. But... I think he's right.

Yeah, he probably is. But at the same time, if you're one of those people like me, frankly, who went to the mall the day after Halloween and saw that the lights were up, the garland was out, Santa's workshop was ready to go. The after Halloween? The November 1st, the place was totally decked out for Christmas with Christmas carols piping through. Yeah, see, that's ridiculous.

But see, that was the great thing about Black Friday. It's like you had a month of just kind of chilling out everything, getting ready between Halloween and Thanksgiving, then you had Thanksgiving and then the holiday season started without Black Friday. It's kind of like this dam that's holding back the holiday season from spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out that it's an impedance to them making money, it probably won't start the official season any longer.

It'll probably be further back from now on. Yeah, well, I think we're in, I don't know about, well, technically slightly in the minority. In 2013, 53% of the population of American adults said they will shop on Black Friday. So 53%. Yeah, that puts us in the minority by a bit. And in 2011, 152 Americans shop. 152 million. Oh, yeah.

Just 150. But they spent $500 billion. Yeah, 152 really rich Americans. 152 million shopped on that day for an average of three hours at a time, which is not too long. I mean, three hours is like, it's longer than I want to shop ever. I saw a woman who did 16 though, like a 16 hour stretch of shopping. She better have gotten it all done at least.

I hope so. You know? Yeah. Like if she shopped for 16 hours and only got like three gifts, it's not time well spent. There's also evidence that the internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door. Thanksgiving Day is the fastest growing online shopping day. And I think like 70% of the people who said that they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do some or most of it online.

So the internet's still there for retailers to make money. But the idea of Black Friday in-store sales going extinct is probably not going to happen because it's its own thing. Like there's this one consumer psychologist or consumer analyst, I think, pointed out that it's a tradition, number one, and number two, there's a certain element of like sport to it. It's more than just getting a good deal. It's like, you know, throwing a fist at somebody while you get a good deal or something to

it that transcends the whole thing. So we mentioned doorbusters. It's a central part of the cog that is Black Friday. And it goes back and print, believe it or not, to the year 1917 and anecdotally to 1895 where in a retailer, we'll basically say, you know what, we have one item, or usually it's a few now, but some really deep, deep and really super great deals on just a few select items. So like for example, a good laptop for $180, and like deals like that, iPods for half off

or a TV for like $200, like really, really, like you said, very good discounts. But here's the deal, it's a scam, people. It's a bait and switch scheme. It's a bait and switch. They've only got a very limited amount of these select items, which is why the violence happens, which we'll get to in a minute. And then after that, they're hoping you get in there, you don't get that laptop, but you're like, screw it, I'm at Walmart at 5 AM.

I might as well buy some stuff regular priced or slightly discounted items. And that's how they get you in the store. That's how they get you. It is. And it's true that these items do exist and they are for that deal. They're there for that price, I should say. But there's only like 10, and in the fine print, it's like one per person, and that deals is for in stock only, like you can't get a rain check or anything like that.

But the concept that these deals do exist for those items that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically gets their hands on that item first gets that deal, leads to doors actually being busted. It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. All right, so before we get to the dark days and the bad stuff that can happen truly, let's do a little message break. Okay.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology.

And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop? But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's go back a little bit to 2008. And probably the, well, I was going to say the darkest incident, but I think the toys are us may be darker.

I think this one's darker because the many people were involved. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. All right, 2008 in Valley Stream, Long Island. It was at a Walmart and it was 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving. So basically people there the day before, it wasn't one of those days where it was open on Thanksgiving. So they're to wait till 5 a.m.

So at least 12 hours ahead of time, there were about a thousand people already set up there. Some people are camping out in tents, they're waiting, they got their coffee, they're probably slugging some Jim Beam to warm the belly. And so the police came out and said, you know what, let's set up a buffer zone, a barricade, which worked till about 2 a.m. when that was breached. And the cops basically said, we're out of here, this isn't part of our job. Yeah, the crowd had turned angry a little bit after that.

So one of the store employees had some family members come and they took them out of the line and took them in the store. Not a good idea. Yeah, but even if everyone in the crowd would have been cool with it, I don't think everybody in the crowd realized that they were family members of an employee. So the crowd actually turned ugly. Yeah, they broke through the barricade and were squeezed against, you know, how the stores have the entrance and then that little glassed and vestibule area before, and then usually

a second entrance to get into the store itself. So there was about, by this time there was about 2,000 people waiting for the store to open. It was 4 a.m., the store was going to open at 5 and a couple hundred were in between this little buffer zone and those front exterior doors. And being pressed up, literally crushed to death, and there's this fascinating article in The New Yorker by a guy named John Seabrook called Crush Point, and it's about not just this incident but just crushings in general where a crowd can crush somebody.

Yeah, we covered that like years ago. It seems like it. Yeah, totally. But anyway, you check out that article. Yeah, people literally yelling, push the doors in, chanting this, and just before 5 o'clock, it's a pretty bad scene, and workers in that vestibule area realized that there was a pregnant lady named Leanna Lockley being crushed against the doors, and so they were like, we got to get this lady in here, open the doors enough to squeeze her through.

She got in, and then the crowd surged forward, and it just kind of went downhill from there, and they still did the 10, 9, 8 countdown. Isn't that mind-boggling? Well, first of all, that the cops left. Yeah, they said apparently in a court deposition that the cops, when they left said, controlling this crowd is not in our job description. Good luck. Walmart had hired a security force of two for the event.

One person hadn't shown up. The other one was inside the store, not helping, so they got a bunch of their stock guys, their biggest dudes that they could find, and said, come stand in this vestibule and help anybody who falls down or if there's a stake point or something. That's when I would have been like, dude, that's not in my job description. Exactly. Well, they didn't say that. And when the doors finally opened after the festive countdown, while these people were

being crushed against the front, the doors started to open, and right when they opened, they actually gave way and were literally busted by this wave of humanity. Yeah, and at that point, the employees, their little red rover line was completely ineffective. People are getting knocked down, some of the workers are getting blown out of the way, some are jumping on vending machines. It's ridiculous. Yeah, a couple of them climbed up the Coke machine to get out of the way for safe harbor. One guy who was in the way of the crowd when the doors gave way, this article by John Seabrook

puts it that he was blown back. So again, there's a vestibule, there's the outer doors, there's the vestibule, and then there's inner doors, and then there's the store. This guy got blown from the outer doors all the way through the vestibule, through the inner doors, into the store by this wave of people. 2,000 people. Yeah, just coming in all at once, all trying to get their hands on that door buster. Yeah, like an iPod or something.

So that's not the end of the story, sadly. People are getting crushed. This pregnant woman trips over some old woman, she's on the ground at this point, pregnant. Yeah, Leanna Lockley, right? In danger of being trampled to death, and then she somehow managed to get to her knees and saw an employee, do you know how to pronounce his first name? Jim Tay D'Amour. Jim Tay D'Amour, he was assigned to help people in case anyone fell, fell down next to her,

the doors fell on top of him, and 2,000 people trampled over those doors and killed him. Yeah, he was trampled to death. He died of asphyxiation being crushed under the door, and he was a stock guy. At 6am, 6.03am he was pronounced dead, one hour after the festive countdown to let people get in to shop. And that was at the hospital an hour later, so he most likely died on the scene. And pretty awful. What's crazy, Chuck, if that story's not bad enough, tramplings are actually really common.

And like somebody might not die, you might not be asphyxiated, and he might not have died had he not gotten caught under the door. But the people getting knocked down, if you want to see this, just go on to YouTube and type in Black Friday. Not even Black Friday tramplings, just type in Black Friday, and you will see tons of compilations of store security footage of people coming in right when the store opens on a Black Friday sale, just climbing over one another, knocking each other down. Some people help other people up or drag them out of the way or whatever, but just as frequently,

people just climb over the ones who are down. For a sale, it's insane. I seriously encourage everybody to go check out some video of it. Yeah, I can't believe that after this incident that there wasn't a law pass outlawing outright Black Friday sales, you know? It's not happening. Well, but it's ridiculous because it's economists and analysts approving that it's not like they'd lose money.

They would probably make more money if they didn't have these blockbuster sales. So it's not like they could say, well, you're keeping me from doing my business. I don't know. I just can't believe they can't outlaw something like this. So that was a pretty horrendous example of a crowd crush and a trampling. But other things do happen. You mentioned the Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California a couple of years back, right? Yeah, that was in 2008.

These two women got in a fist fight and then their husbands got into it. And basically, first of all, these two men were carrying guns into a Toys R Us for Christmas shop, which is a little weird. And they started a shootout with each other, basically. And not a very skilled one, apparently. I read about it. Like one guy forgot to cock his gun. The other guy, like his didn't work either, so they start chasing each other through

the store. Through the store. Shooting at each other. Yeah. Luckily, no one else died. But those two gentlemen shot each other and died in a Toys R Us because of their wife's gotten a fist fight. Yeah.

On Black Friday, I did Toys R Us during Christmas shopping. I'm surprised no one else, if they're running through the store shooting. I think everybody cleared out of their way. I know I wouldn't follow them around and be like, hey guys, what are you doing? Where's the doorbusters? In 2011, a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart pepper sprayed some people in the video games. Initially, the cops thought, well, this lady was some Black Friday jerk. Which would make her a pretty awful person.

Yeah. But apparently the real story is, and she actually got out of it, was that her children were attacked, punched, kicked, thrown to the ground by shoppers trying to get an Xbox from these children, and so she defended her kids by pepper spraying these jerks. Right. And this thing still hasn't been settled. The most recent thing I saw was that a year on, so last year, the cops still hadn't filed charges.

So I guess they believed her story. But she shopped anyway after that happened and bought her items. So she pepper sprays a bunch of people, affects 20 people, causes a bit of a trampling, pandemonium, and then two horrible things happened after that. One, like you said, the lady took her kids and her items and went to the store and checked out, bought her stuff. Second, the people outside the immediate circle where she pepper sprayed, but still in that little area, stuck around, still tried to get their hands on the sale item.

Yeah, they're like checking out in their eyes and nose are watering. There's like, just bring it up, let me get home. Yeah. And then of course, there's the workers as well. Well, yeah. I mean, no one wants to work on Thanksgiving and this year, like we said, a lot of retailers are opening on Thanksgiving and there's really not anything they can do about it if they want to keep their job.

Which is really sad. And Walmart employees planned a strike, I think, last year in 2012. And it didn't work. Only 26 of the 4,200 stores reported striking employees. So for fear of losing their jobs, probably they had to come to work anyway. Well, Kmart in particular was criticized this year for opening at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving. And Kmart said, these people don't have to work. We're not forcing them to work and their critics are saying, well, actually, that's not necessarily

true because you're using part-time seasonal employees and there's no federal mandate that those people have to have holidays or time off. So therefore, they're in a position where they either work or you can fire them legally. So they kind of do have to work. So there's a lot of ugliness on Black Friday. But Chuck, if you are just the average normal person, like my brother-in-law loves to go to Black Friday shopping and he'll go at midnight and go to the door buster sales, but he's not crazy.

Well, the majority of them don't end in violence because this happens all over the country and these are isolated incidents. So it's not like at every door buster sale, you're going to get trampled, but there is a risk. There is. The people you want to look out for, apparently, there is a study of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales and it was a legitimate study. It said that you want to look out for the people who have done a lot of planning because

they exhibit the most antisocial behavior like shoving, pushing, yelling. Like they've got their plan in place and nothing's going to alter that. And they feel like they've really put the time in and they're not about to lose that door buster. The jerk who's never done it before and just showed up. Who just lucked in the line or whatever. You know, remember the famous Who concert in the 70s where the people were trampled? Yeah, that's in that New Yorker article too.

They got rid of general admission seating after that. Like why can't they do something about this? I think the law stepped in and said, wait a minute, you can't just open the doors to a concert venue and say, first one in gets front row. They still have general admission? Not for big arena shows. Oh, yeah. No.

Yeah. Well, you know that there was like just one door open and like four others locked and people were getting crushed up against the locked doors and the people inside who are working at that concert, like just never opened the doors even though people were dying. I can't remember what we covered that in, man. It's so like vivid in my mind from way early on because we studied the science of crowd surges. I don't know what it was either because this article is not that old.

It's just like. No, it definitely wasn't about this. It had to do with something else. But yeah, dirty bad stuff or you can take another approach. Yeah. This is a different approach, you could say. In the 1990s, an artist named Ted Dave gave birth to what's now called Buy Nothing Day wherein the people are encouraged to not buy anything for 24 hours and to fight the power

and consumerism by not showing up at all. And not just fight the power of the guy who created Ted Dave, he's a Vancouver guy who came up with it in the 90s. It was also not just to stick it to the man, which I can only imagine if nobody bought anything in America on Black Friday, what kind of crippling effect that would have on the economy. But he was also saying personally, that's a good day to not buy anything and take stock of how much you do maybe waste or spend or whatever.

Just think about your consumerism for one day. Dirty hippie. And during that time, don't buy anything. And don't gas up your car the night before, don't get a bunch of milk the night before. Just be normal on one day of the year, don't buy anything and that's Buy Nothing Day. And it's kind of become this big thing ever since Adbusters, the people who gave us Occupy Wall Street kind of found out about it and adopted it and just took the whole thing worldwide. It's pretty amazing.

It is. So if you go to a Black Friday sale and you see a bunch of people dressed as zombies, they're making fun of you. They're making fun of zombie consumers. Same with the people who dress as sheep. And then there's Zenta Claws. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll dress up as a sheep and just walk around and buy on people's faces.

And then if I'm there, I might pick up a laptop. There's also credit card cut-up stations. Yeah. Yeah, where you can get rid of your credit card and shook us consumerism. And then there's the, my favorite, the, what is it, the Whirly Gig conga line? Oh, I haven't heard of that. Is that to disrupt shoppers? The whole point is to just kind of serve as a mirror, I think, to people.

Like, look at yourselves. You're ridiculous. You think I look stupid? You're the one that looks stupid. Right. I'm buying anything. But yeah, so there's, it's kind of a two-fold thing. It's one like just kind of reflecting personally slash sticking it to the man as an individual

consumer, like realizing your power in the grand scheme of things is all kind of hinges on you spending your money. And if you don't, then you're taking the power back or pointing out to other people just how ridiculous they're being at consumers as consumers. People probably be like, where'd you get that sheep costume? Right. Exactly. What was that on?

So, I've got one last thing. I noticed the other day, I'd never heard of this before in China. You think we like to shop? Chinese love to shop. And they have something that they have created called Singles Day. And it is on November 11th, so 11-11, the four ones stand for single people. And they're basically like, hey, because in China, I think you're encouraged to marry. So this is like, hey, be single, go out and treat yourself to something online and buy

something because it's Singles Day and you should celebrate being single. Really? And it's a huge deal. They spent, well, this e-commerce platform in China called Alibaba is the one who really got behind it recently. And they spent $5.7 billion on Singles Day this year, which dwarfs Cyber Monday by three times almost. And it's the biggest online shopping day in the world.

And in the first six minutes this year, just a couple of weeks ago, they spent $160 million in the first six minutes online in China just to celebrate being single. And they're encouraged to shop for themselves, which I don't think we pointed out. A lot of people on Black Friday when asked, say, they do some of the shopping for themselves. It's not all gifts. It's like, I want that laptop. I think 47% or 41% of people who said they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do most of the shopping for themselves.

I usually do that. Whenever I go out like genuinely Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something for myself. These people are saying they're mostly shopping for themselves. No, I don't mostly, but I'll just treat myself to something modest. And I want to say, Chuck, we don't begrudge anybody going to Black Friday sales if that's your thing. Yeah. Enjoy it.

That's fine. Just act like a human being. Yeah. Don't trample over somebody who's fallen down. And most importantly, have a very nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with, whether they're friends, family, old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some time to really enjoy this Thanksgiving day and relax and just be. I agree, my friend.

It's Thanksgiving. Be with your family. Turn off your smartphone maybe even. Wow. Really get crazy and just be in the moment. Yeah. How about that? And we give you permission to shout down anybody who says that tryptophan is what makes you

sleepy. That's right. You go ahead and send them straight. Yep. So happy, happy turkey day, Americans and other parts of the world. Whatever you're doing. I hope you're well. Yeah.

Nice, Chuck. And Chuck, we should say that as usual, if everyone wants to send us happy Thanksgiving wishes, they can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. They can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can. And if you want to know more about Black Friday, you can go to HowStuffWorks.com. I think there's like a 10 worst moments in Black Friday history article up there. You can send us an email directly to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com.

And as always, you can join us at our very festive and thankful home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me.

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