BLACK FRIDAY

Black Friday to me is a stay at home day.  I have been on all sides of that: shopper, saleslady and store owner.  I remember getting up many Black Fridays to get to the stories before they opened to be the first in line.  Got many sale items that way.  Also been there where even though I was there when the store opened, by the time I got to the back of the store where the sale items where-they were all gone. Then off to the next store.

I started working as a saleslady when I was in high school, part time.  Worked after school and on Saturday.  When I graduated school and started working in an office during the day, I thought I wouldn't have to work in a store part time-but that proved to be wrong when I bought my first new car.  I worked after work and on Saturdays.  Of coure that was back in the days when stores were closed on Sunday. 

When it hit the 1970's and I worked in the office for an Insurance Agent, I will call Mr. H-that's what all his employees called him unless we were introducing him to someone.  Two of us who worked for him , were in our 20's and working part time store sales  job to pay for our new cars. There was a fire in two buildings one Friday evening, down from where we worked.  Mr. H insured one of the buildings.  On Saturday morning, I came to work in my car because I lived further away and the other lady that worked with me came on the bus-she lived closer.  We didn't know our boss was at the building he insured down the street watching us going to our store to work.  As we are doing our jobs in the store- who walks in but Mr. H.  He goes from my counter to her counter.  Finally he stood between our counters and said loud so we could hear him along with half the store, that none of his lady employees worked two jobs and walked out.  We thought when we went to work Monday he was going to fire us.  On Monday, when we were both at his office working, he called us in his private office.  We thought we were fired. He wanted to know why we were working two jobs.  We both explained that we got new cars, which casued a big extra expense, so we had to work two jobs.  He wanted to know how much each of car payments were a month.  On Friday, when we got our pay check (he paid in cash those days), there was an increase.  He called us in and explained that in each of our weekly pay check was a raise.  If we saved this raise money every week-it would be enough to make our car payment every month. Now we were to give two weeks notice and quit our store job.  We did.  I can still remember him standing in his office again telling all us women that worked that no woman that works for him works two jobs.  Those were the days.

When I became a store owner-I didn't like Black Friday.  My store was on Main Street in the town I still live in.  We had very few customers on Black Friday.  I would put up signs, ads in the paper, offer big sales and very few people came.  On Black Friday everyone went to the plazas and big stores.  Store owners had gotten together in our town to have big sales that weekend and nothing.  The streets were bare.  Maybe one or two people would drift in, but that was it.  So I learned that the weekend after Black Friday was our time.  I never bothered having sales on Black Friday.  I made the next weekend, my big sale weekend.  Even today I went down Main Street and there was no one parked on the streets or people walking up and down the sidewalk.  I felt sorry for all the store owners today.  Their weekend will come.  So if you live in a small town-don't forget to go to their stores, too.

I didn't mean to go on so.  Want to tellus  how you handle Black Friday?  Did you stay home or get some of those sales??  Get any special Christmas Gifts or something that you wanted or needed?

Marilyn