Holy Holiday Shoppers Batman!!!

Weeks ago I was predicting that this year's Black Friday was going to be a little more crowded than usual due to the really crappy economy. I was not wrong. Four o'clock this morning found me showered and dressed ready to walk out the door. Last night I got out my stack of ads and gift lists and spent the better part of an hour mapping out what it was I needed to get ( specific gift requests) and what I wanted to get ( might be something they would like) along with the opening times of various stores and the most efficient way of shopping both for walking and driving. In previous years I have enjoyed light crowds and speedy wait times for check-out but of course I was under no illusion that this would happen again. My plan was simple, arrive a little past 4 at JC Penny's and do the bulk of my clothing shopping there and then move on to Sears, Toys R Us, Gordmans, Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and end at Menards. I do Penny's first for a lot of reasons. The big ones are that my family wears a lot of their clothing and I save a truckload when I do the early morning doorbuster sale. I also know that the other store that opened at 4 was Kohls and that is usually one of the stores that ends up with terribly long slow-moving lines and fights breaking out among shoppers. Last year I made the mistake of doing Toys R Us first and wasted over an hour standing in line for items that were not on the "gotta have or else" list. When I got to the mall around 4:20 the Penny's parking lot was pretty full. Think Saturday on a non-holiday season. There were people everywhere but everyone was in a good mood and the sales staff was walking around passing out candy. Finding what I wanted and in the correct size was no problem so after 20 or so minutes I was ready to check out. Lines at this point were pretty long and not moving too fast. Mostly because everyone wanted gift receipts and there were multiple groups checking out at the same register. Well-known fact, lots of die-hards go in groups and one stands in line while the others get the items and hand them to her. everyone in that group then pays for her individual purchases. The trick of the check-out is to wander around to the lesser traveled areas of the store and look for the cash registers. I went to the very front of the store and there was no waiting. On my way back to the van I mentioned the light lines to fellow shoppers waiting in the back of some of the longer lines. First stop done and it was back through Penny's and out into the mall. I was not about to give up my relatively good parking spot just to drive to the other side of the mall and take my chances there. On my way out of the store, there was a very nice salesperson passing out donut holes to shoppers. My Sears stop was a totally different story. I had a need to buy gift on my list and I wanted to get a coat for Carolyn and Sears always has the best prices. It took about 10 minutes to get my two things and I went looking for a short line to stand in. Sears opened at 5 and I got there around 5:30 so the lines were pretty crazy. My JC Penny's check-out trick did not even come close to working. I hopped over to the shorter lines in the appliance section--big mistake. Sears was not prepared for this day. The computers were not working right and advertised items on sale were not rung up at correct prices and some of the really good deals like the $14 DVD players sold out and people were trying to have the sales staff order one from the corporate office. One of the ladies waiting in line ahead of me had actually purchased her item but the computer refused to issue the gift card that was supposed to be part of that special so she was told to try and go to another line and see if they could get the sale to ring up correctly . I jumped over to the tool area hoping that those lines would at least move somewhat faster and they too crawled along. At one point the cashier had to leave her post and go find a price for something. A kind soul walked by and said that there was no wait over in the circular saw area. He was right. As I walked past the line after checking out I passed this information along to the other poor souls stuck waiting. All told I wasted an hour. Mall stores now completed I decided to dash across the parking lot and do Gordman's real quick. Hubby saw a wooden toy advertised that he thought Andrew would like. I hit the store at just the right time, it was practically deserted. Ten minutes later I was in the van driving over to Toys R Us. That store is just a little too far to walk to from my parking spot. I get there and it is close to 7 so I'm thinking the mass of early shoppers would be gone but no such luck. I walked in and quickly found the manager who was directing the endless line of carts to the check out line. Upon finding out just where the end of the line was and knowing that I would still be traveling a crazy up and down the aisles through the whole store maze I thanked him and told him I would return later. He said the line was moving pretty fast but I only had one item on my want list and it was not worth the wait. Now of course traffic was increasing both shopping and vehicle so getting from point A to point B was taking a little longer than I would have liked. Target is located across the street from the mall (really busy main road)and a quick glance showed nothing but cars in the lot. It would take more time to get out of the mall lot, cross the street and attempt to find an empty parking spot so I decided to park at the very end of the mall lot and just use the stoplight and cross the street on foot. My first impression of Target was that this would be an easy stop. The store had been open for over an hour so hopefully the masses had left. There were very few people waiting in line at the check-out counters and things were flowing pretty smoothly. As I ventured farther into the store it became quite apparent that there was more people than I had imagined. I needed one item and decided that I would check out toy section real quick to find something on Carolyn's want list. After getting the two items I then realized that about 75% of the shoppers were actually waiting in line to check out. I had in my cart the one "must have or else" item so there was no walking out. After finally finding the end of the line I spent pretty much the next 45 minutes conversing with a very nice lady from Spencer, Iowa and walking through most of the store. I let her share the cart with me so she didn't have her hands full of items. I will give kudos to the Target staff. They had someone stationed at the beginning of the line directing shoppers to various check-out lanes so that was why it did not look too busy when I got there. My next stop was Best Buy for a couple gotta have items and I was hoping that they would still be there. This was really quick stop number two in my shopping day. The large crowds that the store is famous for were gone so I was able to get my items and check out within 10 minutes. I was now done with the South end of Sioux Falls and ready to head towards home. Breakfast was 1 can of Mountain Dew and two donut holes (thanks JCP) so I hit McDonalds on my way to Wal-Mart. A bacon egg and cheese biscuit never tasted so good. I purposefully do Wal-Mart in the later stages of my shopping. Along with Kohls they rank up there with shopping horror stories. The lot was pretty full when I got there but I'm not too choosy in parking spots when I don't have the kids with me so I snabbed the first one I saw. I was pleasantly surprised that they still had a few of their early morning special items. There were a couple of things I wanted but wasn't going to be massively depressed if I could not get them. Sadly, the art set I wanted to get Carolyn was sold out so I'll just get her more crayons and paper after the holidays. Crowd-wise I would say think typical Saturday afternoon. I decided to do the self-check out so my wait was pretty minimal. I also did not have a lot of items. My last stop was Menards. I had heard that it was a zoo in the early hours but there are two Menards in town so it could be that I was getting reports about the one closer to the mall. They were sold out of the kids snow shovels I wanted so I guess I'll wait a few weeks and try again. By the time I finished I was wiped out. I called my friend Jen who was shopping with her family and gave her a few heads up tips about traffic and store sales. I called the loving hubby and told him I was headed home. He was nice enough to take Matthew to his eye doctor appointment later that day so that was one less thing on my to do list. Later on the kids helped him get the lights on the house and afterwards we went to Pizza Ranch. I now think I'll lay down and pass out. Yes, I'll be doing this again next year.