My "Black Thanksgiving" Trip to Target

We finished dinner, finished most of the cleaning and the guests left.  My problem?  I was too full from all the food so going to bed didn't resonate.  What else to do but go to Target!   Here's how it went down and my observations.

10:30pm - Arrive at Target.   It looks busy.  Fortunately JoAnn's wasn't open so there was still pretty reasonable parking options...

10:35pm - First sign that this was NOT going to be a regular trip to Target.  No carts available.  Had I known that I would have grabbed one from the parking lot.  Oh well - less to buy.  Steph had actually given me a grocery list!  Not to be tonight.

10:40pm - You hear tales of the crazy folks who make a full day of Black Friday.  Well they come out for Thanksgiving shopping to!  as you would likely suspect.  These ladies were in full on matching footy pajamas and had set up a central, monitored hub that the kept ferrying stuff back to.  I obviously had to be discreet when capturing their shopping zeal.

10:50pm - I encounter a line in the electronics section. Inquiring, I learn it is the "Apple" line where customers hope to get Gen-1 Apple Products at ~$75 discount. There seems to be very little movement in the line.

10:55pm - I had one target (no pun intended) item I was looking for and finally found it. Sold out :( But they did have a nice substitute available that was slightly more spendy (but also a door-buster bargain) so I went with it. Another observation - there were tons of employees there. One I heard complaining he had worked a 14-hour shift the day prior. Here's one employee busily restocking Legos with the "Apple Product" line in the background.

11:00pm - In line to check out. I was somewhat stunned to to see the check-out line. The had set up switchbacks between the cleaning type aisles. I was tempted to opt-out and leave my items behind but I knew that a single queue, multi-server line was extremely efficient so decided to wait it out. Fortunately, the weaving took my right by the Windex so I picked up two bottles including a hard to find vinegar based bottle - that was perhaps the highlight of my trip! It took about 20 minutes to check-out. Based on my experience of this first "Black Thanksgiving" it will definitely be back. Target seemed to be doing a gang-buster business and my guess Wal-Mart was the same way.

Happy Thanksgiving!