Sail through the sale.

Thanksgiving Day brings certain opportunities to a number of people. There is a 4-letter word that never fails to bring excitement to the buying populous— SALE ! Majority of the shopping community that is bitten by the buying bug belongs to the female specie. Why do I say this? Being married for 20 years to a shopping fanatic, I am convinced that women have been born with a gene that causes them to uncontrollably buy products that had been tagged as a sales item.

The whole frantic fight to grab the best sale items at the store shelves always starts about two days prior to the thanksgiving sale. A few diehards would camp outside known stores with the sole goal of being first in line to grab the few items that will be put out on sale at very reduced prices.

Yours truly does not subscribe to the idea that SPENDING money makes one “SAVE” money. Who is the lunatic that came up with that logic anyway? Only boneheads believe in that logic! It is very obvious that all these sales hype is just a marketing ploy that department stores and other businesses wave above their heads to attract the buying public. Like innocent lambs, the hypnotized credit card holders are drawn into these credit slaughter houses whom I call shopping Malls. These poor souls blindly swipe away their plastics with skillful hands without any careful thought if their income is able to keep up with their purchases.

Lucky for me, my spouse has learned to become a cautious buyer. Though she is now a careful shopper, she still can’t help succumb to the urge of going to the stores early to get ahead of the huge crowd that might head to the same store. Last November 23rd at four in the morning, my wife drag my kids and I out of our warm beds and led us to a large electronic store 8 miles away from our house. Half of my brain was still asleep while I was driving towards the store. The temperature was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit that morning and when we got to the store, there were already about 600 people waiting in line. By the time the store opened at 5AM , there were about 1,300 people waiting in line. There was a mad scramble inside the store to grab the remaining sale items. I went to the computer programs section of the store and immediately grabbed a 3-pack box of Norton anti-virus that was on sale for $29.99 (regular priced at $99.99). It was a very good deal because the pack contained three packages (Norton Anti-virus 2008 with spyware, Norton System works and Norton Confidential). After I got the item I wanted to buy, I started searching for my wife and kids. I found my wife waiting in line to the cashier and was holding a bunch of small product boxes. I examined the contents of the boxes and found two wireless routers, two types of computer games, an I-pod and other computer gadgets whose usage I am not too familiar with. When I asked her why she grabbed so many items, she said that she was waiting for me to sort through them. Looking through the boxes, I told my wife, “Honey, though these things are technically interesting to operate, we are not computer geeks and would be a waste of our hard earned money to purchase them”. With that said, returned half of what she took from the shelves and we ended up just buying four items. I was so relieved to step out of that mad house and told my wife that my cozy bed is calling my name.

Well, my story does not end there. At around 7PM that same day, I decided to return to the same store that we lined up to at 4AM . I was just curious as to what items that were still left. There were still a number of people going inside the store searching through the shelves. To my surprised, ALL the items that we bought at 5AM that day were still available at 7PM ! I felt like a bloody fool! I called my wife and told her what I just saw and advised her that unless we are aiming to buy the highly sought merchandise, we need to just go to the store at a more convenient time.