Black Friday: Best Buy pandemonium
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A little boy walking toward a Best Buy in the Glendale area this morning with his mother was so impressed by the size of the line that he rubbed his eyes and softly said, “Whoa.”
The crowd was massive -- draped around two corners of the building and heaving and surging toward the sliding doors at the entrance. Amid the cacophony of wailing children and hooting teenagers, one staff member hollered down the line, ‘No pushing, no shoving! We have women and children in line, and no one wants to step on any children.’
As doors opened and the horde funneled inside, leaving trash and upended chairs next to the sidewalk, another employee greeted customers with ‘You made it!’ Within minutes, the Geek Squad was swamped, and employees kept busy monitoring the mob from a raised platform.
First-time Black Friday shopper Kevin Kim, 18, a high school student from Glendale, waited inside with his uncle, leaning against a stack of boxes that was taller than he was and three times his width. He didn’t know the prices of the TVs, computer monitor, vacuum and other items he had picked up.
The pair arrived at 8 the night before, skipping Thanksgiving dinner and getting by on coffee and snacks. Kim, dressed snugly in a hoodie and fleece vest, said he had to endure the biting chill as well as the rowdy crowd and crotchety security guards.
‘I did this just for fun,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t fun -- it was horrible being in line, where people kept pushing back and forth and the employees were so mean. But it was very, very worth it.’
Too bad Kim was also very, very tired.
‘I’m going to go to sleep and never wake up,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to talk to anyone for a while. I have to think about whether I’m coming back next year.’
Within half an hour of the store’s 5 a.m. opening, customers started staggering out, away from the mother lode of electronics, looking haggard. Many sat on the sidewalk waiting to be picked up, slouching in exhaustion.
Michael Rodriguez, 19, Highland Park, arrived at midnight with six other men and was tucked in the far stretches of the line. But at one point in the morning, employees required customers who had brought tents to remove them, allowing shoppers who had traveled light to sweep to the front of the line.
So Rodriguez, who had been planning his Best Buy jaunt for a week, managed to score a 32-inch TV. But instead of taking a rest and enjoying his spoils, he had to head to his job as a swing manager for McDonald’s.
--Tiffany Hsu
