For those of you who don't know, Black Friday is an American shopping tradition held on the first Friday after thanksgiving, which usually marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day most American retailers offer massive discounts on almost every single good they sell. Businesses do benefit greatly from this as large chain stores have reported that profits of up to five billion can be attributed to that single day of the year, hence the name "Black Friday" (in the black). This year several retailers over on this side of the Atlantic (including Asda and John Lewis) have had Black Friday related sales, so it looks like that that particular shopping tradition may be coming over to the UK.
This sounds all well and good doesn't it? You get a couple of hundred sliced off that TV that you've been drooling over, the Firms make a profit, and everyone has a merry Christmas! Actually no, its not that neat and tidy.
Allow me to elaborate. There is one day of the year, just before Christmas, where you can manage to get all of your shopping done, buy some nice gifts for your kids, and manage not to nearly bankrupt yourself. I'd imagine that you would be pretty desperate to get everything done on that one day. Now multiply that by around 250 million (factoring in the fact that not everyone would be stupid enough to try to do their shopping on that day), and then mix in the universal economic problem of there never being enough pink furbys to satisfy every whiny six year old, and you have got a recipe for a retail apocalypse.
I have heard horror stories on Tumblr from retail workers who have had to climb on top of vending machines in order to escape the stampeding mob of customers, and there is even a website dedicated to measuring the deaths and injuries that it causes (http://blackfridaydeathcount.com/). Now its coming over here and it has already caused fights in Asda branches.
Take your shopping day back America, we don't want it.
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