Shop 'til You're Dropped

The Rome Wal-Mart's Black Friday story of a woman grabbing all the cell phones and running was luckily shadowed by the more dramatic tale of a woman at a differnt Wal-Mart pepper spraying people to get ahead in line. Welcome to the most wonderful time of the year.

Every year, there's a story of mayhem at a Black Friday sale. Then the next day there are stories about how this can be prevented in the future. I have an idea. Stop having these cattle calls at midnight after Thanksgiving for 5 LCD TVs at 90% off.

These things combine at least three things I loathe. You have to wait in line in the cold. You have to fight with people and you don't get to research the items on sale. And it gets better. Invariably, the stuff from these sales ends up on eBay anyway. It amounts to free advertising, driven by sad consumers.

Stores are directly responsible for these sales getting out of hand. If stock was available or, God forbid, eligible for a rain chack, there wouldn't be a stampede. I know for certain that I would not get one of those incredible deals. I can't even find the stuff in a regular Best Buy sale because it's gone by Monday. I'll save my shopping for the week before Christmas, when retailers are really desperate for money and not just trying to get turkeys into the stores after Turkey Day.