Survive Black Friday

It’s 3:50 am, the ungodly hour. You’re standing in the freezing cold parking lot outside your local Kmart. This is Black Friday, the cursed day after Thanksgiving when popular Christmas gifts first go on sale. You are quietly cursing the name of your first born child. The throng of parents around you are doing the same.

The hottest Christmas toy this year is called Sock Puppet. It’s an animatronic sock monkey that plays games, wiggles to music, automatically likes a child’s YouTube videos and Instagram posts, and argues with their haters in the comments. No budding influencer can be without it. Your kid desperately wants this toy, and you promised Santa would come through. Like a goddamn sucker.

Suddenly, the lights turn on inside the store. You look at your phone – it just turned 4:00 am. Shit, you need to compose yourself. You’re about 20 feet from the glass door with a few rows of people ahead of you. They’re only going to have so many Sock Puppets before they sell out. This might be your only shot. Other parents are cracking their knuckles and scowling.

You see a nervous clerk walking up to the automatic door…

What would you like to do?

• Screw this. Just buy the toy on Cyber Monday.
• Use your krav maga skills to eliminate the competition.

If you choose to join the stampede into Kmart…

When was the last time you bought a gift for someone in a retail store?

• If it was this month, click here.
• If it was within the last six months, click here.
• If it was more than six months ago, click here.