Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 1:33 pm
After a nice Christmas Eve and Day spent with family, I decided to join the ranks of the crazy and queue up for some Boxing Day deal-getting. Future Shop advertised the Toshiba HD-D3 HD-DVD player on their web site for $99.99, regularly $399, and since I’ve been in the market for an HD-DVD player ever since Transformers only came out in that format, I figured why not make this the year when I pop my Boxing Day cherry.
Yes, hard to believe, but I’ve never done the Boxing Day insanity. I either couldn’t afford it, or there wasn’t anything that sparked the urge. I have gone shopping on Boxing Day, but just during regular mall hours for the half-price khakis at The Gap. None of the “line up in the cold at an ungodly hour” kind of thing, until this year and the lure of Toshiba.
Initially, I thought I might actually go and line up at midnight, but I really didn’t think there would be that many like-minded people, or that there was enough in the Future Shop flyer to bring out the crazies. Or at least that many of the crazies. How wrong I was.
I went to bed at 9:30 last night, setting my alarm for 3 AM and thinking that would allow me enough of a jump on the later shoppers. When I got to Northland Village mall, however, it was just after 3:30, and there were about 100 people already in line. Since the player I was after was advertised as a “door crasher”, which usually means very limited numbers, I wasn’t sure I’d even get one with so many ahead of me, but I lined up nonetheless.
Remembering the icy blast of wind I was treated to when I came out of the same mall last Thursday, I had prepared with warm clothes and some snacks to fuel the furnace. The temperature was only -2C, but the wind was back, and it was cold when you’re standing at the edge of a mall parking lot. Hiding behind the people in front of me in line didn’t help for long, but it was really only my feet that felt any real cold.
I might’ve been 100 from the door, but by 5:30, the line had stretched to close to 500, reaching all the way along the north side of the mall. Apparently I misjudged the draw of Future Shop’s deals. The staff was out in line before 5:00, handing out chits for the larger items, or those that weren’t on the floor in great quantity, and I asked one of them how many of the Toshiba players they had.
When he said they had ten, I was more concerned that I’d be denied, even though he pointed out that only one other person had asked him about them. All that meant is that no one else thought to inquire. At that point, though, I’d invested almost two hours, and knew that it was pointless to pull the plug, so I kept checking the time and hoping for the best. I did ask where they were in the store, and he told me they were in the warehouse, but to “come and find me as soon as you get in”.
They opened the doors early, at 5:50, and the line fed into the store without too much delay. As soon as I was inside, I scanned the store for the staffer, spotting his (thankfully) bald head behind a pile of boxes in the center aisle, and made a beeline for him. He was handing out the exact item I had come there for, surrounded by a handful of people, a couple of who already had boxes in hand. I wedged my way up to him and said “I need one of those”, and he handed me what turned out to be the last one.
Someone else who had been standing in the aisle said “I want one too”, but was told there weren’t any more as I walked away toward the tills. I was literally the first one to the checkouts, and was out the door of the store by 6:00, the scheduled opening time. As I walked out, one of the employees standing guard at the door commented that I was “very lucky to get one of those”. Yes. Yes I was.
I was home by 7:30, after breakfast at the McDonald’s across the mall parking lot, and went back to bed for a few hours. My Boxing Day prey is an even better deal, too, since it comes with two movies in the box (~$30 each), and there’s a “get five free” promotion on as well. I’ll end up with seven free movies that normally sell for $20-30 each for my $100 purchase.
It was worth the two and a half hours in the cold, and I’d do it again for an equally good sale.
Category: Blabbing
