Friday, November 28, 2014

I Went To Old Navy At 3 A.M. This Morning, Because I Could

Old Navy is open for 31 straight hours this Black Friday. The only way to truly understand the reality of a 31-hour workday is to dive in at its darkest hour. So I did.



Sapna Maheshwari for BuzzFeed


Why would anyone go shopping at Old Navy at 3 a.m.?



This question has intrigued me ever since I read about Old Navy's Black Friday plans earlier this month. The chain announced it would stay open for an "unprecedented 31 hours" straight, starting at 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving and ending at 11 p.m. on Black Friday.


Thirty-one straight hours! By that logic, I reasoned, people must actually want to go to Old Navy at 2, 3, even 4 a.m. I found this...astonishing.



Millions of Americans are drawn to Black Friday deals like moths to a flame; for many, it has a magnetism akin to Ryan Gosling's smile, a pull like that of Disneyland to a child. The retail industry, dramatically, calls this weekend "the Super Bowl of shopping."


But Old Navy! It's not Walmart, where the discounts on flat-screen TVs and tablets are enough to rally tryptophan-soaked bodies from boozy slumber into a consumer battleground.


And it's not the outlet stores, where I've witnessed women succumb to a form of midnight hysteria uniquely triggered by dirt-cheap Kate Spade bags and cut-rate Le Creuset dishes. No, if you're going to Old Navy at 3 a.m., you're up in the dead of the night for $8 fleeces and $3 socks that are also for sale online and during the rest of the day. So why? Why? Why would you go at that hour?


I needed to find out. And that's how I ended up in the mostly empty parking lot of the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Connecticut, at 3 a.m. on Black Friday.




View Entire List ›




via IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment