So it was amusing to observe the fanfare of Black Friday shopping so soon after writing a post on the value of time. I had just finished preparing for bed, and was deciding what time to get up the next morning, when it dawned on me that BestBuy's midnight opening was only a few minutes away. Instead of trying to get up reasonably early the next morning to pick through whatever sale items were left, I could go immediately, and then sleep in later. Since I was not at all tired (common problem late at night) I decided to go for it, just for the adventure of it, if nothing else. That was a good approach to take, because as it turned out, there was nothing else.
I was under the illusion that I might be lucky enough to avoid a major crowd, since this midnight opening is a relatively new marketing approach. I arrived at the store about a minute before it opened, and saw that the line to get in was wrapped a couple hundred yards around the shopping complex. Undeterred, I headed to the back of the line as the crowd was herded into the store. As we got closer to the entrance, I noticed a variety of things strewn on the ground as evidence that some people had arrived here long before I did. They had probably spent much of their Thanksgiving holiday waiting to be the first into the store, while it took me about 5 minutes to enter from the back of the line. The only difference was, that they qualified for some of the more lucrative deals offered inside.
The question is, what is the value of those deals? We occasionally hear on the news about people waiting for days to be the first to get an iPhone or xBox or Playstation, which at the time is irreplaceable. But the unique value of that item only lasts for a few days or weeks, until the supply catches up with the demand. When that time is spent waiting for a discount, the value of that time should be compared to the value of the discount, and to the need for the item in question. Being placed a-thousand-something back in line, I missed out on the headline deals, but still had the opportunity to save money on lots of TVs, consoles, and computers, none of which I really needed. So I spent a few minutes wandering around evaluating whether the potential savings on a number of smaller items I could use, like DVDs and USB sticks, was worth the time I would be spending in the next line, to check out. Then I took the only rational approach, and headed off to bed.
Less than twelve hours later, I was at Home Depot, and I didn't walk out of there empty handed. I aimed to miss the initial rush, but was glad to be there on a day when all of the vendors and service people were onsite for my favorite game of stump-the-salesman. After a lot of detailed technical questions and some phone calls, they satisfied my concerns about their products meeting my expectations, and I ended up with a cartful of things I actually needed, for far less than I budgeted.
That's not to say I regret the BestBuy adventure; it cost less than an hour of my time, which probably would have otherwise been spent staring at the ceiling trying to sleep, wondering if I was missing out on some great opportunity. But I don't wonder at all whether it would have been worth it to spend all day waiting in line early, to save some more money on a bunch of things I don't really need. My time is worth more than that.
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