I’m not much on Adbusters, but in case anyone’s interested here’s their roundup of stuff on this year’s Buy Nothing Day. My youngest brother works in retail, so he spent the day selling things.
I was out of town visiting family this past weekend. My brother worked a 3am-3pm shift Friday. We stayed up late hanging out the night before. I turned in around 11 or midnite. He decided he’d just stay up all night then go to work. He was afraid he wouldn’t wake up to his alarm otherwise. He’s a teenager so he can still sort of pull off stuff like that. We were going to go out after work, but he sent me a text message around 10am saying he was too tired. Fair enough.
When he got home he grinned with bleary eyes, said he’d seen two fist fights at work, people in a frenzy to take advantage of sales on electronics items, each grabbing the same item at the same time, tempers flaring in the crowded store.
He said a big muscley guy knocked him over. The guy was rushing to grab something big an expensive, a plasma screen TV I think it was, shouldered my brother aside. He got up, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” The guy blinked, “what did you say?” “You heard me. Who the fuck do you think you are?” “Okay little man, you wanna go?” My brother called security, they came over, called the cops, took the guy out in handcuffs and banned him from the store. Shortly thereafter a woman found the guy’s cart full of expensive electronics items. “Is this someone’s cart?” “Nope.” “Oh great, it’s got the things I wanted and most of them aren’t on the shelves anymore.” He convinced her to buy the warrantees on most items.