It’s that time of year again. You know the time I am talking about: When you get two thousand new emails everyday from various stores reminding you that they are having “crazy” sales. Pre-Black Friday sales, Black Friday sales, Cyber Monday sales and whatever other kind of sales their marketing team came up with this year. I am seriously getting tired of deleting all those emails. But you know what is even worse? That, to be honest, most of the sales aren’t even that great. 

Let me take a step back. I didn’t grow up in America, so Black Friday and its tag-along sales are quite a new concept for me. Last year I don’t know where I was that I missed this whole thing. But fast forward to this year, where I am a lot more culturally aware and ready to shop.  And don’t get me wrong, I love shopping and I love sales. There’s a reason why I’m currently waiting for 14 packages and the mailroom probably hates me. My main problem with Black Friday is how much hype it gets and then when you actually go to look at the sales, they are not exactly impressive.  Isn’t it so disappointing when you’re excited to get something on sale and then you see that it’s not on sale, or it goes from $145 to $139.99? 

The online sales rarely differ from regular seasonal sales, or sales that happen on other days. Especially when they do the whole Pre-Black Friday thing. Firstly, that takes away from the excitement of Black Friday, like there’s an entire week of sales. Also it comes with additional stress of deciding whether you should buy what you want now or wait until actual Black Friday for a better deal. What is even sadder is when some of those sales are better than the ones on actual Black Friday. Isn’t the point of Black Friday having the best sales? And then Cyber Monday is also a thing, so I really do not understand why it feels like everyone is out to stop Black Friday from being special. 

Then you get the “not so special sale.” I’m sorry but if your discount for signing up is 15 percent, and your Black Friday sale is also 15 percent, you are not doing Black Friday right. Why even advertise that you are having a Black Friday sale if it’s nothing special?! I also love the stores whose Black Friday special is free delivery. Like that’s nice and stuff but is the free shipping worth all the hype? 

Going to an actual store is a nightmare of its own. A lot of people packed in a small store like sardines in a can, some even going crazy over some of the things they find. It even gets aggressive. I watched a woman running around like crazy getting things like it is the end of the world. I understand that buying things on sale is great, but do you really have to get so crazy? And for what? Maybe 30 percent off if you are lucky? I am yet to find one sale that is actually worth all the hype. 

What is even worse is that most of the time the stuff that is actually worth buying is not even on sale. They have crazy sales on clearance and other things no one really wants. This Black Friday I was looking for a new muffin tin because my old one is rusty and scary. Nothing crazy, right? All I want is a muffin tin. What did I not find this Black Friday? You guessed it: a freaking muffin tin. Everything that I found was either not on sale or seemed more expensive than they are normally. 

Speaking of absurdity, there’s a website called Black Friday Death Count, which keeps track of all the deaths and injuries that happened during Black Friday. As of today, there have been 12 deaths and 117 injuries since 2010. Isn’t that crazy? People died on Black Friday while shopping, and a lot of others got injured. Is a bunch of stuff really worth it?  

Am I confused about something? Because I feel like a kid who just found out that Santa does not exist. This is supposed to be the greatest shopping day of the year, but to me it was the biggest disappointment of the year.