Written by Shannon Yang
On one Ohio Thanksgiving, math teacher Jessica Hexsel’s family finished dinner early to line up at Best Buy. Though Hexsel didn’t need to buy anything,
she tagged along with her family to find a deal on a laptop. Upon arrival at 6:30 p.m., however, 100 people were already in front of them.
Soon, it started snowing. “I did not have enough clothing or gloves or hats,” Hexsel said. “We took turns going to the nearby gas station to refill our coffee so that everybody was warm and staying awake.”
Hexsel was never a fan of Black Friday. “People were pushing past me and I was super passive,” she said. “I didn’t care if I got in. I kept getting pushed back.”
Now, Hexsel avoids Black Friday. “It’s crazy that the stores profit from making the deals seem like they’re a lot better than normal days, but really they’re not that much better,” she said. “They play on people who don’t have a lot of money, making them feel like that is the time when they can afford more things, and you’re asking people to sacrifice time with their families to be able to afford things.”
Looking back, Hexsel thinks the situation was ridiculous. “The fact that it snowed and we still stayed outside the whole time and didn’t give up because we really could have gone home at any time, and the fact that we stayed sitting there for hours for really no reason whatsoever is the funniest thing to me,” she said.
