It’s not even Halloween and there’s already a guy camped out for BLACK FRIDAY. Seriously. How sad is that?
A guy named Kevin Sutton put up a tent outside a Best Buy in Orlando, Florida (shocker that he’s in Florida, right?) on Sunday to wait in line for Black Friday. That means he’ll be there for 33 DAYS before the doors finally open.
He says he has two goals. One: raise awareness for homeless children. And two: get a big TV.
Our question what is he really doing to help homeless children? Is he taking donations while sitting out there to donate to a local shelter? Drake feels that he could really just say he was raising awareness for anything, but is his heart really in it, or is he just wanting the press? Kinda fishy, right?
As far as we know, he’s the first person in line for Black Friday this year. Last year, two women in Texas lined up 18 days early. So Kevin will easily break their record. Well, not easily. Handily. But it won’t be easy.
He’s not planning to leave his post except to go to the bathroom. But Best Buy’s decided to be nice enough to let him use theirs during business hours. Hopefully no one brings him any food that will make his tummy all rumbly in the middle of the night.
On the other side of the coin, the camping gear chain REI just changed the game. Instead of opening as early as possible, they just announced they’re going to CLOSE all 143 of their stores on Black Friday AND give all 12,000 of their employees a PAID day off.
It’s part of a campaign to get people to go outside and enjoy themselves. Their website will still be up, but they won’t have any special Black Friday promotions, and they won’t process the orders until Saturday.
It’s a pretty bold move, and it’ll definitely cost them millions in sales. But their CEO says, quote, “We define success a little differently. It’s much broader than money. How do we get people outside?”
Good on you REI! Hopefully more people will take notes and give people the chance to stay home for the holidays!