Black Friday: the day after Thanksgiving, known for its low prices and swarming crowds. Black Friday has been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005.

On this unofficial holiday, most stores open extremely early and offer shoppers low prices to traditionally kick off the holiday season. Teenagers and adults alike wait outside of store and mall entrances for the much anticipated Black Friday midnight openings.  The discounted items seem to draw in intimidatingly large groups of people, which can leave the average shopper wondering if the low prices are worth facing the crowds.

When I was younger, my parents would never allow me to go shopping on Black Friday. The extra early wakeup to go to a jam-packed mall or store never appealed to them. As I’ve gotten older, I have been able to experience firsthand just why my parents never wanted to take me out on Black Friday.

In 2011 I went shopping on Black Friday for the first and soon to be last time.

I went to Park Meadows in Denver, which is a mall that is crowded a majority of the time, because it is located in the state capital. However, despite hearing Black Friday horror stories of innocent shoppers being trampled by mobs of people, I was still determined to find great deals and have a successful shopping day.

The parking was terrible. There were few available parking spaces that everyone seemed to want. However, that was nothing compared to the inside of the mall. Getting around the mall was a tedious task. Everyone was in a hurry and had little concern for where others needed to go. It seemed that every possible space in the mall had someone filling it, which made for a very claustrophobic environment. 

Finding clothes (whether or not they were the right size was a different story) in the stores was easy, because garments covered the floor from where irresponsible shoppers had thrown them. Others desperate to find a sale frantically searching throughout the store created a mood of panic. After about three hours of being bumped into, rushed, and finding absolutely nothing, I left the mall feeling disappointed.

Because of this frustrating experience, I have never gone shopping on Black Friday again. Although I’m absolutely sure many people have successfully shopped on Black Friday with little or no problems, people should know what they’re getting into before they brave the crowds for those discounts.