By Chace Alvarez
Black Friday is the name given to the day following Thanksgiving, which starts the Christmas shopping season. Many College of Southern Nevada students work this intense day.
Most major retailers open extremely early on Black Friday and offer promotional deals that are unheard of. For example, in the past some flat screens were offered for $150 at Best Buy.
Statistic Brain, a website that houses data on many topics, reported $57.4 million was spent on Black Friday last year. The average consumer spent $407.
The annual number of people who shop at stores and online on Black Friday tallies 307 million, according to Statistic Brain. That is nearly the entire U.S. population. Of those shoppers, 23 percent camp out at the stores arriving around midnight.
At midnight or earlier some students rush to work for Black Friday. Students working on this day tend to have long shifts sometimes working 10 to 12 hours straight.
CSN student Valentin Sanchez, who works at Gap Inc., said, “This is the first time I’m working Black Friday. I’m just going to try to focus on the task at hand. I think it’s going to be a good experience and fun. Everyone seems too stressed when working on Black Friday. I’m kind of looking forward to that day.”
Sanchez plans to work long hours with little sleep. “I study on my days off of school and weekends,” Sanchez said. “Normally I’m tired after school and work, so Black Friday will kind of mess with my sleeping schedule for a day.”
PacSun at Galleria at Sunset mall
Stephanee Parent, CSN student who works at PacSun and Michael Kors, worked the last three years on Black Friday. She said, “I really have no idea how I make it through it. I really try to just set some goals for the night and have fun. It also helps that you get pay-and-a-half. I’m really hoping to sleep for most of the day afterward.”
“I don’t think I will be affected by being up all day Thanksgiving and then going to work later on,” Parent added.
CSN student Josh Julil will be working at Express Inc. and Crocs Retail on Black Friday. Julil said, “Last year I worked from 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. It really helps when you have experience working Black Friday; I have a better grasp on how the day will go.”
“It really gets stressful when it starts to get packed and the register lines gets backed up,” Julil explained. “I’m not looking forward for the day but it does help with getting paid more.”
Coyote Student News at the College of Southern Nevada 