'It's Black Friday," she said. "Want to go to Wally World?"
"Wait," I replied. "I have to reload."
A seasoned shopper would be better prepared. Down in the U.S., where the Black Friday tradition is more deeply entrenched, no self-respecting consumer would ever run out of ammo.
There was, in fact, so much mayhem in the U.S. that the hashtag #WalmartFights was trending on Twitter. The mega-chain was one of a dozen retailers to jump the gun (probably an assault rifle) and kick off its holiday sales frenzy a day early this year, opening on the American Thanksgiving holiday Thursday.
A man was stabbed after pulling a gun in a dispute over a parking space in Virginia. An officer was left with a broken wrist after three separate fights erupted over line-budging in California. A guy who assaulted another cop got pepper sprayed in a New Jersey store. An Ohio woman was trampled. Several videos of in-store mob scenes were posted, including one in which a woman can be heard screaming "oh my God" during a melee over flat-screen televisions in North Carolina.
And that's just the Walmarts.
Elsewhere, police shot a shoplifter who tried to drive off with a cop stuck in his car door outside an Illinois Kohl's. In Las Vegas, a robber shot a man who had just bought a TV. One woman used a stun gun on another as they duked it out in a Philadelphia mall. By Friday night, the website BlackFridayDeathCount .com had upped its running tally of shopping-related casualties to five dead and 81 injured since 2006.
No such nastiness here in Victoria.
Maybe we'll get snarlier after B.C. allows liquor sales in grocery stores and we show up for the sales all Rob Forded on President's Choice tequila, but for now our mob scenes tend to involve a thousand people trying to politely hold the door for each other at the same time.
Our stores did have big crowds on Friday. Even though it was a working day here, we flocked to the deals just like they did in the States. Uptown, Mayfair, downtown -- bleary-eyed bargain-hunters rolled out of bed and queued up in a manner more commonly associated with Boxing Day as merchants opened early.
This is the first year Victorians have fully embraced the Black Friday shopping experience. It might seem strange to see us copycat American holiday shoppers on a day that is not a Canadian holiday (wonder how many people begged off work with the Friday Flu), but for retailers these Black Friday sales are really an act of self-defence. They have to offer deep discounts to plug the drain of Canadians going south.
Cross-border shopping re-emerged as an issue in 2007 when the loonie, which for 30 years had languished as the Great Northern Peso, suddenly shot up to parity with the U.S. dollar. Vancouver Island retailers were somewhat protected by geography, the cost and hassle of crossing the moat to the U.S. deterring consumers, but have recently seen that advantage eroded by the rise of online shopping and the increase in duty-free limits.
It creates a moral dilemma for shoppers, who must decide at what point purchasing power outweighs patriotism. Strange how we work ourselves into a lather over raw log exports, demanding that the government stop allowing jobs to be shipped abroad, yet remain mum when it's our own consumer choices that put our neighbours out of work and bleed the local economy.
Friday's TV news showed a B.C. shopper in Bellingham, gleefully crowing about paying just $15 for an item that would have cost her $40 in Canada; perhaps she would like to call the Bellingham Fire Department when her house goes up in flames, as that's where her taxes are going.
Of course, the moral dilemmas can be avoided when the local merchants offer screaming deals of their own, ones that allow Victorians to save money without having to bring a passport or brush up on their close-combat skills.
As for those who wrinkle their noses at the Black Friday frenzy, they can still shop in the traditional Canadian manner, desperately buying iTunes cards from 7-Eleven after work on Christmas Eve.
