For most Americans, the season of Thanksgiving is a time set aside to be spent with family and other loved ones. 

But for more and more Americans each year, it means dollar signs and consumerism at its, ahem, finest.

Black Friday, as it has been dubbed, is the day after Thanksgiving when retail outlets, grocery stores and all sorts of shopping centers open their doors with otherwise unheard of sales and deals on an array of products. Consumers across the country typically flock to these places looking for the best deal for their money, sometimes even causing violent and dangerous overcrowding issues in the competition-like atmosphere.

Chelsea Jones, a senior mass communications major at Missouri Southern, has experienced this social phenomenon firsthand the last two years as an employee of Bath & Body Works in the Northpark Mall. Jones said her store, and several others in the mall, opened even before Black Friday began, some as early as 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

“I have never been a Black Friday shopper, ever,” she said. “I’ve never been crazy enough to go out and even attempt that. There is nothing in my life that is worth getting out in that craziness, but I work there now and I worked there last year. Out of, I think there’s 1,600 stores in the Bath & Body Works company, we’re always in the top 15. We make over 100 grand every year, at the Northpark Mall, which I think is crazy in itself.”

Jones said Bath & Body Works in Joplin opened at 11:24 p.m. this year, and shoppers had already lined up at the entrance to the store by then. 

“We open the door and they just flood in,” Jones said. 

“It’s just like a sea of people, just a solid wall. By like five minutes after we’re open, there is a giant line literally out the door of the store. And I mean it’ll be solid traffic for at least four or five hours. Constant, absolutely constant; you don’t even have time to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, it’s just a solid wall of people. And then, you know, you get to about 4 or 5 in the morning, and it starts to wear off a little, and that’s when everyone’s kind of delusional that’s still working, they’re just trying to get through it … It’s kind of exciting I guess, when you are first there and you’re getting ready to start the shift, everyone is excited. Surprisingly, we really don’t have that many rude people, most people that are shopping are having a good time and having fun, which makes my job a lot easier. You’ll have shoppers high-fiving you and having fun and telling you how excited they are about their purchases.”

Numbers for this year’s Black Friday were up, as they have steadily climbed in recent years. 

Some professionals may say that this could be a sign of a finally up-turning economy that has been in recession for multiple years, but Dr. Richard La Near, professor of finance, said he doesn’t believe the Black Friday shopping craze has a significant impact on the economy.

“I hear this every year, ‘The sales were good.’ So I guess people, now people are looking for a snippet of good news, ‘cause there’s hardly any good news out there. This was a little whiff of good news. But I hear this every year on Black Friday … doesn’t mean that much to me, because almost every Thanksgiving I’m hearing, ‘Oh the sales were great, the sales were great, we’re gonna have a great year, we’re gonna have a great year.'”

Jones said she was somewhat concerned with the message that is conveyed by the rampant consumerism, especially around the Christmas season. 

“It’s not about what the holiday season is about, it’s about what you’ll buy, which kind of twists the message a little bit, I think,” she said.

Jones also said enjoyed her experience working on Black Friday, and said caffeine was an essential part of preparing for a graveyard shift on the busiest shopping day of the year.

“I took a little bit of a nap, and then you get up, you start doing like, 5-Hour Energy shots, you’ll have a Coke or a Dr. Pepper, you have those bottles of water behind you during your shift and you’re ready to go, you’ve just got to get through it. It is kind of an adrenaline rush, there’s just so many people. It amazes me, as small as Joplin is, where all these people come from to shop. I’m just totally blown away.”