Before I lived online and was staying up until the early am to edit emails and blog posts, I worked retail. For almost 18 years. At two very different, family run chains. One was strictly bargain basement, the other upscale and well-known on a global scale. Some of it was fun. Some was not. And some of it was downright horrible. (Saving the truly horrendous material for my book, it'll be one of those true life, tell-alls disguised as a novel, along the same lines of Devil Wears Prada or Retail Hell.) Where exactly am I going with this? Well, next Friday happens to be Black Friday (**Shudders**), which was named as such because it gave stores that were in the red (loss) the chance to get a leg up and into the black (profit) for the year, back when it was still one of the busiest shopping days of the entire year.

With the rise and rise in popularity of online shopping, and the advent of another day called Cyber Monday, Black Friday began to decline as a powerhouse. A lot of people still believed the hype tho. Especially when it came to things like mid priced to higher end clothing. (Uh, no, no, and NO!) They would stroll in after coffee or call to find out whether or not that jacket, cashmere (sweater, scarf, pair of socks or loungewear) or other dreamy item they'd been coveting for the last month or two had been discounted. Guess what? It wasn't. Not usually. Not during my time in the retail trenches anyway. They felt played and that scenario that revolved around inquiring about discounts played out all frigging weekend long. (All the more reason to take a half dozen mental health, ooops I mean coffee breaks.)

Want a look behind the curtain to find out what did do to get ready for Blk Fri? We would move the already picked over clearance racks to a more visible location and wrap things up by maybe adding in a sweater/top/jacket that had been sent specifically for DAX (That's Day After Thanksgiving for you non-retail peeps out there). Now, let me be crystal clear, we would snicker and mock these because they were more often than not tacky and we hated them. At this point, it's only fitting to quote Alicia Silverstone's Cher Horowitz in the 90's hit movie Clueless, as if! As if we liked them, as if we would wear them, as if these were the same quality as what we normally carried...You get the pic.

So, if you're planning on hitting the department store circuit starting at 12:01 am next Friday morning, and it's an annual event for you and your daughters, you and your sisters or you and your besties , then fantastic! By all means. Commence with the bonding time. Wear sweats, get coffee, make the rounds, try stuff on, have a complaint fest/talk sh*t over breakfast, and then crash. Have some laughs. Have a girls' day out. Just don't expect that Italian leather, cashmere knit or bag to be deep discounted.

Ciao for Now,

Patty J