The Math of Black Friday Fallacy

[captain_slinky]

There's a news item today about two ladies who are camped out in front of a Best Buy THREE WEEKS before the "Black Friday" sale in order to get a 50" Flt Screen TV for $199 (normally $499). The news is all about "LOL how cray-cray" and "Well in these harsh economic times blah blah blah", but look at the math:

These ladies are spending 24/7 away from their families for this deal, meaning they don't have any real commitments or obligations AT ALL that would keep them from getting a menial, minimum-wage job for those 3 weeks.

Considering that the National Minimum Wage is $7.25 an hour, if they were to work just 40 hours a week (and they would most likely get more hours than that considering that it would likely be two part-time minimum wage jobs, say Pizza Delivery and Gas Station Attendant) they would have $870 in gross pay - even after taxes, that's enough for each of them to buy the giant TV, a Blu Ray player AND a couple of movies at regular price which would further bolster the local economy!

AND they wouldn't have to be known as "Those Crazy Black Friday Ladies"!

Comments

[aurora77]

Hey! You read TMS, too? I love that site.

I refuse to do Black Friday. People get so scary about over a deal sometimes. I agree that it doesn't make any sense to sit out there for three weeks, but there might be slightly more to it.

One of the husbands commented on having a fixed income. It could be that they just can't find work that pays well enough to justify the effort AND the loss of a portion of their fixed income if it's something like unemployment or another form that adjusts for additional income.

Or maybe they both got really annoyed by their husbands and decided to have some Girl Time away and make their husbands take care of everything, with the excuse of the Black Friday sales. XD

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

I really need to stress that this isn't a "Get a job, Hippie" post, but a "The amount of effort and time you are putting in to saving $300 is worth nearly three times as much as the potential savings" post. They would only have to work some 45 hours in those three weeks, at minimum wage, to make up the difference. Instead they are dedicating 500+ hours of their lives AND risking their health AND facing a potentially deadly Black Friday Mob for what works out to about 60 cents an hour.

Mathematically, it just doesn't make sense!