Thanksgiving break can provide a welcome interlude in Fall Quarter, allowing students to take a breath, reflect and give thanks.
I’m just kidding. We don’t have Thanksgiving weekend anymore, just Black Friday weekend — the best chance for students to fill that inner void by spending inordinate sums on shit they don’t need.
But there aren’t many places in Davis for Black Friday deals, as transfer students Jason Dielz and Lois Price learned last year.
“We thought we were so smart waiting in line early at this little shop downtown for five hours,” Dielz said. “It turns out we weren’t actually in line, we were just standing with a group a homeless people outside the shop.”
According to Ivana Moorshitte, a sophomore at Davis High School, Target is the best spot in town for experiencing Black Friday.
“I have a great memory of watching my dad beat someone with a shovel at Target so we could get a new TV,” Moorshitte said. “Every year, this event brings us together and lets us show how thankful we are for each other by going to extreme lengths to buy material goods.”
Black Friday isn’t just about deals; it’s also about the holiday spirit, as UC Davis third-year Ton Def’s heartwarming story demonstrates.
“I had just left Starbucks with my pumpkin spice latte and was waiting for my Uber,” Def said. “There was a homeless man holding a sign that said ‘Happy Thanksgiving, Anything Helps,’ and I was so moved. I just had to help, so I gave him my old iPhone case because I was on my way to get several new ones, and I thought, ‘Everyone has an iPhone, so who wouldn’t want a spare case? It’s always nice to have a variety of colors.’ When I handed him the case, I could really tell how stunned he was.”
With so much positivity in the air, it can be easy to forget that many retail workers can’t enjoy Thanksgiving with their families. Luckily, most understand that they are contributing to the greater good.
“As a minimum wage retail worker trying to support my family, there is nothing I would rather do than help strangers buy as much as they can fit into their cars,” said Target employee Kent Standett. “It really inspires and motivates me to know that if I continue doing this instead of spending time with my wife and kids, I’ll eventually be able to earn my way to the other side of that check stand and waste my money, too.”
One year at Target, Davis’s wild turkeys terrorized a group of shoppers, but our sources indicate that the irony and poetic justice of the incident was entirely lost on the victims. The holiday spirit, however, certainly was not.
“I really proved that I don’t need old traditions like Thanksgiving to feel thankful,” said fourth-year Renata Kash. “After I bought my new shoes, jackets, headphones, selfie stick, video game consoles, speakers, blender, coffee maker, label maker, ice cream maker, fro-yo maker, panini maker, bread maker, cotton candy maker, button badge maker, juice maker, crepe maker, waffle maker, ice maker, rice maker, spice maker and white noise maker, I felt so thankful that my parents still give me money.”
Written by: Benjamin Porter — bbporter@ucdavis.edu
