Even among a down economy, holiday shoppers have been on the prowl over the past week with retailers offering mega savings on Black Friday through Cyber Monday, with most deals lasting until Christmas.
One of the biggest shopping days of the year, Black Friday, had heavy competition from Thanksgiving Thursday since many of the talked about sales started at 8 p.m. on the once traditional holiday.  
Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Sears got an edge on the competition starting their sales earlier than years past.  With stores opening earlier, employees were expected to report to work earlier than usual.  
Marion Coleman, mass communication senior, said she had to be at work at K-Mart for 5:30 a.m., when the store opened at 6:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day until 5:00 p.m. that day.  After her shift on Thanksgiving, she was expected back on Black Friday at 4:30 a.m. for the store to open at 5:00 a.m.  
“We may have had one hour to catch our breath on Thanksgiving Day,” Coleman said.  “We couldn’t have a break for more than 10 or 15 minutes because it was so busy.”  
Coleman said there were people camping outside of the store with their children as early as 7 p.m. Wednesday night for saving on items such as 32 inch TVs for $97 and 50 inch TVs for $288.  
“Children would split up from their parents to get everything they needed,” Coleman said.  “They literally used their children as toy soldiers.”  
ShopperTrak, a retail technology company that analyzes foot traffic data and identifies opportunities for retailers, reported that foot traffic in stores increased 3.5 percent on Black Friday for a total of 307.67 million store visits.
Bill Martin, ShopperTrak founder, said, “Black Friday continues to be an important day in retail.”  
However, actual sales in retail stores for Black Friday decreased 1.8 percent, with shoppers spending an estimate of $11.2 billion.  The decline in sales are a result of people waiting to shop online for Cyber Monday and the early start of sales on Thanksgiving Day.    
“This year more retailers than last year began their ‘doorbuster’ deals on Thursday, Thanksgiving itself,” Martin said.  “So while foot traffic did increase on Friday, those Thursday deals attracted some of the spending that’s usually meant for Friday.”  
Compared to Black Friday in 2011, ShopperTrak reported an increase in foot traffic shopping in the Midwest by 12.9 percent, 7.6 percent in the Northeast and 8.7 percent in the South, while the West saw an 11.3 percent decrease in retail foot traffic.  The increase in the Northeast is significant since some residents are still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which hit land nearly a month ago.  
“Black Friday shopping continues to expand into Thanksgiving Day and will impact the way we look at all of the ‘Black’ weekend results, since more shopping hours allows for more shopping visits and a smoothing of sales across all of the days,” Martin said.  
Overall, “Black Weekend,” the beginning period of spending for the holidays from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, has seen an increase in sales since 2010.  In 2011, consumers spent $11.4 billion on Black Friday, which was a steady increase from the $10.69 billion spent in 2010.  
According to a National Retail Federation survey conducted by BIGinsight, shoppers spent an average of $423 on Black Friday compared to $398 last year.  
Reporting for duty
As many retailers engaged customers with earlier sales that started Thursday night, it also meant that many workers had to leave their families and change their plans for a holiday they once considered a day off to be thankful for, and report to work to manage the large crowds of shoppers.  
Elizabeth Bergeron, marine biology freshman from Houma, said she had to report to work at Wal-Mart on Thanksgiving at 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. Black Friday morning.
She said the crowds of shoppers were nonstop, and most of the complaints from customers were about items not meeting their price expectations.  
“This was my first Black Friday even leaving my house.  I had been warned all week about how busy it would be so I wasn’t surprised,” Bergeron said.  “There was no room to walk or move in the store, and I was scared I would be trampled, but it all turned out good.”  
Before Black Friday, Wal-Mart was already considered one of the most controversial companies in the United States and has been the focus of labor unions and workers who complain about low wages, poor benefits and the lack of opportunities to express their opinions.  
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported a week before Thanksgiving that some of Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million employees were leaving their jobs for protests and strikes against the company for their uncompromising attitudes toward opinions and schedule requests.  
A union called “Making Change at Wal-Mart,” which organized protests in Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Los Angeles and more cities and states across the U.S., supports Wal-Mart workers who left their jobs in fear of retaliation from management.  
Wal-Mart workers who protested told Bloomberg BusinessWeek the protests were meant to catch the attention of the company when it needs their workers the most during the busy holiday season.   
 “Today, working on holidays carries no guarantee of extra pay, and not working can mean losing one’s job,” Shamus Kahn, sociology professor at Columbia University, said in TIME Ideas.  “Americans have a choice of helping these workers regain the protections, or walking past them in order to shop for more things.”  
Cyber Monday Prevails
With technology on the rise over the last decade, it has become easier for Americans to shop online, and the amount of money spent online for Black Friday surpassed last year’s numbers.  
The large crowds and long lines presented by Black Friday are a contributing factor to online shoppers who do not want to deal with the chaos of the shopping weekend.  
Online Black Friday sales reached $1.04 billion this year from $816 million last year, according to ComScore, an Internet technology company that tracks web activity.    
To draw a close to one of the busiest weekends in retail, ComScore projects spending on Cyber Monday, to come close to $1 billion.  Many online offers extend past Cyber Monday and shoppers have the opportunity to take advantage of the sales throughout the holiday season.