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The Joy of Tech sorts out the folks who shop -or don’t- for Christmas gifts. You can see a larger version at the site if the print is too small here. Which one are you? Link -via Nag on the Lake
Two guys write weird and funny shopping lists for each other and then goes into a store to try to get those items, without having any idea what’s actually on the list.
via Reddit
What do you get for the person who has needs nothing? Instead of something that will collect dust, you can show your love and appreciation by helping those who do need something -in the name of your loved one. Help a third-world family start a business. Contribute to the building of new homes. Do your bit for disaster relief. Bring clean water to a community. Protect an endangered species. You can even give a gift card that can be used at a variety of charities. Web Ecoist has a list of 14 organizations that will channel your gift money to those who need it most, and notify your gift recipient about what you’ve done. Link
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Usually, clerk errors are not good things. Even if it is an error in our favor, the best we can hope for is a free grocery item turning up in our bag. But for one woman in Georgia, a clerk’s error ended up resulting in a $25 million winning lottery ticket. That’s because she asked for a Mega Millions ticket, but the clerk gave her a Powerball ticket with the same numbers. Luckily, the woman decided not to return the ticket and ended up becoming the state’s newest millionaire.
Link Via Consumerist Image Via doncav [Flickr]
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Ladies,
does your man have a short retail attention span? Well, he no longer has
any valid excuse for not going shopping with you now that IKEA has a dedicated
room for your retail-phobic boyfriend or husband:
MÄNLAND is being trialled for four days this Father's Day weekend as a male-only play space to hang out in while wives and girlfriends peruse the aisles.
Publicity manager Jude Leon said the idea was modelled on the Swedish furniture giant’s existing child play area, SMALAND.
Ms Leon said women were given a buzzer to remind them to collect their other half after 30 minutes of shopping.
Sexist? Maybe. Genius? Definitely. Link - via The Week
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Things You Didn't Know About IKEA
I chuckle at this card by Fomato about shopping at Target because it's so true! Link - via bb-blog
Sure if you want something done in life you should probably just do it yourself, but not many dogs have been willing to take this advice to heart…until Jesse the Jack Russell.
Via I Has A Hot Dog
There are 16 states that help with back-to-school shopping by declaring “tax-free weekends,” meaning no state sales tax on certain items during certain days. States running the program this weekend include Alabama, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Iowa, Louisiana, and Arkansas, although exact dates vary.
Before you get too excited though, I should make note of the fact that most states place a dollar limit on what is tax-exempt. For example, Alabama’s tax holiday offers a tax break on any articles of clothing $100 or less. This means that a pair of jeans costing $125 would be taxed but a jacket for $99 would be tax-free, so be aware of any specific rules your state may have during tax holidays.
To help out, BargainJack has assembled a handy chart detailing the dates and limitations for each state, with links to government information. Link
South Koreans have some of the longest work hours in the world, which makes it difficult for them to go grocery shopping. To counter the problem (and to help their market share), Tesco installed virtual grocery stores in the subway stations where items can be ordered via QR code and later be delivered to the person’s home.
Shopaholics rejoice! Don’t let my wife reads this, but turns out that shopping – frequent shopping no less – is good for your health!
Those who shopped daily were 27% less likely to die, with male daily shoppers 28% less likely to die, compared with female shoppers who were 23% less likely to die.
The authors acknowledge that shopping could be a surrogate for good health to begin with, but suggest that shopping itself may improve health, by ensuring a good supply of food, to maintain a healthy diet, for example.
Frequent shopping among the elderly may not always be about buying things, but about seeking companionship or taking exercise, which is easier to do than more formal exercise that usually requires motivation, they say.
So, let me spin it this way to you: Go shop at the NeatoShop and live longer! Yay! Link
Ever been lost in an IKEA store? It’s not your fault – turns out the store was actually designed like a maze. Why? Elementary, my dear Watson: it’s so you shop more!
The home furnishing chain’s mazy layouts are a psychological weapon to part shoppers from their cash, an expert in store design claims. The theory is that while following a zig-zag trail between displays of minimalist Swedish furniture, a disorientated Ikea customer feels compelled to pick up a few extra impulse purchases.
According to Alan Penn, director of the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment at University College London, Ikea’s strategy is similar to that of out-of-town retail parks – keep customers inside for as long as they can.
‘In Ikea’s case, you have to follow a set path past what is effectively their catalogue in physical form, with furniture placed in different settings which is meant to show you how adaptable it is,’ he said. ‘By the time you get to the warehouse where you can actually buy the stool or whatever’s caught your eye, you’re so impressed by how cheap it is that you end up getting it.’
Combine a well-trained dog with a helpful grocer, and you may never have to leave the house again! Zhang Tiegang of Changsha, China trained his dog Deng Deng to go shopping. Deng Deng is outfitted with a special harness and saddlebags, and is sent to the store on his own.
Tiegang said: ‘He just loves to carry things. He started by begging to carry things home in his mouth so I built a little saddle for him and attached some shopping bags.
‘He’s so good at it now that I can just send him to the shop with some money and a list in one of his bags and he comes home with the food and the change.’
There’s no word on how skilled Deng Deng is at selecting the freshest produce. Link -via Rue the Day
(Image credit: CEN)
Lorie and Ryan Davenport are camped out in front of Best Buy in St. Petersburg, Florida, so they will be first in line for the Black Friday sale a full week from today. They switch off heir duties with another couple, and say they are saving places for ten people altogether, but this might tend to put a crimp in their Thanksgiving holiday.
“We’ve been doing this for six years now and we got beat out by the same guy for the last six years,” said Lorie Davenport. “So this year, we said, this might be our last year, it might be our last hurrah, so we’re coming extra early if we have to because we are gonna be first if it kills us.”
After getting an OK from Best Buy management, the Davenports are now in it for the long haul.
Although the couple say they’re not sure what they’ll buy when the doors open at 5 a.m. next Friday, they are hoping for a good deal on a large-screen TV or perhaps something from the Apple Mac line.
Shopping is very important to some people. Link -via J-Walk Blog
People get a little crazy when an item they want goes on sale, or becomes available during a shortage. Some have been injured, or even killed over a simple act of shopping.
Mass shopping can be like mass religion… what starts as a joyful experience can many times spiral into cold-hearted brutality showing the unfortunate soiled underbelly of mankind. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we are, at our core, irrational animals. So the next time you consider getting that “hot new item” you just got to have, make sure you don’t become one of the headlines below.
Check out the following 16 Unbelievable Shopping Disasters and make it a point to be “nicer” to your fellow man this upcoming holiday season. The life you save may well be your own!
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by divinediva.
The Christmas shopping season began when stores opened early today to draw in bargain-hunters. When did the day after Thanksgiving become such a milestone? And where did the name Black Friday come from? The answers to these questions and more are at mental_floss today. Link
Doing some Black Friday shopping? Make sure you get your caffeine, have plenty of cash and checks on hand, and program your doctor’s office on your speed dial. As the day and the deals have gotten more hyped up over the past several years, stampedes and fights have broken out in the frenzy, resulting in injuries and even death. Here are a few of those incidents.
Just last year, a “greeter” at Walmart in Valley Stream, New York, was killed when the crowd of 2,000+ people trampled over him when the doors opened on Black Friday. Jdimytai Damour was 6’4” and 270 pounds and was trying to hold back shoppers who were pressed up against the sliding glass doors. The doors shattered from the pressure, Damour was thrown to the floor, and shoppers rushed over him in a craze to get to their bargains. The official ruling was that he died of asphyxiation. Although other shoppers were injured in the stampede, Damour was the only fatality – the other four injured people were treated and released from the hospital, including a woman who was eight months pregnant. There were reports that she had miscarried, but they were false. Damour’s family has filed a lawsuit against Walmart, citing that the company “engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem and was otherwise careless, reckless and negligent.” Photo from FoxNews.com.
In 2005, it wasn’t a stampede to get to items that caused trouble at Walmart – it was a single line-cutter. People were waiting in an orderly line at an Orlando store to get a heavily discounted computer when one man jumped ahead in the line. The assembled crowd wasn’t really appreciative of this – they ended up wrestling him to the ground.
Last year was definitely a bad year for Black Friday shoppers. On the same day, but a different coast, two men were shot and killed after an argument at a Toys “R” Us in Palm Desert, California. The women they were with were arguing – even coming to blows, according to the Huffington Post – and the fight escalated when the men discovered that they belonged to rival gangs. They ended up shooting only each other – no other injuries were reported. Photo from LAist.com.
Another computer was the source of a riot at the same retailer in 2005. When a laptop went on sale for $100 off the normal price, Cecelia Brannon of Jacksonville, Fla., was second in line because she wanted to get one for her daughter in college. When the doors opened, she got pushed under the rushing crowd and ended up suffering from a concussion and continuing back and neck problems. “This is America’s version of the running of the bulls,” her husband said. As of 2007, Cecelia was still walking with a cane as a result of her Black Friday injuries and still had to take a slew of prescription medications. “I saved 100 on that computer,” she said. “I’ve spent probably $100,000 on medical bills.”
P.S. – I didn’t intend to hate on Walmart, but a vast majority of the Black Friday incidents happened there! If you’re headed to score some deals tomorrow, be extra careful. What’s your opinion – should the onus be on the retailer for not providing enough security, or should people be responsible for their own actions?
Feeling sad or depressed? Cross off shopping from your list. Researchers have just proven that sad people are big spenders:
In a recent experiment one group of people was shown a sad video clip about the death of a boy’s mentor, while another group viewed a non-emotional clip about the Great Barrier Reef.
Researchers then produced an insulated water bottle and asked how much of the $10 the participants were getting paid they’d be willing to give up in exchange for the bottle.
People who had seen the Great Barrier Reef video agreed to pay on average about 50 cents. People in the group that had been primed to feel sad offered up four times that price, more than $2 on average — but were unaware that the video had any impact on their spending.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
