I’m confused about something. Does Thanksgiving still exist or is it just Black Friday Eve? Seems like Black Friday sales has been encroaching Thanksgiving for years now and I’m almost certain I heard more talk of Black Friday than Thanksgiving this year.

I got caught up in the Black Friday hype this year but I do have an excuse. My phone pretty much lost its mind and flipped me off. I bought a battery to replace the original battery that came with my phone on my birthday. I received it one week after my birthday and my phone seemed to act right again. Fast forward about five weeks and my phone starts acting straight ignorant. It starts cutting off again. At first, it seemed like whenever Google Play had updates for my apps my phone would just randomly reboot. Once it restarted I’d be greeted with notifications that updates were available for my apps. That was a little annoying. Then I started getting the occasional alert that a certain process had stopped. It was an endless alert loop, every time I pressed okay the alert would keep popping up until I rebooted the phone. A couple of days later the alert was more frequent and more processes would fail one after another. Again the alerts wouldn’t stop until I rebooted the phone. I’d get a few minutes to play games, respond to texts, or whatever I wanted to do before the cycle of failed processes alerts began again. My “new” replacement battery also stopped working. Sometimes it wouldn’t charge and sometimes even when I knew (or thought I knew) it was charged my phone wouldn’t turn on.

Getting the phone repaired didn’t make any sense to me. One, I no longer had insurance on it. Two, even if I did have insurance I didn’t want to pay to get a second refurbished phone of a phone I’ve been having issues with. Three, for the amount they’d want me to pay to fix it or send me a refurbished replacement, I could get something better using my upgrade or adding some money and just buying something else outright. With few exceptions I’ve had problems with all of my phones after about the one year mark. I’m not sure if the fault lies with the software, the hardware, or both but I’m over having to troubleshoot everything to attempt to keep my phone working until the next upgrade.

At this point I had been without a phone for a little over a week. A phone I now owned in full that was a paperweight. I wasn’t going to pay for a number that I couldn’t receive or make calls from just to keep the number so my choices were to get a new phone or cancel the account. You know I chose the new phone!

Since the phone I originally had my heart set on was no longer available I narrowed down my choice to the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge or the iPhone 7 plus. After talking to a couple of people and doing research I decided to join the dark side and switch to an iPhone. I’ve been team Android since day one with the first Android phone, the G Phone. I loved that phone and wish they’d make an updated, modern version!

My first mind was to get up early Friday morning and hit up some stores. After talking to friend that works at one of the stores that plan was scrapped and I was advised to get their Thursday night. *sigh* So that’s what I did. First I went to Walmart. Apparently, I got their opening time wrong because there was no line outside and the doors were already open. It was a sloppy, disorganized, madhouse! The police had parts of the lot taped off, meaning you could only enter and exit the lot in one direction. Once inside, the aisle immediately behind the registers were taped off. I absolutely hate crowds and it was overflowing with people. Stupid people! Space was at a premium and these dumbasses would have a cart filled with stuff blocking the aisle while asking the workers 20 questions. For real?! Move bitch! You got your shit so get the fuck out of my way and let me try to get mine! The phones weren’t in the area they normally are and it took me asking three employees to finally figure out where they were. Of course, they were sold out. Son.of.a.bitch! There were plenty of deals there if I wanted TVs, kitchen stuff, or pillows of all things but I didn’t so it was time to bounce.

Hopped in Coco Nina and hightailed it to Target. Fortunately, they had iPhones! Of course they don’t have a real phone section. It’s like one and a half aisles and one computer to get access to people’s accounts to add the phone. Then they had to go walk around a barricade to go to a register being used by another long line of people buying other Apple products. After paying for the phone or the taxes and fees you go back to the computer and then they took another five or ten minutes to activate the phone. We had to sign in on tablet for a place in line. More tomfuckery, disorganization, and confusion! Come to find out after standing in line for about two hours that they were out of 7 pluses and only had 7’s. Are you fucking kidding me? No raincheck, no complimentary gift card, nada! Fuck you in the ass with a giant, barbed dick Target! TVs were also a big fucking deal there! I wouldn’t go through that mass of humanity for a cheap ass LCD TV but whatever!

I decided to make one last ditch stop to try to get my phone. Next stop Best Buy! Of the three stores they were the best organized and least hellish. Of course, I got a few different answers to my simple question of do you have the iPhone 7 plus? First I was told that the guy in front of me had bought the last one unless I was interested in Rose Gold. That was like my third or fourth color choice but he didn’t even ask me what capacity I was interested in. I’ll give you a hint. I wasn’t interested in the 32 GB  version. He then tried to sell me a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and mentioned it came with a $400 gift card. Oh yeah, he failed to mention that the $400 gift card was only valid for purchase through Sprint or Verizon. I have service through neither. Verizon is too expensive and Sprint would have to offer me a lot more money and throw in some unlimited usage pussy for me to ever consider going back to those sorry assclowns! He then tries to rope me in buy saying how the Galaxy S7 is a much superior phone to the iPhone. I guess I was looking at him like his eyebrows were doing the wave or something at me and he realized that insulting what I was trying to buy probably wasn’t going to get him a commission. He asked if I was interested and my reply was just, “Nah.” It was after 9:00 pm when I left Best Buy dejected and empty-handed. I decided that I’d try an AT&T store on Black Friday. I’d either get a phone or cancel my service.

Friday morning I went to one of the AT&T authorized retailers near me. Do you have the iPhone 7 Plus in jet black? No. *sigh* At this point I’m starting to wonder who I have to go down on to get a damn phone. The woman says that I can order it here and have it delivered to my house. The estimated delivery date is about two weeks. Fuck it! After last night I realized that I really wanted this phone so I’ll just bite the bullet and order it. While she was taking my information, another person comes out the back and say they have it matte black. She mentions that the jet black will be a magnet for fingerprints. Really? Regardless of cover I was going to throw a clear case on it anyway so I wasn’t really worried about it. After further consideration and looking at her matte black phone I decided I could live with it. I’m going to upgrade next year anyway so I can always get it in my color next year if I decide to stay with Apple. So after two days and four stores, she cancelled my order for the jet black phone and I ended up leaving with a matte black iPhone 7 plus. Yay me!