National Gloat Day/Week

This previous week had many things associated with it. It was Thanksgiving, which everyone knows. I kid you not; it was also Adoption Week, National Game and Puzzle Week, National Bible Week, National Farm/City Week and National Leftover Awareness Week (which makes sense since because of Thanksgiving). In addition, Friday was Black Friday. All these things occurred last week, yet all I knew about were two.

It seems that days/weeks/months are clogged up with someone celebrating something. Moreover, I'm not talking about national holidays here. Every organization/political group has designated a day for special recognition. There are almost as many special significance days as there are days in the month. For instance, in addition to the significance days already mentioned, November also has the following associated with it:
American Art Week
National Card & Letter Writing Week
French Conversation Week
National Fig Week (must have been started to celebrate Fig Newtons)
World Communication Week
National Notary Public Week (if secretaries and bosses have a day, why not notary publics?)
Red Flannel Days (Michigan—though probably anywhere where you might find a lumberjack or an ox named Blue might be capable of celebrating this holiday)
American Education Week
National Eating Disorders Week (this is obviously not a day where eating is PART of the celebration
National Chemistry Week
National Split Pea Soup Week (who would have thought anyone would want to celebrate this vile Exorcist spitted stuff?)
World Mutual Services Week (is that like mutual funds?)
National Children's Book Week
National Osteopathic Medicine Week
International Week of Science and Peace (UN) (with Sadam on trial, maybe we can celebrate it this year)
National Radiologic Technology Week (obviously it's not "Spellers Week" because shouldn't this be "Radiologist" or "Radiological"?)
Book Week (one must assume this is for the adults this time)
National Geography Awareness Week
American Education Week
National Culinary Week
National Bible Week
Operating Room Nurse Week (what about orthopedic nurses and gynecological nurses?)
National Adoption Week
National Family Week (what if you don’t have one? Oh yeah, it’s adoption week too! Or are you supposed to adopt a week, like you adopt a highway? And usually when you adopt a baby you feed it: My question is what does a week or a highway eat?)

As I’ve just proven, everyone and their mother and brother and dead aunt seem to be able to create a day of significance. That’s why I decided it was my turn. From this day forward, the Monday following Thanksgiving shall be National Gloat Day.

Why? Because I was right. I predicted it. You heard it here first. The statistics proved me out. Retailers didn’t do nearly as well as they’d hoped/expected to do this weekend. While people shopped to buy the loss leaders, they didn’t stick around to purchase the profit-enders (like my coined phrase?). Just as I predicted.

See, if the retail world had listened to me (little ole me)—they might have made a bigger profit—and made it into the black on Black Friday. The only way to sell loss leaders nowadays is to make them contingent upon purchasing a profit-ender. This would limit the people buying these items (and hopefully weed out the people who are ONLY buying the very best priced items). But they didn’t do this. Nah-nah! I was right. Gloat-Gloat-Gloat.

It gives me hope that before Christmas these same retailers will have to do some major deep discounting (one newscaster suggested 60% or more) to get the business they need. Plus, a few of these retailers need to make back all they money they will lose from the lawsuits their loss leaders caused from trampled customers.

If the retailers were smart, they would try to do this so that more customers weren’t trampled. Like, maybe, on the Internet. Hey, since it’s also Cyber Monday today, which is like Black Friday for Internet sellers, maybe they should sell some wonderful deals online. What’s the likelihood? Not very good. They didn’t take my advice before about keeping the customer happy—so I doubt they will put good deals online. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what analysts are saying tomorrow. And if I’m right, like I was the other day, maybe this whole week can be National Gloat Week. Gloat. Gloat. Gloat.