I love Black Friday. It’s not that I have a lot to buy, or that I even go for the deals. It has more to do with the frenzy and excitement – I feel like I’m taking a part in a nationwide ritual.

But there are the war stories of all the pushing, shoving, grabbing, honking, hours of waiting in line – all for the allure of getting $10 blenders or 32” HD TVs for $149. In some rare instances, more serious things have happened that cast doubt on what the day was about – it doesn’t sound enjoyable when you read about people getting trampled in a mad rush across the aisles.

If you haven’t seen Extreme Couponing on TLC, it’s worth checking it out at least once. These couponers are just that, EXTREME. They are able to get tons of products super cheap – if not free – with coupons, and often wipe out shelves by buying 50-plus items at a time, doing multiple transactions in one shopping trip, and other tactics.

Although this may seem amazing to some, it’s not to those who want or even need to buy the sale items only to find them all gone. Shaw’s in Bangor recently experienced this when sale items were gone by the end of the first day of the sale and found it hard to recoup products fast enough to accommodate customers. However, they have done well the past few weeks responding to both product demand and customer concerns regarding coupon limit issues. Store personnel take their coupon policy seriously and have posted couponing rules throughout the store, so as to discourage extreme couponers from wiping out shelves.