At 4:30 a.m., Kevin Wetzel, 20, came into the building from the darkness, slammed the doors shut and shook off the rain. “Man, there’s a large crowd out there,” he said to Kristian Nazzal, 23, referring to the hundreds of customers waiting outside the Tacoma Circuit City. “Some of them have been there since yesterday afternoon,” he added.

He referred to the early-bird customers who came Thanksgiving Day to be the first in line to earn the right to be handed a voucher for a 32-inch television for $199, or a free laptop with a 12-month America Online activation and $200 in rebates. Some customers slept in tents while others held their spot by rotating family members throughout the night. They were waiting for the doors to open at 5 a.m. when they could receive the “golden ticket,” a Circuit City voucher guaranteeing them these items.

Wetzel hung up his coat, opened the registers, and double-checked with the other sales associates in the store’s television and home theater department to ensure they were ready for the chaos about to erupt in T-minus 30 minutes. Wetzel is considered a “Black Friday” veteran, as this is his third year working on the day after Thanksgiving for Circuit City. Three years is a long time in retail. He told salesmen Elvis Dhanraj, 40, and Jun Pak, 21, both new to the busiest shopping day of the year, to remember to inform each customer about the necessary accessories every Circuit City salesperson should offer: video cables, DVD players, surge protectors and extended warranties.

When the clock struck 5 a.m., store manager Tony Brown, 29, opened the main doors to the building. Like Emerald Downs’ racehorses bounding down the track to the finish line, about 500 customers moved to the appropriate areas to purchase the “door busters.” Ashley Long, 20, directed the shoppers like a drill sergeant in basic training: “TVs over there, computers over there, car audio to the back. People, move slowly, we are not Wal-Mart; you’ll get your stuff if you have the voucher!”

Shopping on “Black Friday,” which occurred Nov. 26 this year, has become a growing American trend within the last decade. Retail’s big day used to be the Saturday before Christmas, but has been pushed back to the day after Thanksgiving within the past few years so electronics corporations can maximize profits and capitalize on the month-long holiday shopping season. Thus, “Black Friday” was born. Stores offer six-hour sales in an attempt to lure consumers looking for once-a-year deals on big-ticket items like televisions, computers and camera.

Retail corporations raise the sales budgets for each of their stores in the expectation that sales will spike on “Black Friday.” According to manager Tony Brown, Tacoma Circuit City has yet to make its “Black Friday” sales budget. This year, the store was expected to meet or exceed $275,000 in sales. Some larger stores like those in Bellevue, Tukwila and Northgate had budgets of $500,000 or more. “The budgets are normally pretty easy to hit every other day of the year,” Brown said. “But with so many things on sale today, it’s very hard to (meet the budget), especially if we don’t get the customer traffic expected.”

According to Wetzel, the “Black Friday” buzz usually starts right after Halloween, when customers begin to ask sales associates what the big sales are going to be. “It’s a good thing I’m not on commission, because sales are really kind of slow the two weeks leading up to (Black Friday),” he said. “Most people want to know what’s going to be on sale, but (store employees) don’t even know until a couple of days before.”

At 6 a.m. at the Tacoma Circuit City, customer Christina Jackson finished shopping and said she never wanted to attend a “Black Friday” sale again. “This line was so crazy, and it took over an hour to just get some free batteries,” said the 38-year-old resident from Steilacoom, Wash. Many shoppers echoed Jackson’s frustration. On the East Coast at a Maryland Wal-Mart, police were called in to break up a group of customers fighting over who was first in line for the X-Box 360 gaming console. An blogger anonymously commented on the melee on the Web site, Retailworker.com: “It’s a sad, sad testimony to how consumerism has driven people to fanatical ends once reserved for religious zealots.”

This was one of the reasons why the voucher system was created at Circuit City, Brown said. In order to avoid confusion, the chain issues vouchers to ensure that the customers who show up first get the product. “Stores will only give out as many vouchers for “door buster” items that they have,” he added. “Once the vouchers are gone, we will inform the rest of the customers in the line that the items are gone, and that helps keep the confusion down.”

A sale was also in progress at the Spanaway Wal-Mart. At 7 a.m., shopper Byron Burris purchased a Kodak Easy-Share 6.0-mega pixel digital camera with a docking station. He was grateful for the quick service because his trip to the store had already taken four hours.

Burris discovered, while he was waiting in line at Wal-Mart, that there were many people like him. They constitute a kind of subculture of shoppers who wake up before dawn on “Black Friday,” with turkey dinners still undigested in their stomachs, to drive to a store and wait outside, braving the rain and cold for the chance to purchase the hottest electronics currently on the market. “We talked about the product, then about our jobs and our kids,” Burris said. “I bonded with people I would normally probably not talk to.”

Back at the Tacoma Circuit City, the six-hour, “doorbuster” sale ended at 11 a.m. Jun Pak, an entertainment sales associate, went for a smoke, his first since 4 a.m. that morning. “This is the best part of the day,” Pak said. “It’s over.”

With the sale over, the floor cleared as people returned home to enjoy their Thanksgiving weekend. Manager Brown seemed a bit disappointed; retail managers can receive bonuses if they meet or exceed their daily sales budgets.

Generating profits is the name of the game. At 5 p.m., customers continued to enter the Tacoma Circuit City. “Black Friday” could turn out to be an advantageous day for all retail stockholders and profit-watchers. The National Retail Federation predicted retailers’ sales to exceed last year’s profits by six percent, according to an article in the Raleigh, N.C News & Observer. “I think, nationally, the stores will crush the mark after the day we’ve had so far, and there (are) still five hours to go,” Brown said.

At 10 p.m., Wetzel prepared to go home after working the longest day that he will work for the entire year. He checked a computer screen that showed how much money he made for the store today: $13,000. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he said. The Tacoma Circuit City beat their expected “Black Friday” sales goals for the first time. Nationwide, the retail industry also set a record. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, according to the National Retail Federation, retail corporations saw a 22 percent increase in sales during the Thanksgiving weekend compared to the same period last year.

Wetzel yawned, put on his jacket, and walked out the main doors. His parting words to a coworker: “Let’s do it again next year.” Then he headed into the darkness outside.