At Green Acres Mall: Around noon on Black Friday, Eddie Siddiqi, a manager at a custom t-shirt kiosk in Green Acres Mall, was entering the twelfth hour of his shift.

He had been there since the mall opened at midnight, kept up by a combination of red bull and coffee, and said he found the shopper turnout disappointing and business slow compared to years past.

"It's empty, like a regular Saturday or Sunday," Siddiqi, 35, who had worked at the kiosk for ten years, said of the Valley Stream mall.

Back when the mall opened at 4 a.m. on Black Friday, Siddiqi said he did better business. Now, he feels the shoppers just come for the big box stores deals and leave.

"I want to tell my boss it's 'Dead Friday,' not Black Friday." -- Lisa Du

At the Walt Whitman Shops: For Joe Nunziato, Black Friday was an obscure social phenomenon he had seen just on TV. "I had the expectation they're giving everything away," Nunziato, 40, a small business owner from Melville, said. "You're used to these images portrayed on the news."

But at the Walt Whitman Shops Friday, he said the sales were nothing to incite chaos. "Fifteen percent on a Brooks Brothers Shirt," he said. "Big deal."

Blame it on his family's wish list. "I needed to get specific items, I'm not looking for the sale item," he said. "I told my little cousin I'm getting her Uggs for Christmas. So, I'm getting her Uggs for Christmas."

And his wife was looking for a Michael Kors watch. No discount, he said.

The experience underwhelmed, too, Nunziato said. Expecting large crowds heading in, he said he thought, "Are we even going to get a spot in this parking lot." But, "when we did immediately, I knew it wasn't going to be a crazy day here." -- Scott Eidler

At Best Buy in Westbury: At 4 p.m. in Best Buy in Westbury, the scene remained relatively unchanged from when the store opened nearly 24 hours ago Thanksgiving evening.

The only thing missing was the line of people out the door, which had perpetuated through Thanksgiving night. But inside, lines of people continued to zigzagged through the shop -- waiting for different deals and check out, and hum of customers parsing sales persisted.

The electronics dealer had sales on gaming consoles, laptops and smartphones that began at different times through Thanksgiving night and Black Friday, which brought in a flow of non-stop shopper traffic, said the store's general manager Scott Cerniglia.

That afternoon, the hottest item with the biggest line was an iPhone 5S with a $75 discount, a deal which began around 3 p.m.

Cerniglia said there was a lull between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., but that gave him time to reorganize and "move stuff around without having to move customers around."

"Controlled chaos," he said. "It's the key to this." -- Lisa Du