During the holidays, everyone gets excited about the awesome sales and discounts. People can grab their dream items at lower prices. But, it's tough on store workers who have to hustle extra hard.
However, it might be fun for the customers. Retailers are experiencing a hard time dealing with the apocalypse of people buying things. What’s worse is people having conflicts over a low-stock product, sacrificing other people’s safety.
1. Imaginary Line
Worked at a store that had a service department. They couldn't ring up anything at the service counter, but they had a computer, which made it look like a register.
The guy is standing there patiently waiting to be rung up. Finally, somebody will notice him and ask what he needs. "I'd like to pay," he says, "I'm sorry, this isn't a register," replies the service tech.
The guy then tries to convince the service tech to let him pay because the line for the main registers is three hours long. Of course, the service tech couldn't because he didn't have a register.
He just had a computer for making appointments and such. So, after 15 minutes of argument, the guy moves off to find the line. Here's the fun part.
While he was arguing, somebody else saw him standing by something that looked like a register, and so he got in line behind him. Then, people saw the shorter line and got in behind them.
With nobody to control it, the line to nowhere grew quickly. Fifteen minutes was all it took for the not-line to snake all the way around the department. So when the doofus who started this whole fiasco went to find the right line, he found the end of the line he had started.
Then the guy behind him heard that there wasn't a register, so he followed the first guy. Then the next customer followed the 2nd, and so on.
They walked around in a circle for an hour before somebody noticed them. We almost had a riot when a manager had to tell 100 people that they weren't in line and had just waited an hour for nothing.
That same year, we had several scuffles at points where the register line had forked into two lines. From then on, we marked off a huge register path and had several employees manage the line.
IntentionalTexan
2. Lonely Stressful Day
It was technically the day AFTER Black Friday, but it was still busy as all heck. I worked as a customer service supervisor at a computer retailer before.
ALL of my checkers called in sick that morning. ALL OF THEM. So I am the only one ringing people up for the first 6 hours of the day.
When I finally got a 15-minute break, I went into the back area and blew up at the first manager I could find. I was so pissed and stressed.
He just sat there and let me vent to him. After a little while, I went back to him and apologized to him, and he was cool with it all.
zechgroove
3. Irrational Manager
Worked at a supermarket years ago; One of my managers thought she was being sneaky and swapped my Black Friday off shift with an on at 9 am (My shifts normally didn't start until one and ended at 9, so this was an utter joke).
I was in the bakery department and had to work all of Thanksgiving the day before, and they ended up needing more help. I came in at 6 am that day and worked a 14-hour shift because most of my team had been given the holiday off.
My manager's excuse was, "You're young! They have families they need to be with and kids to celebrate with!" so I was pretty angry.
I found out that the Black Friday sale was a 65" LCD TV in electronics and PS3s, so needless to say, it was going to be a bloodbath.
I stayed in my department because there was literally no one else there and caught up on much-needed sanitation. When the manager found out before the sale started, she came my way to rain down fire and brimstone and scolded me.
Thankfully, I could use their own policies against them. There needs to be at least one member of the bakery crew on hand to write on cakes, and since I was the only one there, they were outta luck.
I got out of Black Friday crap, got an easy day of work, and the perfect spot to watch the chaos, all while screwing over a manager I hated.
TheWastelandWizard
4. Impatient Madam
I work at the largest lingerie retailer in the country. We had a security guard last night for the beginning of black Friday. A southern belle mother decided she wanted to go immediately in a 50-person deep line and would cut.
Our security guard asked her multiple times to step to the back of the line or leave. She proceeded to ream him with every curse word in the book.
Well, it ended by threatening him with a gun she had in her bag. This will be my last holiday in retail. That was too much, especially for the security guard.
kittykatie0629
5. Desperate Times
Former store manager. The worst one I ever worked on was in 2006. Everyone wanted a damn Wii. When I got to the store at 4 am to prep for the 5 am opening, there were people wrapped around the shopping center in a line for it.
I had a sign on the door explicitly stating that we could only guarantee them for the first six people. When I made the announcement to the folks in line, I thought I was about to get kicked by more than a couple pissed grandmas and soccer moms who had been waiting since midnight.
After opening, our systems were unbearably slow when processing credit cards, but they still worked. The rest of the day was busy but not too terrible other than the absurd people who couldn't find a Wii.
Fast forward three days later, a lady walks into the store with a bank statement and starts telling me about her card being charged $200 4 times (Processing, not drafted yet btw).
She insists that she won't walk out until I give her $600 cash from the register. It ended with her and I on speaker phone with my district manager, who politely told her to piss off and call her bank.
Cops were very nearly called during the ensuing screaming. This is with a store packed with customers. It was such a huge discussion. Fun stuff.
As it turned out, our credit card processor had been overwhelmed that day, and this turned out to be a wide issue. It was the explanation for the system slowdown on Black Friday. The charges dropped off after a couple of days.
CowabungaM8
6. Patiently Waiting
I worked at a toy store in the mall. Really fancy mall, and we only sold one brand of toys. Anyways, we were all about interacting with the parents and especially making the kids feel special.
Anyhow, in early December, a woman comes into the store with her two children - probably aged 5 and 7, no older than that. I overhear her saying, "I'll be back, stay here," and she just leaves them.
Not a word to us. She just vanishes. Within minutes, it got busy, with 50 customers plus kids. There are only three employees in the store: two at the register. Then there's me...the shift manager, who is supposed to be helping people shop.
There is no way I'm taking my eyes off of these kids, but there are too many people here. Five minutes go by. Then ten. Then fifteen.
I'm checking in with these little dudes to see how they hold up. They're just fine, but I'm the type who takes 100% responsibility for children in my store.
I call mall security because I'm freaking out about the need to watch them. At this point, I have to make a return and do a bunch of customer maintenance. No way to keep track of the kids. Turns out mall security called the cops.
The officers show up about 25 minutes after this lady leaves her kids - the lady gets down and makes small talk with the boys while the man waits outside. Things slow down to a crawl in the store, so my fellow employees entertain the boys while I speak with the officers.
Apparently, their mother had gone to THE OTHER MALL ACROSS, THE 4-LANE STREET. At 7:30 pm. During crazy-busy shopping time. She eventually did come back for them, but it had been close to an hour.
StarCraft_Tenor
7. First Day Nightmare
When I was 15, I got my first actual job. It was at a clothing store, and my first day was Black Friday. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal because I was hired for men's formal wear.
When I showed up at 4 AM, the manager told me I was working on women's shoes today only. Absolute madness. I was dumbfounded.
The worst part is that shoe salesmen get a commission, but since I didn't have employee numbers, I only got minimum wage. Losing out of hundreds of dollars extra pay.
bearded_booty
8. Too Much Work
I used to work at a supermarket during the late 90s. I worked overnights unloading trucks, and back then, the store I worked at didn't have mechanized lifts to get stuff up into the bins in the back, so stock reserved for the blitz sale was all thrown up there by hand.
Anyway, 3 hours to go, we had to get three pallets worth of 19-inch symphonic CRT TVs down. My coworker, Allen, didn't want to throw them down one at a time.
He first pushed a pallet of Pampers down, followed by all three pallets of TVs. Over the next few days, several of those TVs came back as returns. I try to think that they were crap, but I also wonder how many were damaged during the fall.
Nate0110
9. The Lone Employee
About 15 years ago, I was working at a bookstore in a mall. Somehow, around 5 pm, maybe, I found myself the only employee in the entire store--not a single coworker to be found, and we were slammed with customers. We usually had music playing in the store, controlled by an ordinary 5-CD stereo in the back office.
Of course, this is the day the inoffensive holiday music gets brought into circulation. Around the time I found myself alone, I noticed the stereo had become stuck on repeat, just playing the same song over and over.
It was at least an hour before I was able to get away from the counter, and so that was the day I was forced to listen to some kind of generic "A Very Jazzy Jinglebells" some 30 times back to back.
HeyNomad
10. Horror Of Impulsiveness
Just today, I sold a couch to a guy who drove a Prius with no roof rack. We do not deliver, and he wouldn't leave until WE somehow secured this thing in his car.
Not only had he clearly not planned ahead or thought it through, but he was a total jerk about it and insisted on making it our problem.
We ended up using half a spool of twine to tie this thing down, and he had to climb through the window because the twine had gone through his doors.
I REALLY wish I had taken a picture. At one point, he complained to our GM, who had no idea what we were supposed to have done to appease this moron.
Finally, we insisted that he sign a waiver before leaving because we were not about to be held responsible for his own stupidity.
Of course, this was also during the busiest part of the day. I don't mind helping load or tie down for customers, but this guy took the cake.
Uberhypnotoad
11. Weight Issue
Worked in the lumberyard for a long time, and we were strictly forbidden from helping secure any load. People threw a damn fit about it, of course.
Right before I started working there, some woman insisted on loading two 1-ton pallets of retaining wall block into the bed of her half-ton truck.
They're called half-ton for a reason. She got to the gate and got his stuff scanned out, but then the car fell apart a couple hundred feet past the gate.
They called the store manager out while loading, and he checked a dozen times. She said something like, 'It's my husband's truck. He told me to do two pallets.'
They made her call him and put him on speaker, telling them to do it, so the store was covered eight ways to Sunday. Of course, an hour later, the man came storming in demanding a new truck. He sued. Didn't get a new truck.
Dason37
12. Out Of Ways
I worked at a store last year. I was in charge of answering the phone. Only our cordless handsets were broken, so I literally could not leave the fitting room counter because that's where the landline was plugged in.
So, of course, it was super busy, and I found out right away that if I parked a call and walked to the proper department to take the call, that call would not be taken because all the other employees were too busy assisting customers who were in the store.
Even if I asked a question about item availability over the walkie, nobody answered because they were too damn busy. Yes, our store had little scanner devices that we could use to check on item availability.
But not a single damn member of management in that store thought to reserve one for the telephone operator. After asking for one over the walkie-talkies three times and receiving no response, I gave up.
The end result of this was that customers would call to see if we had an item in stock, and I would have to tell them that, to be honest, I had no idea. As you can imagine, the customers did not like this at all.
One of the managers installed new cordless handsets about an hour before my shift ended, but the eight hours prior had been absolute hell.
Oh, and a few days later, I got pulled aside by a supervisor who hadn't even been in the store during my shift that day. She said that I wasn't my usual cheery self on Black Friday and that I had told a customer over the phone that I didn't know if we had an item in stock.
The customer had called back and complained. It took everything I had not to go off on her, and the only reason I didn't was because she wasn't there during my shift, and none of it was her fault.
But to the other members of management: OF COURSE, I TOLD THAT PERSON I DIDN'T KNOW IF HIS ITEM WAS IN STOCK. I HAD LITERALLY NO WAY OF KNOWING.
You did not give me any of the tools I needed to do my job, and you ignored me when I asked for them. And then you wanna coach me on my customer service? OH HELL NO. That's on you, jerks.
JesusGodLeah
13. Multiple Misfortunes
About 6 years ago, I was working at a mall bookstore's cafe. I had the opening shift, which (thankfully because it was in a mall) was 8 am-2 pm.
Unfortunately, the late shift person called in sick, so I had 2 hours off before a close shift. While that sucks, it wasn't the worst part of the day.
I actually had a customer who was stalking me and spent the ENTIRE day sitting in the cafe reading a book and occasionally coming up to order something new.
Any time I wasn't behind the counter or in the back room, he followed me around, including during my 2-hour shift gap. I didn't dare go to my car on my break because I didn't want him to know what it looked like.
My manager didn't want to call security on him if he didn't actually approach me. Worst Black Friday ever. Luckily, two weeks later, he did approach me while I was working and asked if he could clip my fingernails as a keepsake.
That was enough to get him banned from not only the store but also the mall. My manager also made sure someone walked me to my car for the next few months, so it was all good.
NeedsMoreYellow
14. Messy Day
I worked at a restaurant right across the street from the mall (And open on black Friday), so naturally, after, people get great deals on whatever they come to eat.
Anyway, I'm sitting in the back of the house on Black Friday morning, waiting for my inevitably long shift to start. It was incredibly busy as it was, but I wasn't about to clock in early.
I was BSing with one of the managers when I heard a hostess scream through the walkie-talkie, "HELP HELP!" So I immediately rushed to the entrance to see two grown men on the ground fighting, one in nothing but his underwear.
My shift leads, trying to pull them off each other while screaming, "FREAKING STOP. THIS IS A FAMILY RESTAURANT THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE!"
I jolted forward in an attempt to break up the fight. This is where it gets weird. Everyone was gathered around this small area, watching or trying to help, when someone grabbed a fire extinguisher and started spraying us with it.
So we have a bunch of people trying to break up a fight between a man in his underwear and some other dude, and someone spraying us with a fire extinguisher while we have Christmas carols playing in the background. Finally, we get the fight broken up. Cops show up. The whole 9 yards.
Usernamesarestupid12
15. Employees Struggles
I work at a gas station, so I'm somewhat immune to Black Friday-itus. The worst we got this morning was cars lined up to get gas.
On the other hand, a few workers came in, and they looked like they just returned from the war. Both of them had ladies ram their carts into their legs to get at the merch.
The guy said it was just a flurry of shredded plastic and hands when they kicked off the sales. Nobody got a full break, and the catered food was cold and well picked over by the time they could break. A car had side-swiped another car, damaging the paint badly, and tried to drive off.
On top of all, they're not getting time and a half for working Thursday night into Friday morning 'cause it's not technically a holiday anymore. At least he got a homemade cupcake (I brought in cupcakes for the ladies working Thanksgiving at my job).
abbyabsinthe
16. Rushing In
My first Black Friday was gross. We were relatively calm, and then suddenly, a lady burst into the store with a cart from a store and headed to our bathroom. I shrug it off.
A few minutes later, a customer asked where the bathroom was, and I pointed her to it. She comes back seconds later, saying that someone used the bathroom on the floor.
It was my first job and my first Black Friday, so I called a manager. My manager went in and rushed out. Apparently, the lady who first rushed in took a dump but missed.
Instead of in, she did it next to the toilet bowl. My manager ended up having to clean it up(thank god for not being certified in bodily fluid cleanup). I went outside the bathroom and saw cart tracks of poo making a little path through the store.
I have no clue how it got on the wheel...I mopped it up, and later in the day, I found another poo spot by/almost under one of the couches. I have no clue how that happened.
It was disgusting. Surprisingly, I was still able to eat after that, but my manager couldn't. We haven't had anything like that happen again, and instead of Black Friday, it was known as Brown Friday.
goldminevelvet
17. Tug Of War
I worked at a supermarket during Black Friday about 12-13 years ago. The hot items that year were $10 DVD players and trampolines. The DVD players were stacked on two tables near the registers, and the trampolines were in sporting goods.
I'm walking to the receiving area in the back, and someone from Sporting Goods asks if I can grab a U-boat to load up the last trampoline.
I had to go all the way to the grocery to get one, and as I was coming back, someone asked about an item, so I walked two feet away from my cart, and some woman grabbed it and ran towards sporting goods.
I get there, and the woman and husband are loading up the trampoline, and it wasn't even for them. The other lady that had it and purchased it(had the receipt and all, just needed a carryout) said, "Hey, that's mine.”
The husband got in her face and said, "What are you gonna do about it, witch?" They started to walk off, and I was shocked at that point. The husband looked at me and said, "The heck’s YOUR problem?"
I just smiled and told the sporting good guy to call management. The husband then said, "Run, honey!" They booked it to the front. They made it out of the store with the trampoline, too.
Then I get to the front near the $10 DVD players. One older woman grabs the last one left on one of the two tables. Another lady grabs the same one. They scuffle. One lady decks the other one into the other table FULL of $10 DVD players, and they all fall over, and she runs.
duckmunch
18. Too Sick
Oh boy. A reason to tell the story of what happened today. So, I work at the largest consumer electronics store in the US. I really love my job; management is easy to work with, etc. Black Friday, however, sucks. It just sucks. So much.
Today is like any other. I get there about 45 minutes before we open at 8 AM. Help everyone prepare, etc. The store opens, and things are going smoothly.
I'm wearing a sweater over my uniform because it was slightly chilly outside. So I'm about an hour into my shift, and something dawns on me. I'm sweating.
Like, really really bad. Now, I'm a big guy, but not big enough to be sweating while standing still. So I knew something was wrong. It dawns on me that I'm suddenly getting really. REALLY. Sick. I call one of my coworkers over and tell them to finish this transaction I'm on, and I bolt.
Now, a fun fact about our store is: We're really small. It is so small that the men's bathroom only has one toilet. So I burst into the door, and it's shut and locked. So into the trashcan, all of my Thanksgiving goes. I'm just heaving into the trashcan.
Some guy walked in on me and just noped out. I felt like garbage. So I finish and manage to worm my way back outside. And my GM looks at me, and he can tell that I'm sick.
He tells me to hop on a register no one uses, and I just stand there in my corner for about 10 minutes.. and then it hits me again. Off running, I go again.
Thank God the stall is open. So I just start all over again, but thankfully in my own area. Afterward, I buy water and sit in the break room to try to battle this inner demon that is trying to mess me up from the inside out. It wins.
It wins, and it makes it infinitely worse. Throw it up in the trash can in the breakroom, and then it starts coming out on the other end.
So I immediately turned and sprinted into the bathroom and dragged the trash can inside with me. So I called my GM from inside the bathroom and begged him to let me leave, and thankfully, he trusted me enough to let me go.
Pancake_Of_Doom
19. Mystery Boxes
I work back of the house at a toy store. I spent Black Friday taking big ticket items to the back, where we just loaded them into the customer's car instead of trying to make our way to the front of the store.
Apparently, someone decided it was fine to wander into the back storage room and start opening boxes to find what they wanted. Other customers saw this one jerk do it and then decided it was ok if they did, too.
I and other back-of-house guys were busy wrestling with a really obnoxious bed set, so when I made it to the other side of our back storage, I found like 8-10 people just taking cases off our bays and opening them, then tossing them aside if they didn't want it.
They claimed there was nothing indicating they couldn't come back there. We have two signs on the swinging door saying "Employees Only" and "Warning: Only authorized personnel beyond this point!"
Acharai
20. Granny Race
I worked at an electronic store for a year in college. During Black Friday, one of the sale items was a $10 calculator marked down to $5. Two sweet, elderly women came into the store looking for them.
When I told them there was only one left in the display, the war was ON. It turned into a geriatric version of roller derby without the skates.
The one grandma who lost the race called the other one a "freaking witch" as she was standing in the checkout line, gripping her $5 prize.
I always imagined some little kid opening presents on Christmas morning and getting this stupid $5 calculator, not really wanting it and having no clue about the back story behind it, as his grandma, sipping her tea, looks on with a triumphant gleam in her eye.
Jsquaw
21. Morning Hunger
I worked for six years at a restaurant in a mall as a server and manager. We didn't open early like the rest of the stores because we are a restaurant, and we don't serve breakfast.
Had people shake our gates, screaming that they wanted food. It would be just me and an opener getting the chairs set out.
I pointed them toward the food court and told them we didn't serve breakfast. A lady spit at me and told me. Me, "I know you have bacon." We do; it’s in the fridge, waiting to be cooked and put on a burger.
Kidou
22. The Patient Camper
I think it was around Black Friday 2004, and I was a cart pusher at a supermarket. In this particular year, they offered a plasma tv at an extremely low price; it was the hottest deal of the year.
A man showed up the Tuesday before the big sale with a tent, ice coolers, generator, TV, and everything he needed to brave the three nights he would be staying over.
He continuously talked about being first in line, how he was going to get the plasma TV, and how he was hosting the next Super Bowl party, so this would be the best thing ever.
Come around Thursday night, I showed up to my shift, and he was still there in a jolly mood, thankful he was about to be able to go home and sleep in his own bed.
The news came, and he did a short interview and explained what he was waiting for, how he was able to get the time off (he was a truck driver), and was overall excited over the whole ordeal and prided himself for toughing out the cold.
The line for the entrance wrapped around the entire front of the door and about another 300 yards or so past the store with thousands of people waiting to get in.
At 5:00 am, the doors opened, and the man went straight to the plasma TVs to see that they were all gone. What happened?
The garden center at the supermarket opened about 10 seconds before the front doors, and those who came the night before were scooped up on all 15 plasma TVs.
This guy, who had been there since Tuesday afternoon, was dumbfounded and argued with management but was stonewalled and told nothing could be done. That guy's Thanksgiving was a bust, for sure.
smuggling_info
23. The Serial Robber
So, I worked for a bakery in my local mall during black Friday back when I was in high school. Our manager got called to a store in a different city because a manager had severely hurt themselves melting chocolate for their chocolate-dipped cookies.
I ended up having to work for the majority of the day with an equally lazy buddy of mine, slinging cookies and taking orders for cookie cakes while the mall was packed.
Around 4 in the afternoon (and about 1600$ in sales), a gentleman in a button-down company shirt came to our counter telling us he had to do a mid-day drop for us for whatever money we had taken in in the day.
I let him in the back. He tinkers for a second on the computer and ends up taking our deposits. So now it's an hour before closing time.
My boss is now back to our location to help us close. He started going through our paperwork and money and realized we were about 1600$ short.
I explained to him that Mr. Soandso came down to our location to do a mid-day drop since he didn't work. He told me Mr. Soandso didn't exist and called the corporate office.
It turned out this guy had gone to over a dozen branches in the area and robbed over 10k worth of money. They never figured out who it was. I ended up being fired over it with my buddy. We stole a giant cookie cake as compensation. Worth it.
Hereforthefreecake
24. Black Out
I was working a register at an electronics store, and apparently, some idiot ran into a transformer nearby and took out the power to the whole retail block.
Everyone who had items they wanted to purchase (several hundred people) had to just sit down and chill out for around an hour and a half while we waited for the power to return.
The funny part to me was how many people asked me, often in a very pissy, exasperated tone, "When's the power coming back on?"
Mind you, I was working at an isolated register, hadn't left or been visited by any other employees as customers surrounded me, and the people asking had been standing/sitting next to me the entire time.
I understand I was wearing a uniform, but come on, people, muster up a little common sense. Also, I had a bin beneath my counter where I kept things that people had decided they didn't want to buy.
One of the hot items that year was USB thumb drives for about $5. I had someone spot a few in my bin and asked if they could have them, so I looked down to grab a couple and came back up to around ten hands outstretched.
I was worried there would be an issue over "Who asked first." I just said, "Sorry, but someone's going to be upset no matter what I do," and quickly shoved the drives into random hands.
Luckily, no one gave me a hard time or fought with each other. I am very glad I don't have to work that 4 a.m. to midnight shift ever again, and I have nothing but sympathy and respect for all of you still working in the trenches of retail.
zahngol
25. The Apocalypse
Back when I worked retail, we had people lining up at the doors. We hadn't finished setting up the signs yet, so we were running late.
At about a minute after 12, the people outside started pushing on the door and cursing at my manager. The door was a cheap piece of crap, so even though it was locked, they were able to push it inward.
The problem was it never actually opened, but the people at the back of the crowd thought it did, so they started moving, and the people at the front started being crushed against the door.
When my manager saw this, she immediately opened it up, and about five people at the front spilled onto the floor, and the rest of the people behind them started trampling over them. They were okay, though, because they were all young guys, and I saw them shopping a few minutes later.
HaberdasherA
26. Fear Of Announcement
I ran an electronics department in a large retail store and was a veteran of Black Friday. My team always had everything under control.
We had tickets for everything that would sell out quickly, we knew exact numbers and where everything was, and we had signs for lineups for hourly deals. We were always prepared and never had an issue.
One year, the district manager decided to "observe" our store during Black Friday. She stopped by my department in the thick of it to see how things were going on my end.
It was insanely busy, of course, but we had everything managed. She was carrying a piece of paper, which she told me had some unadvertised markdowns for old inventory.
This was news to me. She glanced at it, grabbed my phone, and made a store-wide announcement that we had JVC Digital Camcorders marked down to $49, the regular price of $199.
As she was making the announcement, I stood there with my jaw open. A sense of fear came over me. I knew the model that was just marked down, and we did have it in inventory.
The problem was we only had 4. The store was packed, and a fast-moving zombie horde of shoppers immediately swamped my department from all sides.
It was some Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead crap. As the horde swept over my department, I saw my district manager hightail it out of there. I have never been more afraid in my life.
maybepants
27. Karen Wants Pink
The old lady wanted a cancer pink ribbon fabric, and the woman she ultimately tackled had called ahead and ordered a bulk amount of it because she works for a cancer organization and makes blankets for cancer patients.
The woman was wheeling a cart in the store with several large bolts of fabric in it (which she had specially ordered, and we put it in the cart for her so she could continue shopping).
The old lady sees that this woman has "ALL the bolts," and it isn't right that she's hogging the entire stock of that particular print.
The woman explained the situation, that she had specially ordered these and that she was coming in on black Friday to purchase them because they were a major black Friday promotion at 60% off.
The old lady continues to yell at the poor woman. The woman very calmly keeps trying to reassure her that she is not taking any of the store stock and that she makes blankets for dying women with breast cancer.
She is a very sweet store regular who pays out of pocket for all the blankets, and so my store held the fabric for her until black Friday when she would come in and purchase them with her coupon.
The old lady doesn't give a damn. Whips out mace and tackles the woman. The old lady gets kicked out of the store. She would come in once every couple of months and give me the stink eye.
She rebelliously wrote down recipes from the home and food magazines so she wouldn't have to buy them. Then she'd scurry out and come back in a few months.
[deleted]
28. Ripping It Open
At a local supermarket, started pulling the pallets of black Friday stuff out on Thursday. These pallets were all set up in the middle of the store with plastic wrapped all the way around, so easily cut the plastic and good to go.
So, black Friday comes around, and people are obviously outside the door. Well, some people apparently realized what the store was doing, so they took the liberty of bringing their own razor knife to cut the plastic.
In that way, they didn't have to wait for an employee to do it. So, doors open, everyone rushes in, and for some reason, they didn't have them all unwrapped yet.
Well, these people are so violent over these sales that one employee ended up getting cut on his arm and a few other minor cuts from people with razors. Cops are called, three people are arrested, and the employee ends up getting about 15 stitches total.
zunnol
29. Bagged Stuff
I was working in a video store, and we marked down absolutely everything (including our selection of hundreds of used movies) to insane degrees. I mean 50% or more in most cases. Used movies were practically giveaways.
This guy and his wife walked in with a box of giant professional-grade trash bags among the usual mobs. They proceeded to fill up four of these trash bags. At one point, they were just going through the used bins and throwing things in there.
Naturally, when they got to the register, they had quite a few doubles. Every time they would hit a double, they'd remove it. Because of the sheer volume of movies, they had a tough time keeping up with everything and were taking forever to check out.
Luckily, my manager came up and, acknowledging the increasingly angry lines of people behind them, told the couple they could either buy everything they had in the bags regardless of whether it was a double or leave.
After some arguments, the husband eventually grabbed the bags and upended them, spilling the DVDs on the floor right in front of the register.
They then left. The best part? Customers started to go after the movies on the floor like vultures before we could get to them.
Denton56
30. Toy Rage
Years ago, I got hired as seasonal help for a store. It was before they redesigned the stores into their current cluster, and everything was in long aisles. I got stuck in aisle one: I had board games on one side and a big glass case of video games on the other.
This was the year that Super Nintendo came out, so we had one behind the glass with a controller outside so you could try out Super Mario Land.
I'm up on a ladder getting more copies of Crocodile Dentist down to restock the lower shelves and hear some yelling. I look down, and two kids are shoving each other in front of the SNES.
They start swinging at each other, and the parents intervene, only to start fighting themselves. I slide down the ladder, and my manager rushes over to try to stop things from getting worse.
One of the parents had a bat in his cart and hit the other guy square in the back, knocking him into the display cabinet, shattering the glass, and cutting him up really well.
The guy with the bat realizes what he did, grabs his kids, and tries to make a run for the door. Management was trying to block him from leaving, so they went and got the cop who was outside directing traffic.
The police came in and wrestled this guy to the ground while his kids watched. He resisted and got a serious beatdown in the middle of the store.
The other guy that went through the glass was cut up and bleeding really badly. He ended up losing an eye over the whole thing. After this was all over, we had to lock up the SNES, and you could only try it out if management opened the case for you.
The other messed up part of this whole thing was that people were taking toys out of the cart of the cut-up guy cart as EMS worked on him, and his kid sat there crying.
One woman even tried to take the blood-splattered demo SNES out of the broken case to try to buy for her kid. People are heartless, mindless sheep when it comes to cheap crap. Ever since then, I have spent my black Fridays at home.
Church_of_Xenu
31. Ruined Enjoyment
Around ten years ago, I worked for a chain retailer. I was hired as a seasonal employee while in college and actually enjoyed working there most of the time. Unfortunately, Black Friday ended my enjoyment of the big box retailer.
The year that the PS2 came out, I was in charge of issuing the systems to customers with vouchers (the ones who stayed all night camping out).
The customers would approach me, and I kept two systems in my arms at a time and would go from the stock room to the floor in order to give out each system.
On one trip out of the stockroom, a gentleman approached me and tried to yank a system out of my hands and run with it. As an aside, I'm no small fellow.
As the [im]mature gentleman attempted the grab and go, I simply tightened my grip and calmly said, "Your ticket first, sir." He rebutted with, "I don't have a ticket, and I don't need one; I 'seen' this thing first, so it's mine."
After a brief explanation of the voucher system, the man and his wife only seemed more angered that I refused to surrender the PS2.
To really convince me to give him the system, the gentleman then proceeded to say, "Okay, well, I guess I'll have to whip you for it." Perhaps because of my naivete or the adrenaline, I responded, "Sounds great. Let me clock out first, and I'll meet you outside shortly."
A little taken aback by my response, the gentleman started to apologize profusely and even gave me some sob story over why he deserved it. Of course, I didn't surrender the system.
Needless to say, this was one of the reasons I did not hang around that store for much longer. Sheer stupidity. A grown man trying to fight a 19-year-old who made $8.00/hr for a video game system. Brilliant.
JoeDirtMcGirt
32. Painful Times
I had just undergone shoulder surgery the day prior to Thanksgiving. My boss told me I had better show up, and I liked my job at the time (not for the job but for the coworkers), so I showed up at 5 am, just hours post-op. I was there in a shoulder sling, popped a Percocet, and started the day.
My job was to handle the computers, so I dealt with the onslaught of people pushing me over to get free CD-Rs. Literally pushing me over. I fell down on my shoulder after some mother pushed me over a little kid, no lie. To squelch the pain, I took a percocet.
Around 9 am, a man came in wanting to buy a CRT monitor. You know, those big, heavy ones. He had a bunch of other items and wanted me to carry the monitor out to his car. I objected, but he started getting upset.
So I dragged the monitor with my good arm and put it into a cart. I pushed it out to his car, put the monitor in, and the guy drove away without thanking me.
I turned around and bumped into a customer with my bad arm. This sent a discharge of extreme pain running throughout my body. So I went inside and took a Percocet.
Flash forward to around 11 am. Customers look like blurs, and I find myself drooling a little bit. A customer comes up and asks where he can find the monster cable. I found the idea of a "monster" cable to be hilarious, so I laughed maniacally in his face.
He backed away and asked another employee. I then proceed to sit on a computer box and tell stories about the adventures of black Fridays of yore. Customers guarded their children. Nobody bothered me.
This went on for a good ten minutes in real-time, which felt like three hours to me. The manager in my department walked over to me, grabbed my good arm, and escorted me out of the building. She looked at me and said, "I'll see you tomorrow at 8." I missed my next shift.
joshsalvi
33. Memorable First Time
I used to work at a well-known lingerie store. And my first black Friday, I was at the front of the store. People were already outside waiting to get in at midnight.
When the food door lifted, I was pushed backward and almost fell to the ground.
Luckily, I fell on our launch table. I climbed the table and stayed up there throwing customers hoodies and yoga pants.
It was fun yelling, "Green hoodie, size small, who wants it?" And everyone is jumping and yelling for it. Also, a girl fainted, and I had to push people from walking all over her.
starfoxbella
34. The Policy Breaker
I was on the service desk at a toy store last year, and that meant that I would handle checkout overflow and any messed up transactions from that day.
So, if a cashier double-scanned something or a similar mistake was made that required a return to be run through the system, I would take care of it.
We were not accepting any other forms of returns that day due to the high volume of customer traffic, and this was posted all over the place.
The amount of people coming to the store for the sole purpose of returning an item was staggering. They didn't want to buy or exchange anything - they only came in to do a return and then leave.
One lady in particular, when told that I could not return her item for her since it was not purchased that day, said, "I wanna talk to somebody else. Get your manager." So, I got the next person above me, who was closest to my register. He tells her the same thing: she asks for somebody else.
This woman held up my register for almost 30 minutes as we had to go through every supervisor/manager until she reached the Assistant Manager and started yelling for her to call the Store Manager (who was home asleep after working about 20 hours already).
The Assistant Manager finally made the return to make her leave, but the fact that she was so stubborn about it was infuriating.
Also, putting the store back together after we closed was an absolute nightmare - people had hidden items on shelves you wouldn't think they could reach, stuff was all over the floor, garbage was everywhere, etc.
TheAmazing148
35. The Weirdo
Last year, I pointed somebody in the wrong direction to find a toy amidst the river of other crazy people trying to mess with my elevated stress level.
Quickly realizing my dumb, I ran to find where Dora was really hiding, picked her up, toted her around the whole damn store until I found the lady, and then, as if I was expecting some kind of diamond studded praise like "thanks," I stupidly hesitated just a second too long.
She grabbed my arm and leaned in a little too close, and smiled, "It's a damn good thing you came back," motioning down with her chin to her purse.
She pulled out the butt of a pistol just long enough for me to blink and pull away from her, "because I was coming back to find ya!" She then waddled her murderous little way back to the line where her kids had been waiting since we opened.
DandyDoodleDude
36. Double Attack
I work at an electronics store. This was a few years ago. The Nintendo Wii was new and the hot thing to have that year for Christmas.
A lady approached me and a fellow employee midway through the day and asked where to get a wi. My coworker said, 'HA, no chance of that. We sold out a couple of hours ago; should've got here earlier." the lady said he was rude and demanded to speak to a manager.
So in comes my manager, who says to the lady that he's sorry but suggests she buy a wi game and give that to her son on Christmas with the promise of the system to come.
The lady likes this idea and asks what game is popular. My manager says that Super Mario seems to be very popular. Lady responds enthusiastically with, “OK, where can I find that?”
My manager says, "Ha, no chance of that. We sold out a couple of hours ago, should've got here earlier." Lady left very upset, screaming that we were all jerks.
LickidySlip
37. The Old Cheater
After Thanksgiving lunch with my boyfriend's family at 4 pm, I headed to work. I was put in charge of 70-inch plasma screen television vouchers.
I was given seven vouchers to distribute at 8 pm so customers could go to the register, pay for the television, and have it loaded into their car around back.
So problems arose very quickly. A line for the 70-inch television began as I started my shift at 6 pm. As soon as seven people formed a line, I had to turn people away. At 8 pm, the vouchers were distributed.
Customers 1 and 2 were husband and wife. They were an older couple who brought camping chairs to wait for their two vouchers. Here's where the mess started. Customer 8 approaches me for a voucher.
I told him that they had all been distributed, and he was free to come back within the hour to see if anyone surrendered their voucher. He then became visually distressed and angry, to which there was nothing I could do.
One customer comes from before, and the older man comes from the couple. He offered to sell his VOUCHER to customer 8 for what was close to the price of the on-sale television that had NOT BE PURCHASED.
Customer 8 agrees and reluctantly pulls out the money in exchange for the television voucher. The older couple then walks off with Mrs. Customer 2's television voucher, and THE NEWLY ACQUIRED CASH TO BUY SAID TELEVISION AT THE REGISTER.
In comes customer 9, who addresses me VERY ANGRILY with, "HEY YOU! Aren't you going to do something about that!?" while gesturing wildly at the older couple who totally scored and the poor guy who essentially paid double for a Black Friday television.
I had to let that customer know that what others did with the vouchers was their business. This guy got WAY too close to me, and one of my coworkers noticed and came to help. The guy then TAKES OFF IN A HUFF and claims the company "cheated him."
Two months later, I quit to work in my licensed field and never looked back. Years later, I still have no regrets. I don't even like going into the store where I work.
Dukali
38. Dangerous Man
Be me. I'm working my first job for the second week and working the retail floor on Black Friday. I wasn't that great at my job, so they had me running people from the line they had set up to different registers and quickly answering questions from customers.
No big deal. At about 1 am, as I'm running customers back and forth, we hear a commotion on the other side of the store, and a few police officers come in.
It turns out some guy had broken a bit of plastic off one of the information plaques and tried to use the pointy bit to stab an employee. I never found out why he did it. People are crazy.
npc_Human
39. Gone Mom
Back when I was working at a retail store, another co-worker and I had a lady come during our black Thursday sale with her children.
She went shopping with her kids for a while, but then she saw my co-worker and me in the bedding department and left her children with us, asking us to watch them while she went to get some products.
Before we were able to tell her no, she disappeared and didn't come back for her kids for twenty minutes. Both of us are just standing there, watching her kids slowly freak out and cry for their mother, wondering if she is going to come back.
My supervisor then walks by and sees what's going on, and when we fill her in, she is quite annoyed with the mother, who, by this point, has yet to make an appearance.
When mom finally showed up, her children rushed to her, and my supervisor had a chat with her. Unfortunately, I didn't catch what my supervisor said to her.
siameezer44
40. Naughty Ones
I'm working in a high-end clothing store that rarely goes on sale. It's a small storefront with more than 20 people inside, and it's pretty packed.
It's 9:30 in the morning, and this family comes in with two kids who are wired on sugar. They are running around, acting like idiots, and the parents are doing all because their favorite douchebag jeans are 40% off.
The store has a bunch of metal pots and baskets used for display (which we couldn't put in the back because corporate would throw a fit).
Little Timmy almost dies by nearly falling on a large metal basket with sharp pokey things on it. My manager says, "Kids, it's not a playground."
This leads Sally's soccer mom to lose it. "How dare you talk to my kids like that? Who the heck do you think you are?" This naturally cues her husband to become Billy Jerk and try to fight my manager.
I walk over and ask them to leave the store, or I'll call security. Get told to screw me because they aren't leaving, so "I better call the mall security."
Mall security shows up, and by the grace of the Black Friday retail gods, the one security officer who is actually intimidating responds (former university football player, like 6'6 and built like a brick house).
Billy suddenly no longer wishes to engage in fisticuffs with the mall security and quickly leaves with his family with security in tow.
[deleted]
41. Unexpected Regret
I got hired at a bookstore to be a seasonal help from November through the holidays. It was located on Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago and was the company's flagship store.
Had a a couple of weeks of regular work right before Black Friday, and it was pretty busy then, and I thought Black Friday would be easy. I was so wrong.
I had never had such a stressful experience. We had a constant line of about 30 people the entire day, and no matter how fast we tried to go, it would never die down.
On top of that, we had people getting mad that they were sold out of certain books and would flip out even more when I offered to order one for them. You would expect these kinds of things at a supermarket, but I never thought I would work for a bookstore.
-eDgAR-
42. Parking Spot
This was about twenty years ago, and I don't recall if it was actually Black Friday or just the holiday shopping season. Working at a wholesale company, I witnessed a fistfight between two men over a parking space.
It started just as you'd imagine; car A was hovering, waiting for someone loading up their car to leave, and when they did, car B swooped in from the other direction into the spot.
It was a fairly even matchup until the girlfriend of one of them decided to give an assist with some pepper spray. She managed to pretty effectively get both of them in the face, ending the fight.
By the time the ambulance and police car made their appearance, everyone trying to get in and out of that busy parking lot was pretty screwed.
ryemanhattan
43. Down System
I work at the retail chai, and it's expected that since we are a trendy clothing store, we're going to be busy. What we (I) weren't expecting was to deal with this family who had well over $600 worth of clothing in bags waiting to be scanned, folded, and bagged.
Each person (there are five people in this family: Mom, Dad, Daughter, Aunt, and Cousin) has maybe 5-6 unique items, as well as basic shirts, leggings, sweaters, etc.
After folding maybe ten items, I start to fold another, and the Mom says, "Actually, those need to be bagged separately from these clothes. All of them need to be in separate bags." It's 12:00 PM on Friday, 12 on a Black Friday.
We already have a line of maybe 25 people, and all five registers are open. We are trying to get to as many people as possible, but I have to go and bag these items.
It's annoying as heck, and it took over 20 minutes to get through everything. Fold everything to the Aunt's folding standard, to boot.
So, finally, it's time to tell the total and ask the family to pay. I told them their total was around $620, and they would take forever to pay and leave.
So, finally, I will go check out my next new customer. This really nice lady is buying jewelry for her sister as a Christmas gift. Her husband is retired from the army, and she's proud of him.
Her total is $48, and she hands me a $100 bill. I check to make sure it's real and press the page down to go to the next page to complete the transaction, and the servers are down.
All of the registers are full of people trying to pay. We now have a line that's getting close to one of the doors in the store, and the servers go down.
We have to manually write down the item numbers of the things that are getting sold, and we have to manually run the credit card machines like it's 1950. It took over 10 minutes to do a single customer, and the servers were down for what felt like hours. Definitely not a good day.
rhaemz
44. Pushed Too Much
Circa 2009. I worked at retail. It was a crappy job, but it realllllyyyy lived up to that on black Friday. I worked dressing rooms and simply looked at how many beach-themed, rugged, overpriced items you had and walked you 8 feet to a fitting room.
This day, however, a "larger" woman came up to me with 5-6 pairs of jeans (keep in mind they only went up to size 11...which really isn't that big. NOT my rule, don't blame me) and I got her a room.
She spent maybe 15 minutes in there, which is a long time in this scenario. She came out with nothing, which was not unusual, and seconds later, I went in to get all her rejected clothes.
Hollister usually smells like a bomb of pine, and man musk exploded, but this day I was overpowered by the smell of poo as I entered the room.
Homegirl had obviously tried so hard to squeeze into these jeans that she pooped in them, and it ran up the inside seam to the top.
Maybe it was a reverse hate crime. I don't know. I refused to fill out a "damage report," and my manager was ok with that. That $5.25 an-hour job wasn't worth me 'inspecting the damage' to submit to corporate and getting hepatitis.
Callistaaa
45. Finding Parents
I used to work security at the only shopping mall in town. It was a later shift on Friday itself, as most of the crowd was gone, and the stores were starting to close.
I'm walking patrol near one of the seating areas, and I notice a couple sitting with a small boy, maybe two years old, who is crying. They tell me that they found him without his parents.
The child is non-verbal, just bawling, and can't tell us anything about his family. The entire team goes into action. Another teammate takes the child to several of the nearby stores, hoping to find his parents.
After about 10 minutes, I return to the seating area and sit with the child while the rest of the team continues searching for the parents. My heart is breaking at this point from the obvious terror that the child is feeling.
An employee from a jewelry store nearby brings out one of the teddy bears for the kid. He calms down a bit. Finally, it's been half an hour, and we can't find the kids' parents anywhere.
Per policy, we call the police. Because there are actual emergencies going on, it takes the police almost half an hour to get there. At this point, the child has been separated from his parents for more than an hour.
As the officer was talking to me, my supervisor radioed that he had found the parents. He comes walking up with a young couple, maybe in their early 30s, who have five more kids in tow!
They had been shopping at a store that is attached to the mall and hadn't noticed until they got out to the car that they were missing a child.
The siblings were more relieved than the parents that they were reunited with the toddler. And to top it all off, the mother asked in a very annoyed tone of voice where he had gotten the teddy bear.
child_of_eris