No doubt Black Friday can get pretty busy and chaotic when shopping, but can anyone imagine how it is working a Black Friday? These retail workers reveal their craziest moments. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Out Of Stock?!
“I worked in home theater at a Best Buy in Southern California in 2006. We had this terrible pioneer ‘home theater in a box’ (HTIB) that retailed normally for 200 bucks, but it was on sale for 150.
We had literally 500 in stock. They were freakin everywhere, in every aisle of home theater, in the overstock, warehouse, floor shelves, overhead storage, everywhere. We had a few pallets on the race track that we would keep stocked as best we could throughout the day. Well, as happens on Black Friday, we got busy and the pile dwindled so there was only one on the pallets.
Never mind that anyone with eyes could see we had hundreds more around, but only one on the pallet must be the last one in the store. Well, this lady grabbed it and put it in her cart. Some guy was clearly moving for it but was beat. Lady was oblivious, so she turned down a movie aisle and proceeded to look through one of the bins filled with random three-dollar DVDs.
The dude snuck up behind her and lift the HTIB off her cart and started to walk off.
He got about 10 feet before this very large older man (early 50s I’d guess) said, ‘No you don’t, knucklehead’ and delivered him a square punch, more of a jab really, in the jaw.
The thief fell into one of the DVD shelves and dropped the HTIB. The older guy then picked it up, put it back on the ladies cart (she was still oblivious), and walked away. As the thief, who was clearly shocked and confused more than injured, stood up. He saw me and my coworker staring at him bewildered, each holding more of the HTIB units he was trying to steal, in our arms as we were just restocking the pallet. The guy stood up, walked over, grabbed one, and walked away without saying a word.
That was about the best I’ve ever seen. I worked four black Fridays in all and never saw anything more bizarre and outrageous than that.”
All Over A Furby
1. “I was covering at a different store, one that was a higher-grosser than my store, so the District Sales Manager had been insuring it got Furbies when they were available to keep their numbers high. So it was a few days before Christmas, we got in several cartons of Furbies special delivery. As per procedure, we had a limit of one per customer, and you couldn’t reserve a Furby.
We sell through most of them, but somehow we still had some an hour before we close. I got a phone call from a frantic young woman who was questing for a Furby. Being young, honest, and dumb, I told the woman we had them, but we couldn’t hold them for you.
Me: ‘I can’t hold a Furby for you.’
Psycho: ‘You will have a Furby waiting for me.’
Me: ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s company policy.’
Psycho: ‘When I arrive, you will have a Furby waiting for me.’
Eventually, she told me she would be ‘right there,’ and hung up.
A half-hour passed, and we were down to one Furby. Like something out of a bad movie, this little girl stepped into the store, with eyes normally only found on children in velvet paintings and talking with a lisp, asking me if we had Furbies as she shook her fist filled with crumpled bills. I sold her the last Furby and handed it over to her in its bag when Psycho arrived, boyfriend in tow.
Psycho was about 5’5 with jet black hair, unblinking eyes, and a predatory expression that said, ‘Sociopath.’ Her boyfriend towered over my 6’2″ form, and he was built in a way that would put professional football players to shame. His face was a blank mask, which all these years later, personal experience has taught me is a side-effect of a long-term relationship with crazy.
The little girl had barely walked away from the register when Psycho stepped up.
‘I’m here for my Furby,’ she said in a tone that showed she was used to getting her own way.
I pointed to the departing girl.
‘I’m sorry, ‘ I said. ‘She just bought the last one.’
The words had barely left my mouth when she pivoted in place and headed straight for the girl. The boyfriend stepped forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her in place. She kept trying to pull away from him, and he just kept holding on to her. What added to the creepiness of the situation was that neither one of them said a word, like him having to physically restrain her from attacking children was such a regular part of their relationship that it needed no words.
The store had an all-glass frontage, and we all watched the girl until she disappeared from our field of view. It was about another minute before Psycho just stopped struggling like a switch had been flipped. Her boyfriend took his hands off of her, and she slowly walked out of the store, ramrod-straight. He looked at me over his shoulder, a sad look that I now know to mean ‘I’m sorry you had to see a brief snippet of the madness I endure every day of my relationship.'”
2. “When I was in college I worked at a toy store and it was the year of the Furbies. They were really hard to get and our site only got 10 of them. We were instructed to pass out numbers rather than the actual toys to the first nine in line. I was the lucky one to pass out numbers.
When we opened our doors, it was pretty organized because we had set up lines and it was also a high-end neighborhood. I gave the first person their number and then all of a sudden I was tackled from behind.
This woman slammed into me and knocked me to the floor and ripped the tickets out of my hand, breaking two fingers. All for the numbers.
How dumb was she? The store refused to give her a Furby for her numbers and was trying to detain her until the cops showed up but she decked our manager and walked out.”
“She Was Yelling And Screaming About Cheating”
“I worked at a Bed Bath and Beyond, not freakin’ Bath and Bodyworks. Anyways, last year, I had the early shift from our opening time of 12 am to eight am this particular year. It was completely dead for all but maybe one hour of my shift. The rest of the mall (my store was part of the building like any given Macy’s or Sears) and we didn’t have enough employees to fill the full-time slot so we had to open an hour after the rest of the mall.
Well, some time went by and we were all bored as heck since there was absolutely nothing to do in the store. All the rooms were filled, swept/vacuumed and all of the sales that were happening for the day were prepped and re-filled as needed. We ended up taking displays off of the shelves and were cleaning the shelves in every room of the store as it was that slow. Well about an hour into this extra cleaning, a small group of customers (one male, three females) came into the store and started shopping.
Alright, finally, some people in the store, right?
Wrong.
About 20-30 minutes of this group, two very angry women with some kids (maybe six or eight at most) came storming angrily about the store. I assumed they missed their ticket for another store or something along the lines of they didn’t get an item they wanted. The typical reason for grumpiness other than lack of sleep. Well, these two groups met in the front of our store and all chaos raises as the larger of the women with the kids started slapping the man for being with the other women.
She was yelling and screaming about cheating, money, excuses, etc. The man with the built of a scrawny kid pushed the said woman to the ground and then both groups started hitting, pulling hair, stealing shoes, all while the kids were just shocked at what was happening in front of them. I signaled to customer service to call mall security as I took the kids who had been struck during the ordeal over to customer service. The ‘adults’ fighting were eventually all rounded up shoes on the floor, weaves in hand and eventually, the lady who started the fight was led away by police officers once they arrived.
As far as the kids go, nothing too bad other than a slight bruise on one of them from the wild swings. We ended up giving them both a free coke and a candy bar of their choice while they were also questioned on who had hit them. None of this happened near the entrances where the cameras were located but seven eyewitnesses were enough for the cops to haul the lady who started it all. Sucked for the kids but it was interesting to watch for a while.”
She Demanded To See My Manager
“I Was working a 12-hour shift on Black Friday, from midnight to noon at Toy R Us. Unfortunately, sometime around nine am, I was stuck at the customer service desk while another employee took their lunch, which at that point was just another register for the 1,200 customers we still had pouring in since seven pm the previous day.
A little boy cut to the front of the line to ask if we had a particular toy. I noticed that behind him was a strange woman crouched slightly behind a pillar, watching the little boy. When I told him we had sold out of that particular toy already (right after the store opened), he asked if I could check at our other store. I told him that that store had most likely sold out of it as well (it was a pop-up store, so they had about half the inventory we had).
At that point, the woman ‘hiding’ spoke up, ‘Well can’t you call them and check?’
I told her, ‘Ma’am, I do not have time to call the other store, but I can give you their number.’
I had myself been yelled at by my manager for even answering our store phone while simultaneously checking people out, but I was trying to be nice just the same. She then came out of her hiding spot and demanded to see my manager. I told her that I didn’t have time to summon my manager and that I had to check out paying customers. She had no merchandise, she was just lurking, trying to see if her son would get a better response than she would. So she left or so I thought.
She came back a few minutes later with the manager. For some background, my manager was a stickler for customer service and making every customer happy. So I was expecting a royal chew out from him.
But for the first and last time in three years, he took my side and he told the woman, ‘My employees don’t have time for that.’
To which she responded, ‘This is the worst customer service I have ever seen! I’m never shopping here ever again.’
He responded, ‘I would appreciate that very much.’
And she left with her son.”
She Made A Huge Mess
“A few years ago, I was working in a Best Buy at a large Midwestern mall. There was a sale on 32-inch flat-panel TV for 199 dollars, which was extremely cheap at the time. The store was mobbed, and the checkout lines were insanely long. Not only that, but the server for the credit card verification was having trouble and it was taking a long time to run cards. I estimate it was taking more than an hour and a half to check out.
A very big woman, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, red tights, and heels, was waiting in line with one of the TV sets in her cart. She was by herself. The people standing near her began to curse, and back off. Some even left the line. It turned out she had to take a huge dump but refused to leave the line, so she let it go in her red tights. The smell was beyond imagination. It could make you gag and vomit in your mouth.
You could see the feces lumped through her tights, and liquid dripped out onto the floor. But again, she refused to leave the line. Finally, the manager moved her to the front, making him sick and turn green, and let her pay. She eventually left the store, but the stench lingered for days.”
Manager Of The Year
“In my store, we had a line set up, going from when you enter the store you to the cashiers. This line would spand all over the store, so you would be able to pick up any item without leaving the line.
A woman stormed into the shop with an empty shopping cart and her two small children. She pushed through the line with the huge cart, elbowing everyone to the side so she and her children could get past. She went to the electronics section and picked up about 50 DVDs. Then pushed to the last register, which was quite hard to reach, since you had to push through eight different line), and then just stood there and waited. She waited until someone was not paying attention enough, and then quickly just took the spot and put her stuff on the register.
We had a 16-year-old boy in the said register, and he had to tell her that this was not the way things worked. She demanded to talk to a manager. So one of our managers came over and explained to her what she did wrong. She explained that she thought the line was too long, so she took the spot because the guy behind her was not paying attention enough, and she didn’t want to wait in the line.
Our manager told her to either get back in the line or out of the store. She didn’t like those choices so she slapped him. Yes, she openhanded slapped him.
I got a little angry even hearing this, but he retaliated and slapped her back. She screamed and called for security. The security laughed at her after the members of the line backed our manager up. She and her kids were kicked out of the store. I should also mention, it took quite some physical force to actually get this woman out of the store.
She tried coming back in, doing the same thing to another register twice.”
Savages
“When I was 19, I was working for Wal-Mart. This particular Black Friday was the beginning of the wild banshee craze that is so prevalent nowadays.
I got pulled into the back only to find pallets of goods ready to hit the floor. The manager who pulled me in gave me the second pallet from the door. It was full of 27-inch tube TVs. They were not flatscreens, they were heavy, bulky-tube TVs.
He looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘Son, something isn’t right about them people out there. Just pull the pallet, drop it, and run!’
He proceeded to kick the swinging doors like a superhero. I followed him into the zombie horde known as the customers. The pallet was so heavy I was at a 45 to the floor and struggling to get it going. I was 20 feet into the crowd when my pallet crashed into my heels.
I turned around only to find all of my TVs had been ripped off of my pallet. It was done so fast that I didn’t even feel the weight change. It just crashed into my heels and cut both of my ankles.
My boss stopped, jumped on top of his pallet of goods, and yelled, ‘Look here, you pathetic low lifes! IF ANY OF YOU TRY THAT NONSENSE AGAIN, WE’LL SHUT DOWN THE STORE AND NONE OF YOU WELFARE MORONS ARE GOING TO HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!’
Everyone backed away as he calmly proceeded to his drop point. It was nuts.
Afterward, he pulled me out back and gave me a smoke while we got our story straight about what he ‘really’ said. He was a good guy.”
“She Said I Ruined Her Christmas”
“A few years ago, I was working at GameStop and we opened at midnight on Black Friday. This must have been about three or four years ago, so 2008 or 09. Anyway, we had this deal going for Play Statins Threes (PS3s) where you could get a 160 GB (gigabytes) PS3 with two games bundled with it for a good price. We had 45 in my store and we sold out in about 20 minutes.
Well, I sold the last one and this old woman walked up to me. I’d ballpark her in the mid to late 60s. So she asked me for one of those PS3 bundles.
I told her, ‘We are out.’
She asked me to clarify. I explained that we no longer had those in stock.
At this point, she started to get mad, saying that she had been in line in the cold for over an hour for this and it was all her grandson wanted. I tried to sympathize with her, so I explained this was how Black Friday worked and the ad for the sale stated, ‘While supplies last’.
I explained that the man in front of her received the last one in our store.
Becoming more frustrated, she demanded to see my manager. I called him over and the two proceeded to have a rehash of the same discussion I just had with her. Only now, she was becoming more ingrained in victimizing herself. Claiming that we were holding out on her and that we had more, but we were just keeping them for ourselves.
My boss tried to reason with her, but she just wouldn’t have any of it. It got so bad that she called me over and said I had ruined her Christmas and preceded to spit on my face.
After which my boss demanded that she leave our store, but by that point, she was saying she was never going to come back here.
Personally, I am fine with that arrangement.”
Who Would Steal From Someone In A Wheelchair?!
“Several years ago, I worked at a Best Buy while in college. It was Black Friday and one of our door crasher deals was a DVD player that was going for dirt cheap. Note: DVD players were still fairly expensive at the time.
A man in a wheelchair got one and was trying to navigate to the massive check-out line. Some prick came up to him, grabbed the DVD player off his lap, did a bit of a football side shuffle type of thing, shuffling his feet trying to determine his best course of escape, and just bolted it for the check-out line. He cut in somewhere in hopes of blending in, but I saw the whole thing go down and was just shocked.
I quickly went to the back and found one of the DVD players that a buddy of mine had stashed to buy at the end of his shift (told him the story, he was more than happy to give the DVD player to this dude). I then gave it to the guy and he was very thankful. I also made sure he got to the front of the line to check out.”
Adult Temper Tantrum
“I worked as a supervisor at Toys R Us for several years. On Black Friday, we opened at midnight, and you basically hugged the wall and hope you didn’t get crushed because you were stuck in the same spot for hours.
This grown woman was about 500th in the first wave. She told me the lines were too long.
I told her, ‘That’s what happens on Black Friday.’
She said we should make them shorter. It hurt my brain, but I explained that every register was open. She said she wanted to go to the front.
I told her, ‘Everyone does! That’s why we have a line.’
She asked to see my manager. I told her that wasn’t possible, because there were over 2,000 people in the store. She threw a tantrum and sat on the floor in the middle of the line. Whenever the line moved, she would push her cart and crawl after it, then resume sitting on the floor with her arms crossed.
That said, everyone who has worked retail today has seen the worst humanity has to offer.”
Walmart Behavior
“Last night at about three am, I saw two little boys (maybe seven years old) fighting over a 32GB Wii U while their parents cheered them on. I don’t know if there was a previous arrangement for the fight to determine who would receive the Wii U, or what. But a middle-aged man broke the fight up and then took the Wii.
The parents of the fighting children were outraged but didn’t say a word because the guy who broke up the fight was a 6’4″ extremely intimidating black man.
When he got to my line with the Wii, he literally said, ‘People these days…’ And shook his head.
We would have broken up the fight but our store was so packed with people that we couldn’t even move. Heroic and possible troll man broke up the fight before security even got there.
I work at GameStop. This isn’t Walmart, people.”
Black Friday Shopping In New York
“When I was in New York for university, I worked at Bath and Body Works for a little extra money (my grandparents were paying for rent/university).
There was Lady A who grabbed the last of some lotion, and Lady B went crazy. Lady B started yelling and screaming, while Lady A was trying to pay and get the heck out of there.
Lady B was mad at Lady A because she was ignoring her, and she pulled out a freaking Swiss Army knife and stabbed Lady A’s arm. The most shocking part was, Lady Adidn’t even seem fazed. She literally pulled the knife out of her arm, threw it at Lady B, and left without paying.
We didn’t even try to go after her, she deserved that travel-sized lotion for free. After that, I quit, as you can imagine.”
Cheapskate
“A guy came through my check lane as usual. He had some huge tv that I knew would be about 300 to 500 dollars. After I scanned it, I looked at my screen and it showed up as 20 bucks. I told him there was no way this TV was 20 dollars. He was insisting it was 20.
Upon closer inspection, the name of the item on my computer screen was definitely not a Samsung TV. So I looked at the barcode and noticed it was taped on. This guy taped a freakin 20 dollar barcode on a huge TV. I called over security and the guy was brought to some back room.
I hope that guy was happy because he got me a free pie for catching him in the act.”