45 Unhinged Black Friday Stories From Employees That Make It Seem Like It's Really Not Worth It

I really appreciated what the store manager said to us Best Buy customers waiting in line to get in the store. First of all they handed out coupon type things to those in line, offering each item to the front of the line first and then walking to the back and so on. So it was like you had your item in hand before you ever went into the store as long as no one stole it. Anyway, the manager makes an announcement via megaphone:

"Alright. So we all know it's Black Friday. And we have some really great deals here at Best Buy. But this will NOT be one of those crazy stores you hear about on the news. We are going to be civil adults here. And if you aren't acting like a civil adult, my staff has been instructed to have you removed for the safety of all customers. They know that I am absolutely serious about this request.

We will be letting you into the store 5 at a time. If you try to get pushy, you will be asked to leave the line. We will let you in in the order you are standing. There's no reason to be pushy here. You will all be let into the store in a timely fashion.

Once again. We're civil adults, and this store is NOT going to be one of those places where people get trampled or injured."


I really, really respected how blunt the guy was, and I thought it was the easiest BF experience I have had to this day.

I worked at a shoe store for 6 years. Honestly, it was seeing the huge mound of empty (stolen) shoeboxes pile and pile up in the back. I hate shoplifting with a passion, and seeing box after box that we didn't catch just pissed me off royally.

And I hated that every year we opened earlier and earlier, to compete with the other retail stores. Many coworkers had family hours away, and they had to turn around *on Thanksgiving* to drive back to be there that night when the store opened.

I don't work retail anymore but I refuse to go anywhere on Thanksgiving night. Those workers have families too, and they deserve to have ONE day to themselves. You can wait until 5am on Black Friday, don't try to be selfish and push it back to having the store open at 10pm thanksgiving night. Give me a break and have some respect for your fellow human.

I was scheduled to work 6am-5pm. My lunch was scheduled at 8am. Not much of a breakfast person, I chose to only consume a granola bar before getting back to work. As the hours go by I find that the demanding circumstances (I was behind the register) coupled with hunger is making me feel a tad light-headed.

At 2pm I am denied a 15 minute break to eat something a tad more substantial. At 3pm an ambulance arrives due to the fact that a young, female sales associate has hit the tile, and is probably suffering from a concussion due to her delirious ramblings about wearing mismatched socks.

That sales associate was me. I recovered just fine, but at 4pm my boss called me from the hospital bed and inquired, "Are you coming back to work?"

And that's why I am now a bartender.

I got punched in the face because I didn't know what a zhu zhu pet was.

My first day working for Best Buy was on black Friday 8 years ago. I was controlling part of the line since I had zero training to do anything else. I had a lady saying she was going to faint. She kept saying "please just let me pay so I can get to a doctor". I knew she was lying and called my manager over so he could talk to her. He said "ma'am, they told me you were in need of medical assistance, I've got an ambulance on the way" she freaked out yelling at my manager about the line being too long and how it was his fault she was feeling sick. She looked at me and said "this is all your fault you little jerk, if you would have just let me cut the line we'd be out of this mess". I couldn't help but smile, my manager old her to leave and if she didn't he would call the cops. She tried to stay until a random cop came in to check out the crowd. She left so quick. That was my first of 5 black Fridays with Best Buy.

Manager at GameStop: kid pooped on our floor because his mom didn't want to leave and have to stand in line again.

Not a story, just a word of thanks to those in this thread who work retail on this shittiest of all days. The tales of avarice I've read and seen myself on BF have led me to a new tradition: refusing to spend a single dime this weekend.

I'm from Canada and our version of Black Friday is Boxing Day(Dec 26th). I worked in a sporting good store and the hardest thing to get through the customers head was when we were out of a product we were out. There wasn't anything in the back, I couldn't give you a rain check for the product and if it was another day of the year I would have been more then happy to call any other store in the city and have the product shipped to you but on this day I just couldn't do that.

Worked at walmart during college a few years back. Because walmart keeps the store open unlike say target or other stores we are setting up the merchandise right in front of the customers, it's literally like setting up a buffet in front of hungry bears or something...

When it came time to release the video games a guy literally jumped over the crowd of people and into the game display knocking it over. Games went everywhere and it turned into a mob trying to get the games. No one was hurt except for the guy and a couple of COD games

Another story that happened that black friday was when we opened up the display for the board games. This old lady, i'm talking maybe in her 80's, had two empty carts and when we opened it up she grabbed as many as she could fit in the two baskets... nothing really wrong with this until she started ripping the games from some little kids hands and throwing them in her cart.

You see the worst of people on Black Friday.

When I worked in retail I was working at a small hardware store. We opened at 7 or something on Black Friday which is an hour early. There were several cardboard cutout people that we had to advertise for paint. One was a purple man that was about 6' tall.

I'm standing at my register at ~6:30 am because we had to be there early, even though we didn't open for another 30 minutes...we all knew the owner would open the doors a little before 7 and let people in. Well...there was no line at 6:30 (not uncommon). One person shows up right around then while I'm counting my register in. He proceeds to do the usual "I want my cheap stuff now! now later when you're open!" thing.

Early Customer (EC) - Hello?! ARE YOU GUYS OPEN?

At this point everyone else was in the back of the store setting things up and I was alone up front out of view of the door...but I could look over this window ledge and see him. I didn't really want to deal with him but I started to walk around from my register (after closing it of course) and was about to say something to him when he starts talking again.

EC - I know you're in there! I can see you! What? You're not even going to say a word to me? This is terrible service, you're incredibly rude.

I have no idea what's happening...I'm not within view of the guy yet...finally I realize he's talking to a large purple cutout of a man. I proceed to go open the doors and try to explain this to him.

Me - Sir, I'm sorry we wont open for another 15 or 20 minutes. (Trying to ignore the elephant in the room; him talking to cardboard).

EC - Why wont that guy acknowledge me?!? Why is he being rude, he could have just as easily told me that you weren't open yet. I should get a coupon.

Note: The purple dude was maybe 6' from the door. It's not like he was yelling at a silhouette across the store.

Me - Ummmm...sorry, that's just a display advertisement for our paint sale today.

EC - Well that's stupid, you shouldn't be able to put things up like that, they might scare people. It's really rude, you guys should know better than that.

Me - WAT. (Didn't say it but I thought it).

EC proceeded to berate the other employees throughout the store over the hour or so he was picking up the cheapest items he could get his hands on...finally tried to bargain for 20% off on account of the "rude cardboard guy" (his words not mine). Manager says "Ah, no." (Direct quote). The guy wasn't old/senile...but apparently he needed glasses...badly.

There's a rule out there, nothing good happens after 2am. That also goes for shopping.

I held a seasonal position stocking at Target last year. They trained me on the registers for about 3 hours so I could back them up if need be. Black Friday comes around and I volunteered for the time and a half pay that comes along with checkout. IIRC the first lady to come into my line had like a large screen tv, maybe a 40 or 50 inch model, that barely fit in the cart. I whip around the register with my scan gun and the barcode is on the bottom of the box. Now, the box is aligned lengthwise down the the length of the cart, width-wise it's sticking straight up with it's lower-most corner seated in the cart, and the back resting on the handle. The customer walks around the side of the box to look as some gum or something. That's when I lift the front of the box out of the cart, balancing it on my hand and the handle of the car, and scan it. I check the computer at the register to make sure it scanned, and that's when I felt the weight start to feel awkward on my hand. I look back, and whad'ya know, the box is starting to tip over. So I dropped the scanner, used my right hand to try and steady the box, but this just creates a fulcrum. It revolves around my right and, tips over, and hits the lady right on top of her head. I was so embarrassed but she assured me she wasn't hurt and everything was fine.

It was my 2nd year at Target and I happened to be in a sling from shoulder surgery. I needed the money so I continued to work through the holidays with really only arm to use. On black friday I came in and automatically I was pretty much 2nd in charge in my area just due to the fact that everyone around me was a new person. Nobody had any idea of what was going on. My manager left for a 15 minute break. You think in 15 minutes what could go wrong, well.. it went wrong. I was working on packing out toys and one of my co-workers comes up to me saying she has a situation she doesn't know how to handle. A black lady was quite angry that there were no black barbies on the shelf, only white ones. I was completely understanding of the problem, I just told the lady that a lot of the toys were gone and we were working to get them out. Nope... She needed that barbie now. I told her just to have patience and we will work on it, but nope.. I was a racist. Yeah, screaming at me that I was a racist and the store was full of racist. I had to get some other manager to help me.. this lady now doesn't care about the barbie, just that I am a racist. Eventually my Store Manager has to come over and personally go sift through the boxes in the back for the barbie. Well, of course there was no black barbies. The lady screamed at me some more, told me she was going to write to corporate (like they care) about me. My employees got a kick out of it, but I didn't. I was really upset over the whole situation, I like to see myself as an open minded person. That is really when I realized dealing with the public sucked.

TLDR; One arm in a sling, surrounded by newbs, Corporate heard I am a racist.

A friend of mine had his wrist broken during a Black Friday thing. Someone pushed him out of their way to get at something and he went over a shopping cart.

This was in a clothing store in a mall, not even a major department store.

I worked at Walmart on black friday ages ago. not sure they do this everywhere or just around here, but they would have sale bikes already put together and hanging from the high ceiling from hooks. these would not be the Black friday bikes, just normal sale stuff. I had the misfortune to be getting one of those bikes down at the time they started the sale. I was on top of one of those giant ladders to get the bike off the metal hooks that in hung from, when a crowd of people completely charged past me knocking the ladder out of the way on over. By sheer luck I grabbed on to the bike and was hanging from it a good 20 feet over the concrete floor. It took about 3 minutes for some other workers to muscle through the crowd and get the lader set back up for me to get down.

A guy came for our Black Friday sale not to buy stuff but to sue us. He intentionally spilt food on the floor and walked back over to slip in it. He have himself a concussion and started throwing up. He tried to sue until we showed his lawyer the video.

This woman picked up the most expensive 3D/bluray player from electronics and insisted she was handed it by the workers passing out the Black Friday sale DVD players. I informed her that I couldn't sell it to her for the discount price and she refused to leave the line until she spoke to a manager. When management showed she screamed at them until they told me to change the price. It's people like her that make it intolerable.

My first BF, we had a guy camp out for days. He bought a bunch of stuff then returned it an hour later. He told us he just does it for the thrill.... Weirdo.

I worked Black Friday at Toys R Us twice. That day brings out the worse in people. It was like a episode of The Walking Dead. A fight broke out because someone cut someone in line. I had a lady get mad at me because I couldn't leave my register to help her with a item. 8pm- 6am. So many murderous thought running through my mind at 4am from lack of sleep.

I'm dating myself here. 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 9 in line. (One was donated) 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 am 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 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.