Black Friday sales are the best time to buy expensive products at cheaper rates. Due to this reason, people are often seen flooding the retail stores, and that causes distress.
A user asked the forum, “Retail Employees of Reddit. What Are Your Black Friday Horror Stories?” Here are the top responses.
A CUSTOMER RAN ON A BIKE WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT
“Back in my poor college days when I worked at Walmart, we fought and broke out over a bike. Fists were thrown, and there was some blood. Eventually, one guy got a hold of it and escaped the crowd; he rode the bike out of the store to flee his pursuers (without paying).”
PUNCHED A GUY FOR STEALING A 360
“I’ve thrown one punch in my life. It was on black Friday. So it was the year the 360 came out. I stood in line for an external hard drive beside the video games.
There was this 11ish-year-old kid with a woman in her 60s. He was waiting for his 360 bundle. The woman before him had ‘gotten the last one,’ sighs. Then he says, ‘Nope, one more,’ and begins the motion of handing it to the kid.
This guy comes out of nowhere and pushes the older woman and the kid. The kid hit his face on the edge of a video game rack, the one with the metal and plastic dividers.
At 19 years old, I don’t know what came over me, but I instantly swung for the guy’s head and caught him right in the temple, sending him into a Keurig tower in the middle of the Isle. Everyone froze, including me. The guy had dropped the 360 and got up and walked away. I slid it with my foot to the kid, and he didn’t say anything either.
The best part was, as I still wanted the hard drive, I turned to get back at the end of the line. At the same time, the representative in charge of handing out the other items, such as the hard drive, asked who was next. The first two people in line just pointed at me, causing me to skip about five spots.”
TWO GRANDMA’S FOUGHT OVER A CALCULATOR
“I worked at RadioShack for a year in college. During Black Friday, one of the sale items was a $10 calculator marked down to $5. Two sweet, older women came into the store looking for them. When I told them there was only one left in the display, the fight began.
It turned into a senior version of roller derby without the skates. The one grandma who lost the race called the other one a jerk as she was standing in the checkout line, gripping her $5 prize.
I always imagined some tiny kid opening presents on Christmas morning and getting this stupid $5 calculator, not wanting it and having no clue about the backstory behind it, as his grandma, sipping her tea, looks on with a triumphant gleam in her eye.”
SOMEONE PUNCHED A SECURITY GUARD
“Someone punched a security guard in the face because he thought he was a customer skipping to the front of the line. He was just walking in the door to start his shift. So yeah, my town has that kind of people in it.”
WITNESSED FISTFIGHT OVER A TOASTER
“I have witnessed two people fistfight over a toaster.”
A PEN WENT STRAIGHT INTO LADY’S NECK
“Walmart storytime. A couple of years ago, when the sale started, there was a surge of people trying to get their stuff. One lady got knocked down, and her pen went straight into her neck, thankfully missing the jugular.
The messed up part is that no one tried to help. They just walked over to her to get their deal items. An associate who saw it happen had to stand over her to protect her from getting trampled. When the ambulance crew arrived, they had to shove people out of the way because no one would move.”
DISTRICT MANAGER’S FIASCO
“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, knew exact numbers and where everything was, and 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 jam-packed, 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. It 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 announced, 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 thing. As the horde swept over my department, I saw my district manager hightail it out of there. I have never been in more fear for my life.”
GOT A PUNCH IN THE FACE
“My first black Friday, I was working at a Walmart. I was assigned to be one of the employees who would cut open the plastic on the pallets that contained our merchandise, which were all on the floor.
As I readied the box cutter, I got shoved by a customer, and I fell right on it and sliced my hand open. After getting through that and patching it up, I came out on the floor and promptly got punched in the face when I picked up a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) on the ground. A customer wanted it. I hate black Friday.”
RECOVERING OPEN-HEART SURGERY PATIENT HIT IN THE HEART
“I worked at Walmart for four years and worked all Black Fridays. I’ve seen a woman hit another woman in the chest with those toddler car boxes you drive in.
The woman who got hit was a week or three postoperative of open-heart surgery. Lots of blood. Right in front of me. No idea what happened to the woman who hit her. She got the toy car, purchased it, and left.”
FIGHT OVER A PLAYSTATION 2 GAME
“Around ten years ago, I worked for Best Buy. I was hired as a seasonal employee in college and enjoyed working there most of the time. Unfortunately, Black Friday ended my enjoyment of the big box retailer.
The year the Playstation 2 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 stockroom to the floor to give out each scenario.
On one trip out of the stockroom, a gentleman (early 40s) approached me and proceeded to (try to) yank a system out of my hands and run with it. I’m no small fellow, and as the gentleman attempted to grab and go, I tightened my grip and calmly said, ‘Your ticket first, sir.’
He refuted, ‘I don’t have a ticket, and I don’t need one; I ‘seen’ this thing first, so it’s mine.’ After briefly explaining the voucher system, the man and his wife only seemed more angered that I refused to surrender the Playstation 2.
To convince me to give him the system, the gentleman then proceeded to say, ‘Okay, well, I guess I’ll have to help you with some favors’. 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 apologized profusely and teared up, giving me some sob story over why he deserved it. Of course, I didn’t surrender to the system.
It was one of the reasons I did not hang around the job for much longer. Sheer stupidity. A grown man trying to fight a 19-year-old who made $8.00/hr for a video game system. Brilliant.”
A WOMAN STEALING FROZEN LOBSTER
“When I worked at Sam’s Club, during the madness one Black Friday morning, we caught a woman stuffing the inside of her pants with frozen lobster tail. She would unpackage them and throw the trash in a stack of tires that were on display.”
ALMOST FELL TO THE GROUND
“I used to work at Victoria’s Secret PINK, and on my first Black Friday, I was at the front of the store. People were already outside waiting to get in at midnight. When the food lifted, I was pushed backward and almost fell to the ground; luckily, I fell on our launch table.
I climbed the table and stayed up there throwing customers hoodies and yoga pants. It was fun yelling, ‘Green hoodie, size small, who wants it?’ Everyone is jumping and yelling for it. Also, a girl fainted, and I had to stop people from walking all over her.”
GOT ROBBED BY A CRIMINAL
“I worked for Mrs. Fields Cookies in my local mall during Black Friday back in high school. Our manager got called to a store in a different city because a manager had severely hurt themselves melting chocolate for their chocolate-dipped cookies.
I ended up having to work for the majority of the day with an equally lazy buddy of mine, slinging cookies and taking orders for cookie cakes while the mall was packed.
Around 4 in the afternoon (and about 1600$ in sales), a gentleman in a button-down Mrs. Fields Cookies Shirt came to our counter telling us he had to do a mid-day drop for us for whatever money we had taken in the day. I let him in the back. He tinkers for a second on the computer and accepts our deposits.
So now it’s an hour before closing time. My boss is now back at our location to help us close. He starts reviewing our paperwork and money and realizes we are about 1,600 short. I explained to him that Mr. So and so came down to our location to do a mid-day drop since he didn’t work. He told me Mr. So and So didn’t exist and called the corporate office.
It turned out this guy had gone to over a dozen Mrs. Fields 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.”
PEOPLE SWEARING AND CRYING
“I was a Gamestop Worker when the Wii came out. The second we unlocked the doors, it was a riot. People were fighting one another, swearing, crying, just about everything.
People were so desperate that when they managed to get one, somebody would throw the other person to the ground and buy it.”
A COWORKER WAS CRUSHED TO DEATH
“I worked at the Walmart in Green Acres mall in Valley Stream, New York. I was working the day one of my coworkers got crushed to death by a large crowd who broke the doors and gate outside.
That moment changed Black Friday for the retail world forever. I quit after that and was not ready to lose my life to some television.”
OLD WOMAN STEALING AN ICE CREAM MAKER OUT OF A HANDICAPPED MAN
“I saw an elderly woman steal an ice cream maker from a man in a wheelchair’s electric handicapped cart. He got a security guard, and she flat-out denied it, saying the man was using his handicap to embarrass her.
I lost a little faith in humanity at that moment. I followed her and took stuff out of her cart and put it back on the shelves and put random embarrassing items in their place.”
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This article was originally published on Mrs. Daaku Studio.