Black Friday strikes fear in the hearts of retail workers

by Katherine McCrae

Battles among shoppers trying to score a Play Station 3 have already resulted in one man shot. Can't you just wait for all the Black Friday mayhem this year?

Black Friday is the most dreaded day of the year for retail employees. It’s like everyone loses all common sense and manners fly out the window. Maybe turkey doesn’t just make you sleepy, but insane, too.

There’s no way to understand the pure chaos of the day except to experience if from the workers’ perspective. The whole day is just so surreal that it takes a certain amount of detachment from the shoppers to really appreciate it.

My first Black Friday was during my junior year of high school. I was hired by Target at the end of October and had just completed the training period. I think Black Friday was one of my first days as a “full” employee. Yikes.

I spent most of my time at Target working on the floor (organizing and keeping the store clean). But that day, for some reason, I was (thankfully) scheduled to cashier from 9 to 5, which was was probably one of the biggest blessings of my Target career.

But even from my vantage point at the front of the store, I saw more than my share of craziness. It started even before I entered the store. The line to get to the parking lot was spilling out onto the main road and there were cars speeding up and slamming on brakes, all trying to steal the best spots from each other. Fender benders galore.

Once I got all set up at my lane, the first person to come through unloaded her seemingly never-ending cart. Candles, DVDs, toys – she had the works. The bottom of her cart was stocked with wrapping paper, though, and that’s where the real fun began. She had two kids with her – a girl who was probably about seven and a boy who looked about four. As I was ringing her order up, she gestured for me to lean close. I’m sure she was trying to whisper, but with all the commotion at all the other lanes, it turned into a desperate shriek.

“That wrapping paper is from Santa!” she said. My confused expression led her to explain further. She was buying the paper that she would wrap the gifts from “Santa” in and she didn’t want her kids to see it and have the magic of Christmas ruined.

 Because of the chaos surrounding us, she couldn’t send her kids away, so we had to pull a secret mission, James Bond-style, to hide the paper. While the kids were distracted by the candy lining the lanes, we tried to sneak the paper in the largest bag the store had. Of course, it didn’t fit. With the kids getting restless and the customers behind her growing more and more impatient, I ended up having to gift wrap the tube of wrapping paper. Twice – so they couldn’t “see through it.”

 The customer behind her apparently wasn’t touched by a mother’s attempts to protect her children’s belief in Santa. He absolutely had to get to Meijer (about a five minute drive with all the traffic) by 9:30 because their best sales ended at 10. It was now 9:22. And had this been a regular-size checkout, he might have made it. But he had two carts, both completely full. Meijer in eight minutes – right.

I didn’t say anything; just started ringing everything up. I was going as fast as I could and actually making pretty good time, until I got to the glass ornaments.

“Do you want these wrapped?” I asked.

“Of course, I want them wrapped! Do you think I want to just waste my money on broken glass? Yes! Wrap them and hurry!” It was like a poorly written SNL skit just came flying out of his mouth. But, in keeping with Target’s policies, I smiled and got to wrapping. He must have had about a dozen ornaments that needed to be individually wrapped.

I got him out of the store by 9:28 – not bad considering the circumstances. I think I wanted to get rid of him even faster than he wanted to leave.

After that initial bit of ridiculousness, things went relatively smoothly for awhile. When I took my lunch break, it was like a battlefield. Those of us who were rookies looked traumatized, while the veterans looked wary. That half hour of peace and sanctuary went by faster than it should have (like all good things in life) and soon I was back behind my register.

I’m pretty sure I got carpal tunnel from all the scanning and bagging and cashing and checking and wrapping and loading that I did that day.But it was all worth it when I saw two grown women literally fighting – pushing, pulling and screaming – over some toy. I have no idea which toy it was, but it was the last one of its kind on display up front. The best part of the whole incident though was the end though, when the poor guy who was working in the toy department that day (Worst-Job-Ever.) came running over and pushed through the small crowd that had formed. In his hands was the exact toy they were fighting over. Apparently, the display at the front had just one left but the display in the toy department was fully stocked. Watching two grown women fight over a toddler’s toy was only topped by the awkward apologies and embarrassed walks to the registers.

 There were other bizarre moments throughout the day. There was the family that spent some $800 on Christmas decorations alone. There was the woman who insisted that I leave my register to act as her personal shopper and find her the snowman cookie cutters (for the record, they were right next to the gingerbread cookie cutters and the snowflake cookie cutters and all the cookie cutters in general). By the end of the day, I was ready to take bets on which frantic shopper could beat the person next to them to the shortest line to check out.

That one day was enough for me. Though I worked at Target through the end of my senior year, I had the foresight to be “unavailable” on Thursdays and Fridays during that holiday season, therefore missing Black Friday 2004.

To this day, thanks to that one Black Friday, I do everything I can to be an exemplary customer on that holiest of all holy shopping days. But my experience also taught me to keep a watch on the people with a touch of crazy in their eyes. Not only do they provide the best stories, but those people are the ones who make Black Friday everything that it is.

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