Planning on hitting the mall (and risking life, limb and, worse, dignity) tomorrow for Black Friday? I’m guessing you’re a hardcore shopper, a thrill-seeker, or out of your damn mind — probably all three.
And, if that’s so, well, there likely isn’t much I can say to dissuade you. Crazy people don’t tend to take cautionary advice very seriously and thrill-seekers make a habit of actively ignoring it. Hardcore shoppers are just hardcore.
So I’ll just say this: be careful ya loon — it’s scary out there. And before armoring yourself with caffeine, the Lord’s prayer and maybe actual armor and heading out Friday morning, remember that 60 percent off an electric toenail buffer or whatever isn’t worth losing the foot those toenails came with in a stampede of panting, mouth-frothing, sale-crazed middle-aged women in track suits. OR IS IT.
Better yet, take it from these Reddit users, from a recent thread titled, “Retail Employees of Reddit. What are your Black Friday Horror Stories?.” Below, I’ve pulled some of the highlights (lowlights). Spoiler alert: this s— cray.
“A lady spit at me and told me ‘I know you have bacon’.”
“I have witnessed 2 people fist fight…..over a god damn toaster.”
“Working in the electronics dept. A little old lady punched a teenage boy in the face to get the last radio he had picked up. She snatched it up and ran.”
“I’ve seen a woman hit another woman in the chest with those toddler car boxes you drive in…lots of blood.”
“Basically, as I readied 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 on the ground. A customer apparently wanted it.”
“…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 s—. 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.”
“An 80 year old grandma tackled and then bear-maced a woman over fleece fabric at my store.”
“A lady who did not want to lose her spot opened the dryer, and shat right there in front of every one.”
“We’ve had a lady hit someone with a stick of salami over a smoked ham.”
“I saw an elderly woman steal an ice cream maker out of a man in a wheelchair’s electric handicapped cart.”
“I watched a woman collapse in hysterics into my manager’s arms because we didn’t have the exact model of cooler she wanted.”
“[The] kid actually manages to wiggle his way through the crowd and grab one, only to be picked up under the arms by a 20 year old and no joke, thrown backwards into a display of Flash drives.”
“I went out of the doors to see what the situation looked like, and was met with the blank, soulless stares of hundreds of people all now focused on me. I was a deer in headlights. These people were scary.”
“She ended up kicking some poor schmuck in the head, grabbed a Furby, stuffed it down her shirt, and tried to casually walk out and steal it.”
“Some dips— 20 year old threw food on the floor, purposefully slipped in it and gave himself a concussion, puking all over the place like a goddamn fool.”
And my personal favorite:
“we caught a woman stuffing the inside of her pants with frozen lobster tails.”
