These people had in-store meltdowns on Black Friday
It's that time of year again.
Bright signage, holiday music and huge crowds signal the annual rush that retail workers dread as Americans get ready to hunt down those Black Friday bargains.
While a lot of shopping happens online these days, retail workers have no shortage of stories to tell of Black Fridays past, and many have taken to Reddit to unload about the chaos that can occur during the popular shopping holiday.
From baffled customers to scrappy grandmas, here are the Black Friday shoppers who are remembered for risking it all for the deals.
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The following stories have been edited for clarity and readability.
1. A dreadful deal
I've worked for Best Buy for three and a half years now. One year I go in at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving to prep for our midnight opening.
We hand out tickets at 9 for the doorbusters. A few of the people at the front of the line aren't there to keep the product, just sell it for profit. One lady sells her ticket to someone closer to the middle who didn't get one.
The "buyer" gives her $200 cash. When she gets inside to pick up her TV that was on sale for $200 she insists she paid for the TV already. She couldn't comprehend the fact that she bought a ticket from another customer, not a TV.
We spent about an hour with her before she left mad without her TV and $200 less in her pocket.
| SurfNC02
2. She wasn't 'in the zone'
The customer thought she was demonstrating her superiority.
I used to work at Best Buy in college a few years ago. They had zones [that] us blue shirts couldn't move from. So I got zoned for Wii systems and games, not so bad.
One lady comes running up and asks if we have Christmas-themed baby music on CD. I say there is no way we have that, but I can't help since I'm zoned for gaming. She storms off like I had just become Scrooge to her Black Friday.
Probably two hours later she comes back pushing a CD [in] my face like she had bested me. All I said was congratulations for taking two hours to find it.
3. Toaster tantrums
I was in a Walmart a couple of years ago when a guy got in a fight with a woman over a toaster. It got really heated and the woman took out a switchblade/pocketknife.
She started swinging all over the place trying to scare others away and she ended up slicing the guy down his arm. The guy sprinted to the front of the store, and the woman grabbed her toaster and sat down across the aisle.
An employee came by a few minutes later and mopped up the blood. She got the toaster.
4. Whatever floats your boat
I remember once when I used to manage a department in Walmart on Black Friday there was this plastic kayak for like a really low price with the oars and everything.
Some guy got in the kayak while scooting himself through aisle with the oars just tossing stuff onto it.
Was pretty funny. I didn't tell him anything cuz, well, it made me laugh.
| Griim004
5. Why not Wi-Fi?
The new iPad owner didn't understand why it wouldn't run on the store's Wi-Fi.
I stood behind a lady at Target who was returning a newly bought iPad. She was livid because her iPad wasn't charging. She claimed that the tablet had [a] Wi-Fi connection to the store, and it wasn't charging like it was supposed to.
She was told that the cord [that] came with it was the only way to charge it.
She balked at the statement and adamantly said that since it's hooked up to Target's free Wi-Fi, it should be charging. Sadly, this is not the case ...
Sad to think she thought Wi-Fi charged her iPad.
6. The pain in the glass
One woman thought that it was a good idea to break the glass on the game display case to get to the games rather than asking for me to unlock them.
As she cradled her bloodied elbow and forearm, she yelled at me for not using tempered glass.
Sorry lady, [I] didn't realize that someone would be using their arm as a battering ram on my cabinets.
7. She wasn't ready to be 'paid forward'
A woman I was working with was at Best Buy waiting in line on Black Friday. There was a gentlemen in line, two people in front of her. He tells the cashier he will pay for the next two people in line's items.
The guy in front of her had like a big screen TV and a few other items. She only had a Celine Dion CD. Why only a Celine Dion CD? Who knows.
Turns out the person who said he would pay for the items was Chad Johnson. Former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver.
| TheOpen
8. Mother of the Year
Hey, what am I doing on the floor?
[I] worked at Walmart and there weren't anymore shopping carts. [I] saw a man lift a car seat with a baby in it out of the shopping cart and leave said baby in the middle of the aisle while Mom was busy trying to get $5 DVDs.
I'm watching as this goes down, and I pick up the car seat with the baby and tell the mom what happened. Do I get a "thank you"? NO!! She proceeds to yell at me for touching her kid and letting the man steal her cart!
... I just walked away as she continued yelling and digging through the DVD bin.
9. Grandma's got game
Watch for crazed elderly shoppers on Black Friday.
[I] 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...
We opened up the display for the board games. This old lady, I'm talking maybe in her 80s, 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 kid's hands and throwing them in her cart.
You see the worst of people on Black Friday.
10. Toy store trauma
The customer went to a corner and cried.
I worked at a Toys R Us. While I was walking around to find people that need help, I found this guy in a corner covering his face and crying his eyes out.
When I asked him if he needed help with something, he just kept saying "I just want to go home... I just want to go home..."
He looked to be about 50 years old.
11. The cafe creep
I was working at a mall bookstore's cafe. I had the opening shift. Unfortunately, the late shift person called in sick, so I had two hours off before a 4 p.m. to close shift.
I actually had a customer who was stalking me and spent the ENTIRE day sitting in the cafe reading a book and occasionally coming up to order something new.
Any time I wasn't behind the counter or in the back room he followed me around, including during my two hour shift gap. Worst Black Friday ever.
Two weeks later he did approach me while I was working and asked if he could clip my fingernails as a keepsake. That was enough to get him banned from not only the store, but also the mall.
12. Total witchcraft
The worst moment for me came when a customer tried to buy a pack of scrapbook page protectors.
The customer was attempting to buy a pack of 25 but was convinced the price was wrong because she was looking at the sticker for the pack of 10. She screamed at me for a good five minutes while I calmly tried to explain the price.
Finally, it ended with the quote, "You're ruining my Thanksgiving, you stupid witch."
Trying not to scream back after that comment, I replied with "I'm sorry to hear that, but unfortunately, I cannot give you the lower price as it was not mislabeled."
She responded to that by throwing a punch, which I ducked. My manager saw the whole thing and the customer was escorted out and banned from our store.
13. You’ve got to be shipping me
It was the first year we did nation-wide online orders, and so I went to one of our shipping locations.
Turns out the computer system that communicates with our store server was down and we had no way of knowing.
We showed up at 1 a.m. to pull orders, and they trickled in, about three per hour — obviously, it felt like a waste — and at 5:30 a.m., we had 600 orders pop in to pull immediately.
Of course, since it was such a waste of time, the location manager sent the receiving team home at 5 a.m., and I had stuck around in protest. So I was the only one on hand to fulfill the orders. Rough day.
14. A bloody mess
One year while working at Kmart on Black Friday, I stood up too close to an end-cap, and ended up gashing the top of my head on a sharp shelving corner. The cut was just inside the hairline, and blood starts going everywhere.
Luckily, I thought, I'm near the back of the store, and I was only about 20 yards away from the "employees only" area. I got stopped three times by customers. With blood pouring down my face, in a span of about 50 paces.
Only one of them asked if I was okay (after I helped them with their shopping problem FIRST, of course), and they all gave me this dull look as they talked as though they were consciously trying to block the fact that, yes, they WERE talking to someone who needed medical attention, but they REALLY needed to find that $20 DVD player first.
15. Bear on a rampage
Beary weird things happened that day.
I went to a local Target and the store had already opened by the time I got there.
My friend and I were browsing some of the PS3 accessories and games on sale there and we heard a giant crash from the other isles. I kid you not, I heard a massive "ROOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR."
I peeked out of the aisle to see some guy dressed as a grizzly bear completely tearing up this store. He had techno music playing from every stereo system at Target.
I watched as he tackled shelves and other things in each aisle.
When the workers came to realize what was going on. I watched as they chased this bear throughout Target and it was the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life. Eventually the bear got tackled by some security guards.
16. A smashing good time
One man tells me he drove over an hour to get to me, only to wait another hour in a line, to have the concierge say no appointments.
He gives me this huge sob story, blames the fact that he's pissed off due to waiting in line and wants me to comp him a new iPad for his troubles. I tell him I can't and it will be $320 to replace it.
The next bit happened like a flash. He flipped out and started smashing the iPad on the studio wall table. Threatening me with my life and job...
Glass was going all over the place, the store which was packed came to a halt to watch this dude flip out on me. My manager runs over and what I witnessed astounded me.
We comped him a replacement iPad and a case...really? Retail is the worst.
17. A tall order
One year I had to sit on top of a ladder because I was stuck on it once I got up there — the customers had managed to pull down a section of slat wall digging through some heavy items and I had to fix it in the middle of the madness.
I was just digging out sizes of merchandise at the top of the wall for customers all day while they screamed out sizes. The aisle was so packed, no associates could break through to even get to the wall for other customers.
So I was the last person standing in that area and had to shout out orders to other areas of the store and call down sizes at the same time.
It was surreal. I even had to talk an associate through the return process and give them my code because I myself couldn't get down off the ladder to get to a register.
18. Screeching nightmares
Circuit City. I worked 16 hours that day. Got in at 4 a.m., and there was a line wrapped around the store already. I worked in the back, so we handled all the larger items (TVs, stereos etc.).
Whenever an order is placed from a sales associate on the floor, it makes a loud screech noise once.
6 a.m. comes and everyone starts flooding in. Grabbing everything. We are all in the back observing this madness because it hasn't hit us yet.
Then the orders start. It's screech after screech for the next 14 hours that I'm there. It never stops. You'd think it would take a break for few minutes? Nope. That thing screeched non-stop.
By the time I left, I heard that screech noise in my sleep. In my dreams. When I woke up. For the next two weeks I couldn't get rid of that noise. It was awful.
19. Book it out of there
A lady actually beat me with one of the store advertisement books.
I was helping another customer find something and holding her booklet, when another lady grabbed it from me. I told her it wasn't mine to give, but I would find her one in a second.
She proceeded to beat me with it. It didn't hurt, but it was very demeaning. Instead of getting mad, I went and tracked down another advertisement book, found her and gave it to her.
The look of horror on her face that someone would be kind to her after that was better than anything. I made her feel like a bad person all while I remained a good person.
| Fervidor
20. Merry freakin' Christmas
Don't mess with security guards
A lady came in, loaded up her cart with TVs that weren't on special and thought she could just walk right out with them.
Needless to say security tackled her at the door, and she punched the security girl right in the stomach. Big mistake! She got slammed HARD against the brick wall before being cuffed.
She was dragged back into the store kicking and screaming about how we were "ruining her children's Christmas."
As security dragged her in two young college boys in line started a slow clap for her that led to every guest in line clapping and shouting "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" It was glorious.
| Pearl725
Source: Reddit
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