39 Retail Employees Reveal the Most Black Friday Horror Stories

Everyone is always looking to save money. For this reason, people postpone buying stuff and wait for Black Friday to get cheap deals on various products. While the thrill of discounts and unbeatable prices fuels enthusiasm, sometimes people end up getting hurt.

Those who have seen it all are retail employees, and some things they have experienced have remained stuck in their minds. Some retail employees on Reddit shared crazy stories they experienced during Black Friday. Here is what they had to say.

Comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

1. Surviving the Victoria's Secret Pink Black Friday Madness

u/starfoxbella: 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 hood was 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?" And everyone is jumping and screaming for it. Also, a girl fainted, and I had to push people from walking all over her.

2. The Queue Confusion Chaos

u/IntentionalTexan: I worked at a store that had a service department. They couldn't ring up anything at the service counter, but they had a computer, which made it look like a register.

A guy was standing there patiently waiting to be rung up. Finally, somebody noticed him and asked what he needed. "I'd like to pay," he said. "I'm sorry, this isn't a register," replied the service tech.

The guy then tries to convince the service tech to let him pay because the line for the central registers is three hours long. Of course, the service tech couldn't because he didn't have a register. He just had a computer for making appointments and such.

So, after 15 minutes of argument, the guy moves off to find the line. Here's the fun part. While arguing, somebody else saw him standing by something resembling a register and got in line behind him. Then, people saw the shorter line and got in behind them. With nobody to control it, out of nowhere, the line grew quickly.

So when the guy who started this whole fiasco went to find the right line, he found the end of the queue he had created. Then the guy behind him heard that there wasn't a register, so he followed the first guy.

Then the next customer followed the 2nd, and so on. They walked around in a circle for an hour before somebody noticed them. We almost had a riot when a manager had to tell 100 people that they weren't in line and had just waited an hour for nothing.

3. I Mistook an ATM Card for a Gift Card

u/Opinions_Like_Woah: I worked retail through college. The store ran a special leading up to Black Friday, resulting in many gift cards. With lines leading out the door and the store an absolute mess, my shift was a non-stop run of cashiering.

After several hours, I had turned into a robot. Greet customers, ring stuff, swipe gift cards, cut up gift cards, hand receipts, etc. You see where this is going.

A client handed me their gift card and their ATM card. I swiped both, returned the gift card, and cut her ATM card in half. She freaked out. It was horrible.

4. Policeman Caught in Toy Tussle

u/jennyanydots711: My dad was a police officer when the toy of the year was the Tickle Me Elmo. He responded to a call at Walmart or Target (can't remember which one exactly) of two women beating each other up over one.

When he went to break up the fight, one of the women bit his arm. She bit him so hard that she spit some of his skin and blood out onto the floor.

He had to get his blood tested every six months for two years after the incident to make sure he didn't get any diseases from her. People are crazy!

5. The Insensitive Shoppers

u/oferpetessake: Years ago, I was a cashier in a department store with every available cash register staffed. I worked through my "smoke" break voluntarily, but my manager came over and told me to go on my lunch break.

I'd been working for four hours, so I needed a restroom break, too. I've never been booed in my life. 40+ people booed at me as I closed my register.

6. Surviving the Black Friday System Crash

u/Steelergrl2310: I worked for a golf superstore as a cashier. Black Friday customers come rushing in, and the line starts. I proceeded to scan the first item, and nothing reflected.

The registers are entirely down, and the lines are growing fast. The only thing we could do is take every transaction manually. Write down SKUs, calculate tax, and use the old credit card swipers for three hours. I never worked retail during Black Friday again.

7. The Black Friday Drama Where We Almost Called in the Cops

u/CowabungaM8: I am a former GameStop manager. The worst one I ever worked on was in 2006. Everyone wanted a Wii.

When I got to the store at 4 a.m. to prepare for the 5 a.m. opening, people wrapped around the shopping center in a line for the Wii, even though I had a sign on the door explicitly stating that we could only guarantee them for the first six people.

When I announced to the folks in line, I thought I was about to get a beating by more than a couple pissed grandmas and soccer moms who had been waiting since midnight.

After opening, our systems were unbearably slow when processing credit cards, but they still worked. The rest of the day was busy but not too terrible, other than the grumpy people who couldn't find a Wii.

Three days later, a lady walks into the store with a bank statement and lies to me about her card being charged $200 four times. She insists she will leave when I give her $600 cash from the register.

It ended with her and I on speaker phone with my district manager, who politely told her to call her bank. We almost called the cops during the ensuing screaming. This is with a store packed with customers.

As it turned out, our credit card processor had been overwhelmed that day, which turned out to be a wide issue. It was the explanation for the system slowdown on Black Friday. The charges dropped off after a couple of days.

8. Bacon Craving Escalated to Chaos

u/kidou: I worked as a server and management at Johnny Rockets for six years. We didn't open early like the rest of the stores because we are a restaurant and don't serve breakfast.

We had people shake our gates, screaming that they wanted food. It was just me and an opener getting the chairs set out. I pointed them toward the food court and told them we didn't serve breakfast.

A lady spat at me and told me, "I know you have bacon." We do have it in the fridge, waiting to be cooked and put on a burger.

9. The Shoplifter

u/ToSay_TheLeast: I worked greets at American Eagle today. My job was to stand at the front and tell people what the sale was. Some lady walked in with eight bags, and the alarm went off.

So I smiled and said it went off, most likely because there was a possibility that a tag was on one of her items. She responded, "I JUST WALKED IN, AND YOU'RE ALREADY ACCUSING ME OF STEALING?!?!?," and then stormed off.

10. When Shopping Takes Priority over Parenthood!

u/StarCraft_Tenor: I worked at a toy store in the mall. It was a fancy mall, and we only sold one brand of toys. We were all about interacting with the parents, especially making the kids feel special. It was the best place in retail to work. If I could have had full-time benefits, I'd have stayed.

In early December, a woman comes into the store with her two children, probably aged five and seven. I overhear her saying, "I'll be back, stay here," and she leaves them.

Not a word to us; she just vanishes. Within minutes, it got busy -- as in, 50 customers plus kids. There are only three employees in the store: two at the register; then there's me, the shift manager, who is supposed to be helping people shop.

There is no way I'm taking my eyes off these kids, but there are too many people here. Five minutes go by. Then ten. Then fifteen. I'm checking in with these little guys to see how they're holding up.

They're just fine, but I'm the type who takes 100% responsibility for children in my store. I call mall security because I'm freaking out about the need to watch them. At this point, I have to make a return and do some customer maintenance. I can no longer keep track of the kids, and the mall security has already called the cops.

The officers show up about 25 minutes after the lady leaves her kids. She gets down and talks with the boys while the man waits outside. Things slow to a crawl in the store, so my fellow employees entertain the boys while I speak with the officers.

Apparently, their mother had gone to the other mall across the effing 4-lane street at 7 p.m. during crazy-busy shopping time. She eventually came back for them, but it had been nearly an hour, and in Ohio, that is way past what counts as child abandonment.

I don't know what happened to her/them, but all I remembered was the shock of "Who thinks that's a good idea" and "Omg is she going to jail?" while I watched the officers escort her and her children away.

11. The Black Friday Viking Scream

u/Duane_: Ours wasn't that bad in perspective (Walmart, Small Town.), but I froze in shock and thought I was going to die right as everything went down. Our event started Thursday at 6:00 p.m. I had to be out front to guide traffic.

At 5:56 p.m., one of the assistant managers at the back of the store decided it would be a great idea to start opening the plastic on some of the displays so customers wouldn't have to savage them open.

A customer nearby made eye contact with her, looked at the ceiling, and let out a VIKING SCREAM that echoed throughout the store, and everyone else started screaming. The whole thing lasted about seven minutes.

12. The Unlucky Customer

u/smuggling_info: It was around Black Friday 2004, and I was a cart pusher at a Walmart. This particular year, Walmart offered a plasma TV at an extremely low price; it was the hottest deal of the year.

A man showed up the Tuesday before the big sale with a tent, ice coolers, generator, TV, and everything he needed to brave the three nights he would be staying over.

He continuously talked about being first in line, how he would get the plasma TV, and how he was hosting the next Super Bowl party, so this would be the best thing ever.

Come around Thursday night, I showed up to my shift, and he was still there in a jolly mood, thankful he was about to be able to go home and sleep in his bed.

The news came, and he did a short interview and explained what he was waiting for, how he got the time off (he was a truck driver), and was overall excited over the whole ordeal and prided himself for toughing out the cold.

The line for the entrance wrapped around the whole front of the door and about another 300 yards or so past the store with thousands of people waiting to get in. At 5:00 a.m., the doors opened, and the man went straight to the plasma TVs to see they were all gone.

What happened? The garden center at the Walmart opened up about 10 seconds before the front doors, and those that came the night before scooped up on all 15 plasma TVs.

This guy, who had been there since Tuesday afternoon, was dumbfounded and argued with management but was stonewalled and told nothing could be done. That guy's Thanksgiving was a bust, for sure.

13. The Chilling Threats over a Return

u/[deleted]: I worked a 12-hour Black Friday shift (5 a.m.-5 p.m.) at a now out-of-business sporting goods store. There were a couple of notable things from that day.

Our sale was a nightmare. It was a deal you could get any other time of the year, but people went nuts because it was black Friday.

"Buy one get one half off, all shoes" except in the long, small print paragraph below the deal; the coupon claimed that this did not include Nike shoes among many other popular shoe models from other brands.

Cue customers threw a huge fit when they came to the register and saw that the deal didn't go through. After 20 minutes, my manager got so fed up he just started overriding the transactions because every cashier was getting screamed at.

My manager told us not to do any returns on Black Friday, as it took a long time and would hold up the line, but also because people would try and return big-ticket items and buy them again for cheap with the black friday price.

I had this couple come up and try to return a small trampoline, and I knew for a fact that they were trying to buy it again because it was on sale for $10 less than the price they paid. I informed them that I couldn't, and the wife FREAKED OUT and screamed at me for a good five minutes.

My manager told her to leave, and she was fuming while the husband tried calming her down. Two hours later, the husband is back wearing different clothes, sunglasses, and a baseball hat.

Did he think changing his appearance would change our return policy that day? He came when my manager was on break; after I recognized him and told him I couldn't do the transaction, he threatened to follow me out after my shift, break my legs, and then tell my manager something nasty about me, so I just processed his return.

14. The Mysterious Lady Who Claimed I Knew Her

u/hahauknowwhatitis420: My first day of retail was on Black Friday. I got hired at Home Depot, and they didn't know what to do with me, so they put me in the Christmas Tree lot.

Somebody would pick out a tree, and I would mend it to their specifications with a chainsaw I had never used before. The worst experience was when a woman started yelling at me and even demanded to speak to a manager.

She insisted that I was the one who promised to save her the Christmas Tree clippings so she could make a wreath. I had not seen her before in my life.

15. Black Friday Turned into a Grocery Store Ghost Town

u/Omny87: My Black Friday two years ago was just the opposite of crazy. I worked in a grocery store, so the whole shift was dead. I have never been so utterly and thoroughly bored before or since. I would have done anything for something crazy to happen so that I could chuckle the next day.

16. The Shocking Black Friday Heist

u/shadowrider666: I was working at a retail store, and this woman left her cart alone for one second to check something out. Customers just raided her cart and took everything in it; the worst part was that we were out of everything she had in the cart, so she had no way of getting it back.

17. The Couple Who Opted for Towels over Electronics

u/Lineman72T: I worked in the security department at Target for five+ years. I only have a few horror stories since it was a store in the rougher part of town.

The funniest one I like to tell is a couple of years ago, I was there early doing crowd control. I would always talk to people in line and keep them entertained while they waited in the cold. The first couple in line had been there for about 13 or 14 hours.

So we open the store and have deals on electronics, toys, etc. They get in line and have a shopping cart filled with towels we had on sale for $2. Thats it. Just towels.

They were first in line outside and waited over half a day for $2 towels. When I left after my 12-hour shift, we still had shelves full of these towels and tons more in the stockroom.

18. When Patience Runs Out...

u/[deleted]: I am a manager at GameStop. This is one funny story. The kid pooped on our floor because his mom didn't want to leave and had to stand in line again.

19. This Took an Unexpected Turn

u/CeeDeee2: I worked at Old Navy in college. We usually had several items on one table, but only one was on sale. It was clear that it would be t-shirts, skirts, and sweaters, and the sign would say, "T-shirts $5."

One guy got pissed that everything on the table wasn't on sale and started flipping out about false advertising. We wore lanyards, and he grabbed my manager's lanyard and started choking her. We were ready to call the police, but my manager was a pretty assertive older woman who put him in his place.

20. TV Troubles Triggered the Ultimate Response

u/Thebootydiaries: We had a woman summon the police to our store because we ran out of a TV. It's hard to believe, but it happened – and the police responded.

21. She Broke My Two Fingers for Mere Numbers

u/CharistineE: In college, I worked at a toy store in the year of the Furbies. They were hard to get, and our site only got ten. We were instructed to pass out numbers rather than the toys to the first nine people in line. (One was donated).

I was the lucky one to pass out numbers. When we opened our doors, it was organized because we had set up lines, and it was also a high-end neighborhood.

I gave the first person their number, and suddenly, someone tackled me from behind. This woman slammed into me, knocked me to the floor, and ripped the tickets out of my hand, breaking two fingers—all for mere numbers.

How dumb was she? The store refused to give her a furby for her numbers and tried to detain her until the cops showed up, but she decked our manager and walked out.

22. A Retail Horror Story

u/preternaturous: I worked Black Friday three years ago at Best Buy. I saw a guy get out of his car and stab another guy over a parking spot. I had to give a witness statement for that one.

The same day, I saw one lady punch a pregnant lady cause the expectant woman got the last of the 200-dollar TVs. Thank god it was a punch to the face, not the womb.

Also, on the same day, a gentleman grabbed one of the chairs from the Geek Squad counter and threw it at my coworker because she informed the man that we sold out of the iPad 2 four hours prior.

Also, I had to work, even though my grandma died the day before (on Thanksgiving). It was the worst 15-hour shift I've ever had to work, the blackest of Fridays.

23. Long Queue Pushed Shopper to Play Sick

u/mammajrocks: My first day working for Best Buy was on black Friday 8 years ago. I controlled 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 felt sick. She looked at me and said, "This is all your fault; 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 told 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 quickly. That was my first of five black Fridays with Best Buy.

24. Black Friday's Gunpoint Drama

u/kittykatie0629: I work at the largest lingerie retailer in the country. We had a security guard last night for the beginning of black Friday. A southern belle mother decided she didn't want to wait in a 50-person deep line and would cut.

Our security guard asked her multiple times to step to the back of the line or leave. She proceeded to ream him with every curse word in the book and ended by threatening him with a gun she had in her bag.

25. The Retail Olympics

u/LikeMike2224: I worked at Walmart during college a few years back. Because Walmart keeps the store open, unlike Target or other stores, we are setting up the merchandise right in front of the customers; it's like setting up a buffet in front of hungry bears or something.

When it came time to release the video games, a guy jumped over the crowd 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 on Black Friday was when 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 was 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.

26. The Scammer

u/Shamyeah: A guy came through my check lane as usual. He had some huge TV that I knew would cost about 300-500 dollars. After I scanned it, I looked at my screen, and it showed up as 20 bucks.

I told him there was no way this TV was 20 dollars. He was insisting it was 20. Upon closer inspection, the name of the item on my computer screen was not a Samsung TV.

So I looked at the barcode and noticed it was taped on! This guy taped a 20-dollar barcode on a huge TV. I called security, and the guy was brought to some back room; I hope that guy is happy he got me a free pie for finding him out.

27. He Almost Sued Us, but the Tape Became Our Unexpected Hero!

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

28. He Lost His Eye over a Toy

u/Church_of_Xenu: Years ago, I got hired as seasonal help for Toys R Us. It was before they redesigned the stores; everything was in long aisles. I got stuck in aisle one: board games on one side and the big glass case of video games on the other.

This was the year that Super Nintendo came out, so we had one behind the glass with a controller outside so you could try out Super Mario Land.

I'm up on a ladder getting more copies of Crocodile Dentist down to restock the lower shelves, and I hear some yelling. I look down, and two kids are shoving each other in front of the SNES.

They start swinging at each other, and the parents intervene, only to start fighting themselves. I slide down the ladder, and my manager rushes over to stop things from worsening.

One of the parents had a bat in his cart and hit the other guy square in the back, knocking him into the display cabinet, shattering the glass, and cutting him up well.

The guy with the bat realizes what he did, grabs his kids, and tries to make a run for the door. Management was trying to block him from leaving, so they went and got the cop who was outside directing traffic. The police came in and wrestled this guy to the ground while his kids watched.

He resisted and got a serious beatdown in the middle of the store. The other guy that went through the glass was cut up and bleeding badly. He ended up losing an eye over the whole thing.

After this was all over, we had to lock up the SNES, and you could only try it out if management opened the case for you. The other messed up part of this whole thing was that people were taking toys out of the injured guy's cart as EMS worked on him, and his kid sat there crying.

One woman even tried to take the blood-splattered demo SNES out of the broken case to try to buy for her kid. People are heartless when it comes to cheap crap. Ever since then, I decided to spend my black Fridays at home.

29. My Unforgettable First Shift at Walmart

u/Wildfires: On 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 containing our merchandise 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 on the ground. A customer wanted it; I hate Black Friday.

30. Woman's Shocking Act Landed Her behind Bars

u/[deleted]: I worked one particular Black Friday in the clothes department at Walmart. People hovered over the pallets for about two hours before the sale began. The alarm went off, and the swarm just went insane.

There were two women in particular on opposite sides, tossing clothes back and forth to each other. I don't know what their system was because they were catching and tossing aside half the stuff.

But this little teenager (I mean like a petite tiny girl) intercepted a pair of jeans being tossed, and the woman went INSANE and elbowed her in the face. Instant blood, and the little girl was so shocked she just stood there shaking and crying.

The woman acted like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I pulled her out of the crowd and started to walk her to get her cleaned up when the sheriff appeared out of nowhere.

The best part was she was his kid, and the woman was arrested on the spot. Hahaha. She had to post bail and pay full price for her jeans

31. A Toddler Car Box Turned into a Weapon

u/InfinityKitty: 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.

A woman who got hit was a week or three post-op of open heart surgery. She lost lots of blood right In front of me. I have no idea what happened to the woman who hit her. I think she got the toy car, purchased it, and left.

32. Black Friday Turned Granny into a Warrior

u/[deleted]: An 80-year-old grandma tackled and then bear-maced a woman over fleece fabric at my store. The old lady wanted a cancer pink ribbon fabric, and the woman she ultimately tackled had called ahead and ordered a bulk amount of it because she works for a cancer organization and makes blankets for cancer patients.

The woman was wheeling a cart in the store with several large bolts of the fabric in it (which she had special ordered, and we put it in the cart for her so she could continue shopping.) The old lady sees that this woman has "ALL the bolts," and it isn't right that she's hogging the entire stock of that particular print.

The woman explained the situation and said she special ordered these, so she came in on Black Friday to purchase them because they were a major promotion at 60% off.

The old lady continues to yell at the poor woman. The woman very calmly keeps trying to reassure her that she is not taking any of the store stock and that she makes blankets for dying women with breast cancer.

She is a very sweet store regular who pays out of pocket for all the blankets, so my store held the fabric for her until black Friday when she would come in and purchase them with her coupon.

The old lady doesn't want to understand. She Whips out mace and tackles the woman. The old lady gets kicked out of the store.

She would come in once every couple of months, give me the stink eye, and then rebelliously write down recipes from the home and food magazines so she wouldn't have to buy them. Then she'd scurry out and come back in a few months.

33. Only the Security Lady Could Handle Her

u/ThisIsAnustart: This one year, when I was 15, I worked at Wal-Mart, shelf stocking. This time, we had this doll on sale for $19.99; Toys R' Us had the same doll for $79.99.

People knew about this and lined up outside five hours before opening. This wasn't just your regular bargain shoppers. This was a bunch of middle-aged women standing in the cold for five hours to get this doll and the few normal bargain shoppers in the mix.

Fifteen minutes before opening, we started hearing this loud "BANG" "CRACK," so a few of us started going to see what was happening; THEY WERE RAMMING THE DOOR!

Two hundred cold people were trying to take down the gate to the kingdom! Five minutes later, you hear the loud SNAP; they broke through the doors! Everybody rushes into the store.

It's yet to be opened; nobody is at their cash, but it doesn't matter; 300+ people think it's okay to go in through the door that popped off its hinges. There was a huge rush of people flooding the store. I've never seen anything like it, and I've worked retail (in total now for almost ten years).

Now, there are a few things that happened here. First, we had to call an ambulance, as there was one of our elderly customers, a very nice older man who always made people smile. He was near the front entrance and in the front line of the bargains battle.

He fell to the floor and got run over by countless people. Nobody stopped to help; he just got stepped on. He had a broken hip, broken ribs, and countless bruises. At the same time this happened, I headed over to the toys section where the three pallets of these dolls were sitting.

And what do I see? A crazy woman is swinging her cane violently, claiming the whole lot of them! And screaming, "I'VE BEEN HERE FOR 8 HOURS! I BOUGHT 5 THOUSAND DOLLARS AND I'M GETTING THEM ALL! IF YOU WANT SOME YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO BUY IT FROM ME!!"

She was crazy; she hit two employees and many customers. Our security guard, Robin, was there. Robin goes to the front of the crowd and says, "This is strike 2; I want you to leave now, or else I'm having you removed (at this point, the cops were already on the way). Of course, the woman screams, "BRING IT ON! YOU CAN'T TAKE ME!"

So Robin did the most unusual thing I've ever seen. She slowly walked up to her, put her hands in her pockets, and threw 3-4 bouncy balls on the floor. The crazy lady was a little thrown off and looked at the balls.

Robin then snapped the cane out of her hands while simultaneously smacking her with it on her arm. Robin spun her around and held her arms behind her back (no cuffs) until the cops showed up a minute later.

The rest went well; we sold out of dolls in minutes, with a limit of one per customer. This is my craziest black Friday story.

34. The Crazy Shopper's Rampage

u/Msknee: I worked at Toys "R" Us when the original Furby came out. I walked in the back doors right before my shift when doors were supposed to open. I had people follow me in and assault me trying to get a damn Furby.

Then, when doors finally did open, one parent pushed my coworker to the ground and jumped on top of a pile of people to get one from the display.

She ended up kicking some poor schmuck in the head and grabbed a Furby and stuffed it down her shirt, and tried to casually walk out and steal it.

35. The Granny Who Triggered a Heart Attack

u/Jaysapathy: I was working for a Media Play during Black Friday. They were going out of business, so there were just liquidation prices, no sale prices. We had made a tower of MP3 Players that were moderately priced and put them by the front door.

They were $20 each or something like that. People start to line up outside the door at 4 a.m. We don't open until our normal 10 a.m. time. About 8 a.m., they start to bang on the door.

My manager explained that we don't open for another two hours, and things get rough outside. At 10 a.m., we open the doors a little later than the rest. Leading the pack is an elderly woman who looks to be a hundred, sporting a walker. She shuffles into the store, "running" with her walker, and dives for the MP3 Player Pyramid we'd put up.

She threw herself into it with her arms out, frantically grabbing all she could get her hands on. She hits the ground hard, and people start to flood the store. A few of them step on her. We just sat there and watched the flood come in.

Meanwhile, the old lady is suddenly clutching her chest. We're all looking at each other, trying to figure out what to do, so we try to help her. She falls to the ground. The cycle repeats twice until we finally realize it's time to call the paramedics.

During this entire time, she holds three MP3 Players and refuses to let them go. My coworker dials 911, and the paramedics rush over a few moments later. They're loading her onto the stretcher, and she's moaning about Christmas presents while still clutching the MP3 Players.

After examining the woman, the paramedics said she had triggered a heart attack. The paramedics wheel her out and get her to the hospital. It wasn't a major one, but she refused to drop the merchandise at any time.

It went in the ambulance with her. My boss went to visit her in the hospital later that day, in uniform, and her first words were, "Oh my God, please don't press charges, I promise I'll pay for it right now."

36. These Shoppers Had the Audacity

u/Acharai: I work back of the house at a Toys "R" Us. I spent Black Friday taking big ticket items to the back, where we just loaded them into the customer's car instead of trying to make our way to the front of the store.

Apparently, someone decided it was fine to wander into the back storage room and open boxes to find what they wanted. Other customers saw this guy and decided it was okay to do it.

My coworkers and I were busy wrestling with an obnoxious bed set, so when I made it to the other side of our back storage, I found eight to ten people just taking cases off our bays and opening them, then tossing them aside if they didn't want it.

They claimed nothing indicated they weren't supposed to be there. Two signs on the swinging door say "Employees Only" and "Warning: Only authorized people beyond this point!"

37. Mr. So and So Got Me Fired!

u/Hereforthefreecake: I worked for Mrs. Fields Cookies in my local mall during Black Friday 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 working most of the day with an equally lazy buddy of mine, slinging cookies and taking orders for cookie cakes while the mall was packed.

Around four in the afternoon (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.

I let him in the back. He tinkers for a second on the computer and takes our deposits—an hour before closing time. My boss is back to our location to help us close. He starts reviewing our paperwork and money and realizes we are about 1600$ short.

I explained that Mr. Soandso came to our location for a mid-day drop since he didn't work. He told me Mr. Soandso 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.

38. The Battle over a Calculator

u/Jsquaw: 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, elderly women came into the store looking for them. The drama began when I told them only one was left in the display.

It turned into a senior version of roller derby without the skates. The one grandma who lost the race cursed the other as she stood in the checkout line, gripping her $5 prize.

39. They Mistook Shopping Carts for Flat-Screen TVs

u/ChickenHauler: I have never worked retail but delivered to many retail stores. I showed up with a delivery at a Wally-World about 8 a.m. on Black Friday and couldn't even get back into the dock.

It turns out they had some ridiculous price on flat-screen TVs and had run out. The store manager had told them more were coming in on the next truck that morning.

So, naturally, they saw me and thought they'd be allowed to grab them off the truck? They were disappointed when they saw I had a trailer full of brand-new shopping carts.

40. Sweet Revenge

Deleted user: This crazy woman almost gave me a heart attack, but thank God my manager smartly paid her back.She brought a box of kitchenware for a return, saying, "l got the same thing as a gift, give me a FULL REFUND!"I opened the box and froze.

Me: "Sorry, but we didn't sell this to you. No refund."She: "How dare you?! I'm the owner's wife, you'll be fired if you don't make the refund!" My manager Jack steps in, "Sorry ma'am, he's newbie and doesn't recognize you, of course, we'll do a full refund."

She smirks, gets what she wants, and leaves. Me: "Jack, she's not the owner's wife, what's goingon?"Him (with a huge smile): "Yeah, I know. Just wait 5-10minutes, you'll see."

This moment, she comes back with red face: "Please!!! I beg you!!! Don't do this. I didn't know that you knew my husband...Jack's grin widened. "See, she's been cheating on her husband with my brother. I just called her husband and told him I knew their secret."

He continued, "She came back, not out of remorse, but fear. I blackmailed her into returning the refund money and to apologize. Her fear of being exposed to her husband made her do the right thing for once." The store erupted in murmurs, all eyes on the door she had just exited. It was a cunning move by Jack, ensuring justice in an unconventional way.

While many eagerly anticipate Black Friday as a chance to save money, it's crucial to prioritize safety. The excitement for discounted products can lead to chaos, resulting in injuries or, in extreme cases, arrests.

It's important for shoppers to stay calm and collected for a smooth experience. Keep safety in mind, and you'll have a successful and enjoyable shopping experience.