PSA: Don’t Do What These People Did On Black Friday

Black Friday is a terrible time. Sometimes, you come out of it with a great deal on a pair of shoes — but mostly, you come out of it with a mysterious bruise and a headache that lasts for days. The horror stories are as intriguing as they are upsetting, so naturally, when we spotted an open forum of true Black Friday woes from retail workers on Reddit, we fell into a deep (black) hole.

Anyone who has worked retail knows it can be incredibly demoralizing. But, Black Friday is an entirely new level of despicable customer behavior. Seemingly innocent grandmothers will fight their own infant grandchildren, tooth-and-nail, for a ridiculous, slightly marked-down item they most certainly didn't need.

We pulled out a few highlights in case you don't have time to go down the same rabbit hole we did (or, if Reddit is tragically blocked on your work computer...sigh). Check it out below, or hit up the full forum for more scary goodness.

@Wildfires: "My first Black Friday , I was working at a Walmart. I was assigned to be one of the employees that would cut open the plastic on the pallets which contained our merchandise, which were all in the floor. Basically, 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 apparently wanted it. F*ck Black Friday."

@Kidou: "I worked for six years at a Johnny Rockets in a mall, as a server and management. We didn't open early like the rest of the stores, because we are a restaurant and well, we don't serve breakfast. Had people shake our gates screaming that they wanted food. Or, it would be just me and a opener getting the chairs set out. I pointed them towards the food court and told them we didn't serve breakfast. A lady spit at me and told me, "I know you have bacon." We do. In a fridge waiting to be cooked and put on a burger."

@Nickdubs: "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."

@IUsedToBeSomebody: "I watched a woman collapse in hysterics into my manager's arms because we didn't have the exact model of cooler she wanted. Thanksgiving must be a stressful time in her family."