Hectic, dangerous and overwhelming, these are the words that come to mind when thinking of Black Friday. Every year people line up outside stores and wait for the good deals. Black Friday shopping can get very intense as people are desperate to find a good deal. People are fighting over all kinds of products, and some people have ended up in the hospital after having a shopping trip go badly. Black Friday is not only difficult for the shoppers, but it is even more difficult for the workers. Kathryn Sloane has worked in many popular stores such as Anthropologie and American Eagle. She has many crazy stories from people causing a scene in the store to others when shoppers just made her shift a whole lot harder.

There was one time when a child pushed her down during a shift. “There are always kids running around the store knocking down items carelessly,” said Sloane. Some parents who brought their children shopping were paying no attention to their kids at all. It’s not only children causing problems, but also many adults have caused a scene too. “There was a time when a woman asked me to hold her cat while she went into the dressing room,” said Sloane. “I just stood their holding her cat as she tried on her clothes,” said Sloane. Retail workers encounter plenty of odd customers and they only find more on Black Friday. Surprisingly, many of these stories involve pets.

“For example a woman once brought her dog into the store and let the dog run around and make a mess,” said Sloane. After they found the dog owner and kindly explained that she would need to buy the items that the dog had destroyed, she went on to argue with the store employees insisting that it was not her dog’s fault. After persistently arguing with the store workers she finally agreed to clean up after her dog and purchase everything that he destroyed. “There was a time when a man brought in a box of over 400 clothes on Black Friday and when we asked him what was wrong with the clothes he told us that he didn’t feel like trying them on,” said Sloane. American Eagle has a policy that they have to return all clothes, no matter how old they are and a lot of people take advantage of this rule. Sloane shared another story of when there was another man who locked himself in a dressing room for the entire day and refused to come out. When someone would come by to ask him if he needed help he would be completely silent and the employees decided to leave him be knowing that he would come out eventually. As the store was closing he walked out of the dressing room and out of the store, and when an employee went into the dressing room they found nothing. The man had just been sitting in the dressing room all day doing nothing.

As a Black Friday shopper you have to prepare yourself for the day. Many people wake up very early in hopes of getting to a store before everyone else. Fiona Sloane talked about her experience going shopping on Black Friday. “All of the stores were extremely crowded, and it was hard to move around without bumping into someone. While I was at one store I even witnessed people throwing clothes at each other as they dug through a huge pile of clothes, ” said Sloane There have been plenty of stories on the news of people taking shopping too far and people getting seriously injured. Just a few years ago a target employee witnessed someone pull out a can of pepper spray and use it against someone. In other stores fistfights have broken out over something silly like a blender. If you plan on going shopping on Black Friday make sure to be have a good time but to stay safe.