Working Black Friday

I have a love/hate relationship with a certain shopping day happening tomorrow.

I work in a card shop so needless to say that this is our busiest time of the year. You see some things when working retail at Christmastime let me tell you.

Christmas Eve is the worst, that is when everyone is borderline fighting for the last of the cards and folks are rather aggressive. Last year when I told a customer the card he wanted to buy was £5 he yelled “I’m no fucking paying that for a card!” and stormed out.

Thankfully I tend to do the earlier shifts on that day and I hope that trend continues this year.

Black Friday is an odd day since it isn’t really a thing here in the UK. We have deals and stuff but nothing compared to how it goes down in the states. The manic crowds and violence only happened once and since then, few people go shopping on Black Friday. Maybe online deals along with Cyber Monday but not a lot of folks show up in stores on Black Friday, possibly to avoid any such instances of mass hysteria.

This doesn’t tend to happen, thank goodness

I have worked the past three Black Fridays and it tends to be a rather quiet day compared to the rest of the November/December shopping rush. On top of that we don’t really do anything sale wise, normally a deal on Yankee Candles or something like this year but not a shop wide discount or anything crazy.

Most shoppers don’t mind, a handful might ask if there are any other deals on for Black Friday but no one kicks up a fuss since we tend to do a fair amount of deals year-round anyway, so they will still grab a bargain or two anyway.

However, I’m always worried that this will be the year where the stampedes going to happen. Not to mention that it was on Black Friday I witnessed one of the worst events I have seen during my time at retail.

To keep it short, an elderly woman collapsed in the shop. We called for medics and started to ask customers to come back in five or so minutes so the medics could do their job and help her.

Did they? Some yes but about half demanded to buy their items now and went to the tills. Stepping over the lady on the floor to do so!

I was disgusted.

Thankfully nothing like that has happened since as the only other time an older customer collapsed she was still awake so I fetched her items for her as she sat on a chair my manager brought out for her. She was such a sweetheart and kept making me laugh, one of my best customers ever.

While working Black Friday isn’t ideal, I do like shopping then since, like I said, it tends to be quiet and some stores do great deals which go a long way whether it’s for my Christmas list or just a treat for myself. It doesn’t hurt that it coincides with my payday.

Although in all honestly the sale I look forward to the most is the Steam Autumn Sale. Already starting to pick up a few games into my cart ready for payday.