What it’s like working in a clothes store on Black Friday

The number of curses we hear on our headsets drastically increases

Black Friday is as much a part of the holidays as Thanksgiving.

All over the States, shoppers line up outside of stores and wait for the glorious moment when the doors open.

We’ve all seen the videos of the fights and stampedes of people rushing into the store and grabbing random items. During the madness, no one thinks about the poor retail workers who have to fix the displays, clean up the messes, and cash you out at the register as fast as they possibly can.

Black Friday is the retail worker’s nightmare.

I work at an American Eagle. There are lots of clothes put in neat piles, some of which need folding in somewhat complicated ways to make nice displays.

On Black Friday, it was my job to keep everything in these displays looking pristine.

This not only includes the tables at the front of the store, but the rounders, the sweater tables, the jean walls, and the stacks of very fluffy scarves.

It doesn’t sound that difficult. All it involves is folding clothes.

Well, when you have to re-fold each pile of sweaters, the leggings, and joggers every five minutes or else it looks like a bomb went off, you get tired really quickly. That’s why most managers buy the employees Red Bulls, Monsters, a lot of coffee, or just about anything with caffeine in it.

We do our best to keep the front looking nice so shoppers think we might actually have it together mentally

 

On the subject of food, if you have a shift that is less than five hours in length, you only get one 15 minute break. If you have a shift longer than five hours, you get one 30 minute meal break.

On Black Friday, it’s all hands on deck. When you get a break, it’s wonderful, but in the back of your mind you know your work pile is becoming larger and larger every second you sit. That’s why managers and other employees bring in and share a ton of food in the back room. When you take your break, it shortens the amount of time you have to be away from the work.

Working Black Friday is a test of an employee’s patience. All day you have to deal with rude customers, people knocking things down, and yelling at you if there aren’t any coupons they can use on top of the already good sale. You just have to smile and be polite and pray those customers don’t come back in the store.

Additionally, there are shoplifters. Black Friday is a field day for them. With all the chaos and people cluttering the store, they can easily steal a bunch of lower priced t-shirts. The worst part about them is when you catch them, the cops have to be called and then you lose half of the staff to giving statements.

The stack of clothes at one point was taller than the pictures on the wall. This is also where shop lifters hide security tags

The other thing shop lifters do to cause problems is hide the pins and security sensors in other pieces of clothing. These are always fun surprises when you are running around like a crazy person trying to straighten the store up. There is a reason we have to wear sneakers or shoes with good soles – the security pins if stepped on can go through the bottom of your shoe, and it’s even happened with sneakers.

So just imagine folding a pair of jeans and having your hand stabbed by one of those pins. It’s not fun at all. I’m not even going to dive into the problems caused when they hide razor blades in pockets. I think you can figure out how that sort of situation could go.

Black Friday is complete madness. It seems like it is the one day of the year where people think it’s OK and almost acceptable to bully and abuse retail workers.

We are people, and we do have feelings.

When you are rude, we might look pleasant and put on a nice smile, but inside we are smacking you across the face and cursing you. As all of us are going completely mad throughout the day, the number of curses you hear on the headset we wear drastically increases.

And trust me, if you are one of those rude shoppers, there’s a good chance one of those swears is about you.

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