Black Friday Shenanigans..

Anyone have anything interesting happen on Black Friday? I was over working at the mall with a legion of other security officers from all over the tri-county area. Nobody got trampled to death, but I don't think I've ever had as many asinine and invalid complaints in one day in my entire career in security.

We have a strict employee parking policy at our mall, and for the midnight opening last night onward till close of business sunday, we have off-site parking for employees with a free shuttle that takes about 10 minutes. Some guy showed up in his van who was an employee, and started being really stubborn and holding up traffic while me and another guy told him he had to park off-site. He said he wouldn't move until my boss(the account manager) came out to talk to him, so I told him that he isn't just inconveniencing us, he's inconveniencing the horde of cars behind him who are about to get out and whoop his ass if he doesn't move. He eventually called our dispatch to complain, but as we were all outside, it was on the phone patch that transfers phone calls to our radios. He was screaming and bitching at the top of his lungs to our account manager on our radios so we could all hear, we were laughing our asses off the whole time.

On the way out to the traffic intersection I was going to be directing before we opened, a woman asked me what time our doors were opening and I told her midnight. Someone left one of the doors unlocked and people started streaming inside the mall to line up on stores, and she came into the middle of the traffic intersection to try and get me to somehow get her a voucher to be inside the store as if she got to the line first, she was super irate. All I could tell her after she insisted I could somehow help her was "FUCK OFF OR I'M GOING TO CAUSE AN ACCIDENT. I'M BUSY!"

Had some lady ask me if we were going to open the parking garage tonight and I said no(It gets so congested eventually that nobody can back out, and thus the people driving through it all over the place have no place to park and it ends up being a huge mess) and then about an hour into it we decided to open it. She came out all pissed that(god forbid) she had to park in the parking lot.

None of these people could seem to grasp that they didn't have any claim to being pissed off about anything, seeing as they all got to have thanksgiving with their families and I was at work. Pieces of shit, it's just stuff.

Anyone have stories from last night? Anyone here work retail perhaps? Anyone enough of a loser to be sitting outside in december weather for hours waiting in line?

I'm staying at home, avoiding the hoards of crazy. The Christmas season pisses me off so much.

I live across from the mall. Hordes of stupid pyschotic drivers all over the place. Plenty of near misses and close calls. The lack of snow we normally have has made the drivers more reckless then usual.

Barkey: Sounds about right for a black friday event. I worked at a Toys R US years back. I got to handle the rain checks. I got to see soccer moms get mean, nasty, and rude. They then bitch you out that you advertise an item and it runs out. They seem to fail to understand the conceopt of limited supplies. The words sorry we are out doesn't click in their thickened skulls. As if by chewing the ass of the guy trying to help you, magically makes an item appear on the shelves.

Our guards get called out to walmarts and other locations for this kind of day.

edited 25th Nov '11 7:13:08 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Nah, I've been in bed all day laid up with a nasty cold.

But I've been listening to Megadeth's Good Mourning/Black Friday most of the day. The song might not be about Black Friday antics, being about a man getting possessed and killing people with a hammer, but it fits the level of insanity this day breeds in people.

One of my friends, who is a security guard, got a mouthful of Narm from a woman who was trying to get in minutes early to shopping.

He kept telling her she needed to wait until everyone else was allowed in.

Does she act reasonably and respect the rules? No.

She replies, "All you cops are a bunch o' fascist cold blooded lizardmen!"

You would never hear anyone talk like that...except on Black Friday.

edited 25th Nov '11 6:42:00 PM by NickTheSwing

My mother and I skipped black friday by dint of driving across 2 states to get home. It made driving through Milwaukee a dream since the roads were so clear, even at rush-hour.

@Nick: I might have to steal that, actually. Too funny.

Seriously wtf is wrong with these people. Shootings, stabbings, robbery, trampling. Damn loons are acting like animals for things.

There are multiple articles on violence at these events. Hell one crowd got OC sprayed they got so out of control

edited 25th Nov '11 7:15:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

That's why I say Megadeth's Good Mourning/Black Friday is the perfect song for the day, considering how insane people get.

A kid ran his face right into my elbow. I turned just to see his four-hundred pound whale of a mother staring me down, plotting just in what order she was going to cook and eat me for her son's mistake. So I left.

On my way out, I saw what I consider the funniest thing ever; a woman in a power chair, lone rock in a sea of people, unable to move. I'm sorry, but if you can't walk on two legs, then Black Friday really isn't for you.

Black Friday is one of the reasons why I'm glad I work at a Grocery Store rather than a department store or mall.

Why? Today is one of the slowest days of the year for our store. Sucks not getting the hours,but better than having to navigate a sea of people and dealing with all of the nonsense.

I never go out on Black Friday. So not worth it. If I have to pay more later, so be it. I prefer to avoid as much of the crazy as I can.

Working. Somebody's gotta lift peoples fridges and water heaters into their cars.

Arrested a shoplifter masquerading as a US Army Major... Sick mofos come out during the holidays.

How is that sick? I mean it is pretty damn low. Maybe I have higher standards of sickos.

I work in a hospital, and for once I was glad to be working the ten-hour shift today and didn't have to deal with any of that foolishness (working in a hospital on the holidays isn't as bad as it sounds, since the less-critical patients go home with their families, so it's not as busy). This video is making its way around the internet, showing people acting like total maniacs (at one point you see a woman bite somebody). Behold madness and weep for humanity. WEEP.

edited 23rd Nov '12 7:54:20 PM by DesertDragon

There's also this one.

It's the same video actually. Nonetheless, that kind of thing makes me want to hide in my room until January 5th lol.

I stayed home today. There's some shopping I want to do but it can damn well wait until the crazy has left the building.

My mom had to go to the hospital for a bit again, but otherwise it was pretty uneventful.

my town decided that the best thing they could do was hold a christmas parade right down the main street of the town. This street divides the north from the south in the town, and when they start the parade, there are exactly two ways to get from the northern part to the southern part, one is a busy thoroughfare at the best of times with sub-prime access to the big mall, the other is a residential street just off of a high-speed residential street. It's really freaking stupid.

I heard from my aunt that while she was shopping for phones, when she went for this really low price one, a lady behind her shrieked in this horribly shrill voice, "Don't you dare touch that phone, motherfucking motherfucker!"

Aunt said this lady looked to be in her sixties or something.

Black Friday seems to be a day when everyone goes horribly, narmtastically insane.

edited 23rd Nov '12 10:29:54 PM by NickTheSwing

This shit should be illegal.

assaulting people is illegal.

Being that nasty to people is not.

I think what Cats is saying is the whole Black Friday thing ought to be illegal. Which, while I'd love to see it, I'm not sure how we could make it so without going against some other laws.