Black Friday is dead. Good riddance.

Eight years ago, I was working at one of the anchor stores of a large mall.

My co-worker Duke (not his real name) burst into the break room, his eyes popping out of his head.

“I just saw two guys fist fighting over a parking space!” he gasped.

“Duke, have you worked in retail before?” He hadn’t. “Welcome to Black Friday.”

I worked in various retail jobs for about 10 years. I am all too familiar with Black Friday.

Industry experts have declared Black Friday dead. Between customers evading crowds with online shopping and retailers spreading out sales, it was already declining. Now the pandemic has killed it.

Good.

To clarify, I am not against shopping per se. Do all the shopping you want (and can afford) - it keeps businesses open and people working.

That said...

Black Friday deserved to die, and we should let it stay dead.

Those “door buster” deals are grossly overhyped. Door busters are a trick to get bargain-hunting shoppers through the door, and historically they’ve worked. Here’s what stores don’t tell you: there are often VERY limited quantities of the door buster items. There may only be one - and there have been cases of certain store locations not having ANY of a door buster item in stock.

Last year, Walmart was taken to task by frustrated customers by running out of highly coveted items before the Black Friday sale even began, running out of the Apple Watch 3 within a few minutes, and in at least one case, canceling a customer’s previous order on Black Friday.

Speaking of “door busting”…it’s deadly.

Black Friday is not known for bringing out the best in people. Shoppers fight over parking spaces, fight over the last iPhone, push and shove, destroy store displays, and viciously attack each other and the retail workers serving them.

The website Black Friday Death Count attributes 12 deaths and 117 injuries to Black Friday, beginning in 2006. It lists assaults, stabbings, shootings, incidents of trampling, and far too many more horror stories to list here.

And that count doesn’t include minor injuries. The last time I had to work on Black Friday, I was bruised, scratched, and stepped on by frenzied shoppers - despite working behind the cash wrap for my entire shift.

Employee abuse runs rampant on Black Friday.

I’m not just talking about horrible customer behavior (although there is far too much of that). Some retailers think absolutely nothing of ignoring employees’ rights on Black Friday.

You may be aware that warehouse employees are often too busy to take bathroom breaks. Guess what, that also applies to retail workers on Black Friday. Stories abound of workers having to wear diapers, knowing the restrooms will have long lines - IF they get a restroom break at all. I can personally attest to not always being given legally mandated breaks on Black Friday - in some cases, on all of Thanksgiving weekend. Some retailers have forced sick or injured employees to work on Black Friday, under threat of termination.

Ever had to stay at work past the scheduled end of your shift, for two shifts in a row, that were less than six hours apart (meaning you only got two hours of sleep in between them)? I have. By the time I was finally allowed to leave after my second shift, I was woozy and very close to collapsing from exhaustion.

Finally, Black Friday ruins family time for everyone involved.

One store where I worked opened on Thanksgiving night. Corporate headquarters declared that working on Thanksgiving was strictly voluntary, and I didn’t mind working a late-night shift for holiday pay.

Then on the one year my parents had guests from out of state and needed my help in the kitchen, the store’s sadistic new general manager forced me to work the opening shift on Thanksgiving, knowing I had plans. We all had to reconfigure our entire schedule and have Thanksgiving lunch instead of Thanksgiving dinner, just so I could be at the mall at 5pm (and then back for a second shift with only two hours of sleep). That’s hard when air travel is involved. And after two grueling shifts with very little sleep, followed by two more nine-hour shifts that weekend, I was too exhausted to see much of our guests before they had to fly back home.

To add insult to injury, one customer I rung up had the nerve to snottily announce “you should be at home with your family today”.

…Wow.

Over the years I saw countless exhausted children, ranging from babies to tweens, having meltdowns because their parents dragged them to the mall at 5 a.m. (if not earlier) and forced them to stay there for hours. Once, I had to page the stockroom staff to borrow a chair from the break room for a senior citizen who was having trouble staying upright. Her adult children had insisted on going shopping, apparently without any consideration for her health and wellbeing.

Enough is enough. Thanksgiving - the one day out of the year when we’re all supposed to practice gratitude - shouldn’t segue into fistfights, chaos, and forcing a cashier with food poisoning to come to work.