Nothing brings out the worst in people quite like thinking they’re about to lose money.

One toy store cashier found that out after the company suddenly announced it had gone bankrupt.

Customers were given just a few days to use their remaining gift cards, so the stores were packed almost immediately.

Unfortunately, the system couldn’t handle that many people trying to use their cards at once, and transactions started taking forever.

Most customers understood, but by the next day, things had gotten so bad that employees were being screamed at, threatened, spit on, and even assaulted.

Read on to see exactly what transpired.

Toy retailer goes bankrupt, so crazy customers decide to assault the cashiers.

I work as a cashier for a toy retailer. Our company has about 300 stores in the country, of which most are regular-sized ones, and some are XL stores that are about the size of a big supermarket.

Recently, it was announced that the company had gone bankrupt. Usually, when this happens, all gift cards that have not been redeemed at the time of bankruptcy become invalid and can no longer be used. An exception was made, and customers were allowed to still come in with their gift cards until Sunday.

Turns out this was a huge mistake. When the news broke that the company had gone bankrupt and customers only had about 3.5 days to use their gift cards, the stores got swarmed by people.

Halfway through the day, the gift card system went down.

At my location, one of the XL stores, there was a horde of people waiting outside on Friday morning, and the crowd ended up filling half the store by 2 PM.

Around 2 PM, our gift card system started to fail. We quickly realized this was because 300+ stores were operating on the same gift card server, and the system was overloaded.

Most customers sympathized and understood that there was nothing we could do other than try to scan the gift cards 100 times (which usually ended up working; it only took absolutely forever).

There were even some people who saw the humor in the entire thing, as the toy store now looked like a warzone. At one point, a mom in my queue opened a bag of lollipops and started handing them out to the kids around them (she did pay for them), which was a very wholesome thing to see.

Luckily, around 6pm things started to calm down.

Things got crazy. My supervisors were running around in a frenzy as 3 others and I were at 4 cash registers, desperately trying to get the gift cards to work.

Eventually, one of my supervisors came up with the brilliant idea to use the computer at the service desk as a DIY gift card balance checker (since everyone was asking us if we could check their balance for them) by turning the entire thing around and just letting the customers scan their own cards.

At one point, a young girl in the queue whose mother’s gift cards I was scanning just passed out. Which, of course, only caused people to panic more.

Eventually, though, around 6 PM, when the stores had started shutting down, the system went back to a semi-regular speed, and we were able to get through the queue of people relatively quickly.

Even though she didn’t work the next day, she heard what happened.

But oh boy, it didn’t end there.

I wasn’t scheduled to be at work today, so I didn’t experience the absolute mayhem that took place. Not that I needed to, because it’s all over the news.

Here’s a quick rundown of the most bizarre things that happened today, as the gift card system was not only overloaded but also got hit by a DDoS attack:

Employees got yelled at, cussed at, and generally verbally abused. Fights broke out between customers and employees, and the police were called. Employees were being spit at.

At this point, some of the stores started to close early.

Furthermore, stores closed early because the employees were being assaulted. Employees got threatened. Customers tried to steal toys when their gift cards were declined. And employees got toys and other items thrown at them, etc.

Of course, Twitter is going rampant too.

Most people are defending the employees and are calling out the ridiculous customers, while the minority either claim the whole system overload is a hoax or that we deserve the response we got from customers.

As grateful as I am that I wasn’t at work today, I am scheduled for tomorrow. Wish me luck, guys. We’re in the endgame now.

Yikes! It’s always crazy when people lose their mind over stuff like this.

Let’s take a look at what the folks over at Reddit think.

Apparently, two stores went out of business in Denmark too.

This person is happy it’s happening in the Netherlands.

Some people like to remain loyal until the end.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tech support worker who told a manager a computer needed replaced, only to be told no thanks.

Here’s how this person thinks they should’ve handled it.

Shame on those customers.

These employees were already dealing with losing their jobs, and then they had to put up with people treating them like this too?

It’s understandable to be upset about losing money, but screaming at cashiers and assaulting them is on a whole other level.

None of this was their fault, and they definitely didn’t deserve to become everyone’s punching bag.