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If you’ve ever worked in retail, you’ll know that there is one day that almost all store workers really dread. Black Friday. Because the day’s reputation for the year’s best discounts on pricier goods (and especially technology) seems to either bring out the very worst of folk, or somehow turn otherwise decent adults feral. Those who would usually behave perfectly politely are suddenly brawling in the middle of the store over the last discounted TV, and you’re left to pick up the pieces – as well as deal with those who couldn’t even get to the TV in question. And that’s never a nice position to be in.

The retail worker in this story was aghast after having to work yet another discount sale shift – but this time, it was actually on Thanksgiving. So not only did that mean having to cut their own Thanksgiving short, it also meant basically babysitting grown customers who were reduced to entitled children for the night.

Read on to find out what happened.

“I had to leave my family for this!”… Well so did we!

I’ve been working at this particular big-chain retail store for about a year and a half at this point. I’ve also managed to work in every section of the store save for some very high up managerial positions.

Yet, they still decide to torture me with the guest service Black Thanksgiving shift every year (meaning this year and last).

For this position, all you get is screaming customers for the first five or six hours and then it’s dead from about 12am to 6am to the point where you want to rip your face off.

This story happened last year on Black Thanksgiving.

Let’s see how this went down.

In case you couldn’t tell, we opened on Thanksgiving day at 6pm last year (and continue to do so this year).

Because of this, most of the people I work with have to shove food down their throats and leave their Thanksgiving celebrations early to come and deal with irritable customers trying to save a few dollars and throwing a fit if they don’t get what they want, much fun.

So last Black Thursday we had a line forming of about 200 people at 3:30pm, and TV tickets were handed out in line long before we opened: first come, first served.

So you had to be in line loooong before we opened, and people were willing to come in insanely early to get what they wanted. When I came in at 6pm, the line was huge with about 1,000 people waiting to come in and shop.

Yikes! Read on to find out what happened when they opened the doors.

So when the floodgates opened at 6pm, it was the most amusing thing to watch people trip over each other and book it to the electronics section.

When most people saw the TVs right next to guest services roped off, they realized that the TVs were already accounted for, and although they were upset they understood that they had been too late. There were a lot of other cool things to get, so it’s not like they came for nothing.

About three hours later, the initial rush of the night settled down and things were relatively calm up front (although electronics was still insane, not surprisingly).

At this point, people had stopped yelling at us for silly things that we could not control, so most of our work consisted of sorting things and cleaning up the front.

But then, a customer came in to change that.

At about 9pm, this man comes in by himself and heads back towards electronics, which is no big deal because there are always stragglers and you never know what might be left.

Well apparently this guy didn’t understand how Black Thanksgiving works, because about fifteen minutes later he comes up fuming to guest service and starts yelling.

He yelled at me, “Where are your TVs? I want a TV right now!” so I replied, “Sir, I apologize but the TVs were a high demand item and people had already purchased all of them.”

The guy then insisted, “No! I want a TV right now! This is unacceptable! I had to come all this way and leave my family and I want a TV!”

Let’s see how the store workers tried to calm this guy down.

At this point, no amount of reason would settle him down, so I called over the front end manager to try and deal with him. She asked “what’s the problem over here?”

Before I could even speak, the guy yelled, “I CAME IN FOR A TV AND YOU GUYS DON’T HAVE ANY AND HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME! I HAD TO LEAVE MY FAMILY FOR THIS AND COME ALL THE WAY HERE AND I DEMAND A TV RIGHT NOW! HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME LEAVE MY FAMILY FOR NOTHING!”

My manager then said, “You will not yell at me or my team member like that! At least you made the decision to leave your family – every single person here had to leave their families in the middle of dinner to come here and deal with grown children like you throwing temper tantrums because they showed up three hours late to something when people had been lining up since 10am for this.”

She continued, “You can go home and cry to your family because at least you get the option to do that, but you will not yell at me or my team over your poor planning and immature attitude.”

Wow. Read on to find out how the customer responded.

The customer just glared at the two of us and said “You two should be fired! I have never seen such terrible guest service in my entire life!” and stormed out of the door.

Needless to say, she is forever my favourite manager I’ve ever had and I have told this story many times this Black Friday week and will continue to do so for the next few years to come (even after I leave retail).

This is some pro management right here.

She really put the customer in his place, and left her employee feeling supported too.

It almost makes up for having to work on Thanksgiving.

Let’s see what folk on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that the star of the story is the manager.

While others had experience dealing with ridiculous Black Friday customers.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a fast food employee who shuts down a customer angry about her change with a single word.

Meanwhile, this Redditor was shocked at the way some grown adults choose to behave.

Honestly, regardless of whether you missed out on a big deal or not, speaking to another adult in such an entitled and demanding way is never acceptable. When you’re grown you get to choose to regulate your emotions and keep your tantrum to yourself, not attack staff because they can’t give you exactly what you want. That kind of entitled behaviour belongs in a playground, not in a store on Thanksgiving.

As for the fact he ‘had to’ leave his family to go get a discounted TV? No he didn’t. He chose to leave them, which shows what his priorities really are in life. He’s not someone who is invested in spending valuable time with the folk he loves, he is someone who will duck out of the festivities early if it means getting a great deal on some electronics. And to be so entitled as to not think about the fact that the staff have had to cut their own Thanksgiving short in order to serve him? Well it’s not surprising that he’s not taken a moment to think about that, because clearly all he cares about is himself.