The Black Friday Retail Experience

Before freelance writing and reporting for any Patch site and ultimately becoming the Local Editor of Smithtown Patch, I attended Hofstra University, where I suffered the same economic plight most college students experience today. In an attempt to make ends meet, I was employed in a somewhat typical profession for college students–the wonderful world of retail, specifically a clothing store.

Although I have not worked in clothing retail in four years, I often reminisce on my years of folding shirts, stocking socks and asking customers, "do you need help finding a size?"

To bring the retail employee experience to you readers I returned to my old retail employment stomping grounds on the busiest shopping day of the year, the dreaded Black Friday.

I like to think that the fields of journalism and retail clothing sales aren't too far apart–speaking with customers is similar to man-on-the-street style interviews and people in both professions impatiently wait for their paychecks to spend on rent, cell phone payments and numerous daily cups of bad coffee.

For Black Friday and the following Saturday I was scheduled for the overnight shift, where I folded hundreds of sweaters customers left strewn over racks of clothing, underneath tables and on the floor and restocked dozens of completely empty fixtures on the sales floor. The Black Friday experience isn't far from what a typical day in retail feels like, it's just a great deal busier and the hours are longer.   

There were parts of working in retail that I experienced once again that I would have happily done without–the customers who shoved me out of the way to get to items instead of asking me to move, the numerous people that watched me fold stacks of sweaters only to unfold the entire stack in front of me, knock some on the floor and then walk away, and the people who spoke to me as if I were a child or incompetent.

I feel it is important to state after the Black Friday experience that retail employees aren't brainless creatures that work in retail because they don't have any other options, it is simply a means to an end. While working in retail I was pursuing my masters degree and there are many people that have done and are currently doing the same thing, and others just genuinely enjoy it as their career.

I was happy to experience some things the Black Friday retail experience provides–the coveted 15-minute paid break where you get to leave the sales floor and talk about the random amusing or ridiculous things you witnessed throughout the day with your coworkers and the food the company purchases for the employees for lunch so you don't have to leave the store.

In closing I would like to offer a couple friendly suggestions to anyone who enjoys to shop–please, if you do not want the shirt, fold it back up and place it neatly on the stack of shirts you removed it from, and if you're feeling especially nice, offer to buy an employee a decent cup of coffee.