The Thanksgiving spirit is defined as giving, thankful, and family-oriented but it seems that those thoughts fly out the window when Black Friday starts later that night and all the next day, ruining Thanksgiving for all.

Many accounts of the Black Friday craze are given by the retail sales associates, other workers such as policemen, and shoppers themselves. One such account from the New York Post, by journalist Amanda Woods, involves two “fist fights [and a Walmart] employee” getting hit with a rack and “all over a TV.” So much for being giving and thankful.

The online newspaper, The People, actually did a fifteen list of crazy stories from retail workers “who are still scarred.”  Many Walmart workers see actual war between shoppers but none would imagine it would be “over a bike” with fists thrown and end with one customer riding it “out of the store (without paying).” Another Walmart worker worked her first Black Friday as a box opener until as she “readied the box cutter, [she] got shoved by a customer” and fell right on the box cutter, “slicing [her] hand open.”

The list continues with a security guard getting punched in the face because someone believed he was cutting the line when really he was just starting his shift. A woman collapses in hysterics when a store didn’t have the exact model of cooler she wanted, another lady calls 911 because a store wouldn’t price match with Best Buy. 

Now that there’s the bloody and the crazy we can move onto the psychotic, all in the same article. “There was a sale — $1 for towels or something. This guy jumped into the towel bin and literally growled at anyone who tried to get a towel. He claimed them all.” What’s so great about towels? Nothing, it’s just means that the guy is certifiable.

Lastly, still in the same article, “They tore down our mall’s door. Again.” What about Black Friday screams Thanksgiving? Black Friday can be summed in one word: greedy.

In a MoneyWise article titled “Retail Worker Share Their Worst Black Friday Horror Stories” we encounter more spirit-killing. A sales associate of PINK was tasked with working the front of the store and when the gates lifted the associate was “pushed backwards by the crowd and almost fell to the ground” but then proceeded to climb a table to stay up there to throw “customers hoodies and yoga pants.”

Another story in the article tells of two women beating each other up over a Tickle Me Elmo and when a police officer arrived to separate them one woman “bit him so hard that she actually drew blood.” The policeman “had to get his blood tested every six months for two years after that incident to make sure he didn’t get any diseases from her.”

Remember how family was supposed to be apart of Thanksgiving? Well one mom decided it was a good idea to leave her five and seven year old children at a mall leaving sales associates to entertain her children. Where was she? At another mall across the four-lane street. Tell me what’s responsible or even family-oriented about that.

A solution to this issue would be to move Black Friday to next week or the week after because having it so close to Thanksgiving, especially having it on the night of, just ruins the holiday for everyone.