Black Friday from the eyes of a high school sales associate

By Jessica Berg

Black Friday is by far the biggest shopping day of the year. Stores everywhere open their doors at midnight or even earlier for the crowds of people waiting for the great deals. If people haven’t been Black Friday shopping, it can be quite a scare from the consumers’ point of view. It can be even crazier from the sales associate’s point of view, especially if it’s her first day of work.

This past Black Friday was my first day of work at a clothing store at the Logan Valley Mall.

The morning of November 25 I woke up at 5:30am just to get ready for work. Why so early? My mother and I figured that we should leave a lot earlier than I had to be there to make sure we had enough time to fight traffic.

We left our house at 6:00am, but there wasn’t much traffic going to the mall, and when I got in there, I was surprised that there weren’t as many people in the mall as I had thought there would be.

The first thing my employers had me do was work the floor, which required that I help people find clothing sizes, open fitting rooms and try to get them to spend a lot of money. I was content with these tasks because I got to roam around the store and try to take everything in.

At first the Black Friday crowd wasn’t too crazy, but then it became insane: the checkout line wrapped all the way around they store and almost out the door.
My boss then asked me to be the greeter. At that time in the morning, I was not yet awake or in the mood to be friendly or tell people what was on sale. Personally I didn’t see the point of telling them what was on sale because there are numerous signs in the store saying the same thing.

Soon after, I was asked to run the register. It was the worst. Although running the register is now my favorite thing to do at work, that day…my first day of work…Black Friday, this job was frightful. I made so many mistakes, so the line was going extremely slowly. In hindsight, working as a cashier made the rest of my shift go by really fast.

Even though Black Friday was a rough day for me, I think it was a good starter. If I could handle Black Friday, I’m sure I can handle any other day at the mall.