Seriously, people. Black Wednesday. Black Friday. Black Monday. What the hell is with that? I don’t remember ALL of those days being referred to as Black ___day. Of course, today, I get. When did Wednesday and the coming Monday start being called that too? I think it’s only this year I have heard of that.

I am, fortunately, spending today at home, laying in bed with my laptop and not plowing through other shoppers ready to shank someone for the last Sex and the City box set. Trust me, if I were up for the Black Friday insanity, I would shank you for that last Sex and the City box set. $99.00 for that. Dude. Seriously, consider yourself shanked, but I honestly do not have the patience for the lines and the rude people and cranky retail workers.

How do I know they are cranky?

Because I use to be one of those cranky retail workers! I’ve done my share of working retail and hopefully I will never have to do it again. When I was in high school, I worked at a Target. Back at 17, I didn’t have the love and appreciation for Target that I do now. I can’t go into that place without spending minimum of $100! I think it’s like rule that you have to buy at least one thing that you don’t need when you go there. Or in my case 12 things you ‘need’, but in all actuality, you don’t…even though you totally do. I also worked at the GAP flagship on Michigan Avenue for a few months, that was awesome because of the discount. Until, I got fed up with the management and just stopped going right before Christmas. I definitely don’t recommend doing that.

Then a few years ago, I worked at Toys R Us. They were like, ‘Oh Jamie, we love you so much we are sending you to work in the video game section!’ right around November. Obviously, they didn’t really like me or they wouldn’t have sent me to work in HELL just in time for Christmas season. For some reason at Toys R Us, they called it Green Friday, instead of Black Friday. This was probably because you had people practically throwing money at you, begging for that last XBOX. I had people scream until they were blue in the face because we were out of the special edition Halo game. Because duh, they were SPECIAL so obviously the regular edition was just not good enough and I should have saved one for them, even though I don’t know who they are or that they were coming to buy some stupid game. It was a rough day. I ended up doing the closing shift on Green Friday, which sucked because we were open until Midnight and THEN we had to clean up the chaos from the whole day, so I didn’t get out until at least 2AM.

Hopefully, I will never have to work retail again. It’s just not my thing, but working it taught me a lot. I can guarantee you that I will never go in to a store and throw a fit if they are out of what I want. I will say ‘please’ and be polite. I will definitely say ‘thanks’ when they help me out.

You never know what kind of day it has been and a little appreciation means a lot.