Can you remember being at Thanksgiving and hearing your family talk about Black Friday shopping and how crazy it was?  Maybe you’ve even found yourself out in the middle of the crowds looking for the best deals. If you’ve never heard of Black Friday, it is the Friday following Thanksgiving when many stores open very early and offer very discounted sales as a kickoff to the Christmas shopping season. For the second year in a row, many big name retailers are closing their doors on Thanksgiving in favor of giving their employees the holiday off. 

Black Friday has pretty much been the busiest shopping day of the year in the U.S since 2005 or earlier. Despite the amazing deals and discounts, Black Friday isn’t just a day known for shopping. It has a reputation for being chaotic and dangerous if some cases. According to an article from the New York Post, there were 44 incidents of violence on Black Friday between 2006 and 2018. Those incidents resulted in 11 deaths and 109 injuries. Could you imagine hundreds of people all rushing in to the same store at the same time trying to be the first to get the best deals? Not only does that cause an unsafe environment, it also creates a very stressful work environment for the employees.

What do you think? Do you think it’s worth the risk? Or should everyone resort to online shopping?