Cold air fills the air before I enter Walmart. Black Thursday is what I like to refer to it now. Hundreds of people line the aisles of Walmart to get their hands on some of the best deals stores have to offer, and instead of shopping, I’m working.

The rules of the Black Friday shopping have changed just a little bit. For example, instead of starting at midnight on Friday morning, stores begin their sales at 6 p.m. on Thursday night. As a worker, I’m forced to go in around 4 in the afternoon and give up my Thanksgiving evening to go and help with crowd control and watch over specific items so no one walks away with any items that are not supposed to be sold until the big sale begins.

This year will be my second Black Friday working at Walmart. Watching over some of the items is just a bit annoying though. Everyone tries to be sneaky by slowly putting stuff into their carts in order to have a head start on most people. Unfortunately, that’s not allowed because the sale has not yet commenced, so you must walk up to the customer, ask for the item, and remove it from the cart. After you take it away, everyone just looks at you as if you are the bad guy for doing your job. Now if that’s not annoying, some people will continue to do it over and over again as they try to play it off as if they are doing nothing wrong. At some point, you would think they would realize that they need to respect the rules of the sale. Luckily, there is only a handful of those customers.

Working “Black Thursday” does come with some perks as well, such as experiencing the atmosphere of all the chaos of customers trying to get a good deal on something they don’t need. As a worker I get to shop at some point in my shift. If a fight breaks out, I may even get to watch and enjoy it before I have to stop it. I also get to look around see if there’s anything I want. Hopefully by the time I take a break I can quickly grab the item and purchase it.

Unfortunately for me I don’t think there’s that many good perks to working on Black Friday. I feel like there’s too much to worry about on that day. That’s why I stick to Cyber Monday.