The Woman Who Fought Me Over a Toaster on Black Friday

I have worked eleven Black Fridays now, and I still cannot explain what happens to a normal human being the moment those sliding doors unlock at five in the morning.

That year we had a doorbuster on a chrome four-slice toaster. Thirty dollars off. It was not a good toaster. I want to be clear about that. It burned bagels on the low setting and it hummed like a refrigerator. But we had a pyramid of them near the front, a big yellow sign, and apparently that was enough to turn our store into a nature documentary.

The doors opened. I was standing by the toaster pyramid because my manager, Rick, in his infinite wisdom, decided the toasters needed a human shield. A woman in a puffy purple coat came through the entrance at a speed I did not think was possible in slippers. She had slippers on. It was thirty degrees outside. She had been waiting in line for two hours in slippers for a thirty dollar toaster, and I respected the commitment even as I feared for my life.

She grabbed a toaster. Fine. Great. One per customer, we had plenty. But then she grabbed a second one, and a third, cradling them like infants, and a man behind her said, "Ma'am, there's a limit," and she turned around slowly like something out of a horror film.

"Says who," she said.

"Says the sign," I said, pointing at the sign, which said, in letters the size of my hand, LIMIT ONE PER CUSTOMER.

She looked at the sign. She looked at me. And she said, and I will remember this until the day I die, "I have four children."

I said that was lovely but the toaster only makes toast for the household, not per child, and that was the wrong thing to say because she took one of the toasters, still in the box, and swung it at me. Not hard. More of a warning swing. A toaster shot across the bow.

Now Rick, who had vanished the instant the doors opened, materialized out of thin air the way managers do when there is a scene but never when there is a spill. He put his hands up in the international gesture for please do not hit my minimum wage employee with a toaster. And the woman, sensing weakness, turned her full fury on him instead, which honestly I appreciated.

"This is false advertising," she screamed, in the middle of a store, holding three toasters. "The sign said thirty off."

"It is thirty off," Rick said. "Per toaster. You are getting thirty off. You are just only allowed to get it once."

By now a small crowd had gathered, because nothing draws a Black Friday crowd like the promise that someone else is about to lose it worse than they are. Somebody in the back yelled "let her have it," meaning the toasters, and the woman took it as encouragement.

Long story short, she got her one toaster. She paid for it while glaring at me the entire transaction, like I personally invented the concept of a purchase limit. And as she left, slippers and all, she leaned in and whispered, "I hope your toast burns forever."

Given the quality of that toaster, ma'am, it absolutely will. Yours too.