Black Friday stories from Barlow staff

Jana Inglesby- About 5 years ago, Inglesby was shopping at Kohls. The lines in Kohls during Black Friday are always long and there was a lady behind her, so she started casually talking to distract their boredom. The lady kept talking about how she was learning Spanish and she was sharing all the new words and phrases she had learned. Inglesby mentioned she didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was a Spanish teacher and that most everything she was saying was wrong, so she just smiled and said “Good for you to learn new skills!” while inching her way to the cash register… oh so slowly.

Jeff Schroeder- This happened when Schroeder was just dating Mrs. Schroeder, they went with Mrs. Schroeder’s mother Black Friday shopping at K-Mart, and her mom started running around trying to get all the items she wanted. “I was laughing because it was so fast and I’d never shopped with anyone who shopped that fast,” Schroeder said. The phone started ringing at the desk and she answered it saying, “K-Mart, how can I help you” and then she said, “please hold”. She then went to the store intercom and said “Customer Service line 1 please”. Everyone heard, “I was dying laughing,” Schroeder said. 

Kelly Hart- Hart worked retail for a bit in her younger years. She worked at the Woodburn Outlet Mall while she was working at Molalla High School. For Black Friday, the Outlets opened the mall Thursday night at 8pm and was open until Friday at 9pm. There would be long lines of cars that stretched for miles just to get to the parking lot, However, on one particular Black Friday the news was filming the chaos. There were people pounding on the doors for an hour before the mall opened, demanding to be let in. Once the doors opened, a couple of people tried to go around the crowd thinking the doors were bigger than they were, and walked right into the windows. “They kept me entertained,” Hart said. 

Adina Kiriac- It was 2015, Adina’s second year working at Old Navy which was the weirdest year. Adina was working through the night up to 6am for the usual Black Friday hours. No one was shopping, so it was just the workers in the store, then a group of 5 people walked in wearing animal costumes. They walked around for a while then walked right out, they didn’t buy anything. Something else happened that Black Friday but surprisingly, it warmed her heart. This was one of her first years working at Old Navy. A gentleman who was wearing an Army uniform walked up to her simply asking if they had a shirt that his son really wanted, so she went to go look for it and found it in his size. When she gave it to him he told her that she was their hero. “I felt touched because it was a soldier who thanked him and called me their hero when he is a hero to the world,” Kiriac said.