Thanksgiving break took place last week and during that week, two incredible days in America occur. The first one is Thanksgiving, which is a celebration of a 1621 Plymouth feast, and the second is Black Friday.

Black Friday isn’t technically a holiday but maybe it should be. Black Friday is the day that kick starts Christmas shopping and companies do this by starting their sales for the holiday season. Since nearly every company takes this approach, stores have to start lowering their prices and this leads to stores constantly having their lowest prices of the year.

Those low prices are what make consumers come out in mass, almost as a mob or stampede, to make sure they take advantage of those low low prices.

While the low prices are great, Black Friday itself isn’t always a great thing. The use of mob and stampede earlier were not just choice adjectives, they actually happen on Black Friday and have even gotten people killed before.

Black Friday, is a day that I have a lot of memories of but not as a shopper. When I was younger my family almost never went shopping on the day, if anyone did it was just my mother and she wouldn’t go for very long. But my brother, Noah, got a job in retail around 2009 and from then on out my family has always experience Black Friday in some form or another.

“I still have nightmares of those days,” my brother said, “going into work for an eight-to-twelve hour shift, usually punching in around midnight-to-four in the morning and all just to deal with a rush of shoppers who were in terrible moods and just wanted to argue with you.”

I continued to ask my brother about the day, what some of his craziest memories were, like if he had ever seen two people fight. “No, no not an actual physical fight,” he said, “but I did see people start yelling and swearing at each other while they were waiting in line or just arguing over something in the store. Plus I had a few customers flip out on me a few times because they were too tired to actually read and understand how a sale worked. So when I would correct them they’d think I was lying or something and start cussing me out because they’re not saving as much as they thought they were.”

I asked him what the worst thing a customer ever said to him was, “Nothing too crazy,” he said, “I got called a bleeping idiot and bleeping dumbass before but I mean I had heard that stuff on days that weren’t Black Friday before so it didn’t really get to me. It’s not like swearing at me was going to change the sale to what they wanted it to be anyway.”

What my brother said last was what surprised me the most. “Truthfully, my first year was the only day where Black Friday was the busiest day of the year. What’s really the busiest day is December 26, the day right after Christmas. People are coming in with returns, trade-ins, and all their gift cards and the whole store is like a mix of Animal House and American Pie.”

I would never have believed my brother on that if it wasn’t for working retail myself for my first job, in the exact same store that he used to work in. I got the job as soon as I turned 16, back I 2013 and I remember working my first Black Friday. Sure, it was a super busy day but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. The worst part was cleaning up the store afterwards it was like a tornado had run through there.

But the day after Christmas, boy was my brother right. People were out in full force on that day and had no respect. Someone had bought them the wrong gift, or given them a gift card for the perfect amount for what they wanted but the product was running out, and these people had to make sure they got what they wanted and if you didn’t help them do that quickly and precisely they would attack you. It was brutal.

This is my first Holiday season where I won’t be working retail in three years. My brother hasn’t worked it in six. We both agreed that it feels great to just be a consumer for this holiday season.