Nike had a bittersweet experience in Seattle this weekend. More than 20,000 people stormed one of their shoe stores on Black Friday, leaving a shop that looked like it had been through an earthquake.

Josh Gardner described similar events when he was out with the crowds on Black Friday. “We stood in line for about two hours to get a TV. It was a limited item, so they only had three of them. I grabbed one and hid in the toy aisle until I could make my way to the checkout counter.” He probably won’t go again, sticking to Cyber Monday from now on.

“I saw a few fights when people wanted the same item,” Gardner said. “It was nice and clean when we went in but then got really dirty. There were DVDs all over the ground, clothes everywhere. I would hate to work in retail.”

Matt Child works in retail and was happy that he had the day off. “I’m praising Jesus that I didn’t have to work on Black Friday. I did go out and shop, though. It’s not always a great time — everything is getting destroyed, and I know how it is to clean up, so I was just going around fixing things as I shopped.”

“I went in on Thanksgiving to get a few deals,” Child said. “It was even a few hours after opening, and it was still so bad, so crazy — the stores were still jam-packed.”

Black Friday crowds didn’t stop many from going out to get good deals. Black Friday is the day most retail stores usually begin making money. Even those who couldn’t stand the crowds or the chaos still went for the deals.

Figures from Business Insider show that online shopping went up 22 percent from last year, smashing sales expectations, and mobile sales accounting for 36 percent of all e-commerce sales. Shoppers are spending more, with online transactions increasing by $115 million from 2015 to 2016.

Taylor Winnie worked on Black Friday and had different thoughts on the day.

“I had a positive experience, no punching or shoplifting. People would come in waves, so sometimes it was busy, other times
quiet.”

Winnie also chose stick to online shopping on Cyber Monday. “I usually just wait until Monday to do all my shopping,” she said.

Child echoed the sentiment about continuing his holiday shopping online. “I still have some shopping to do. I’ll go on to Amazon later
tonight,” he said.

Having good or bad experiences with Black Friday is part of our culture now, even though trends show that online shopping will quickly overshadow in store
shopping.