Many years ago, I was the manager of the jewelry department at the Bozeman K-Mart. We opened at five a.m. on Black Friday. It was bitterly cold, sub-zero temperatures, and our boss felt sorry for the schmucks freezing their keisters off in the parking lot so he let them in early.
We had 70% off on fine jewelry for four hours that morning. I was alone in the department, sipping my coffee, doing my inventory, when a surge of folks came barreling over to my counter. My register wasn't even open. The boss had to sprint back to the cash cage to get my money and open my register. He ended up ringing up a few purchases. He apologized later, as I finished my now stone cold coffee, and admitted he should have tried to hold the crowd back but that would have been impossible.
As a consequence of those years in retail, I never go near a store on Black Friday.