Sophie Plzak, a senior here at Appleton North, worked from 7pm-2am on Thursday night into Friday morning in the Fox River Mall at PacSun. Having dealt with working on Black Friday before, Plzak knew it was going to be stressful. She was there the eve of Thanksgiving preparing for what was to come. The managers made sure to tell them to get plenty of rest before handing them their special all black PacSun shirt to wear as a uniform for this event.

But this isn’t her first time working at the clothing store, in fact, her very first day at work was working Black Friday last year. “I just remember folding clothes for like 9 hours.” This year, however, she got to be a greeter, working at the front of the store and telling the customers that flood in about all the sales going on. “I really liked people-watching this year — people who don’t normally go to the mall ever were there, so I saw people that I knew and I got to look at a lot of cool outfits. A lot of people I could tell weren’t from Appleton by the way they dress- like they were from bigger cities because the mall attracts people from all around. I got to see a lot of graduated students who were coming back for their [Thanksgiving] break.”

Another moment that Plzak shared with me was around the end of her shift (2am), the entire mall was dead, despite all the sales happening throughout the mall which I found shocking. But, in her luck, she found a lot of great deals with little to no lines.“I came back the next day and there were masses of people there. If you go at 2am, there’s no crowd at all.”

I then proceeded to ask her if she, herself participates in Black Friday shopping to which she replied with no pause: “Yeah! I always get Abercrombie jeans every year because they always have the same sale — 50% off all jeans. I have a few stores that I consistently buy winter gear at.”

Closing the interview off, I was curious to know what the most popular sought-after items were at PacSun. “People immediately asked if the shoes were on sale because we have a lot of Nike skateboarding shoes. Also, although this wasn’t on sale, everyone got excited about the Adidas table because it was up front and everyone wanted an Adidas shirt.” Another hot item that flew off the shelves: “Calvin Klein was also 20% off, and it almost sold out completely.”

All in all, if Sophie Plzak had to describe her Black Friday experience in one word: “Exciting. I love interacting with people.”