It’s Black Friday. You know what that means. It means you have the day off and, because I’m not quite quick enough with my Time Off slips, I’m at work. But it’s alright. In commemoration of the day, I am repainting my entire office in shades of black. Why am I doing this? Simple. When I walked in the building today, I saw my red door and I wanted to paint it black. So sue me.

As I sit here in my empty office, with only the various voices in my head to keep my company, painting my officemate Clay’s chair black despite the fact that it was already black to begin with, I let my mind wander back to my lesser days of retail. I can still recall, to this day, a particular Black Friday where, in an act of utter desperation, I spent the day hiding in “the back” disguised as a pallet of Sweetheart bread. You’ll forgive me my cowardice. I was young, and the horrors going on outside those doors were more than I could handle.

Most customers know “the back” as the magical area of all department stores where, if you are unable to find something on the shelf, you can ask a worker to go to “the back” to find more of. The truth of the matter is that “the back” is really just a dingy, dark back room which only contains more of the exact same shit that’s already on the shelves. On this particular day, however, “the back” was the only thing saving me from an untimely death. As I lay cowering underneath a pile of 56 individually-sliced loaves of white bread, I could hear the sounds emanating from outside. The screams. The howls of neglected children. The cries of agony being emitted by my fellow workers, as they were beaten and eaten alive like small monkeys by hordes of crazed gibbon soccer moms trying to grab one of the five remaining Chicken Dance Elmos. As their limbs were pulled free from their bodies and hungrily devoured by those crazy old women, I shivered and made myself as small as possible, praying desperately to God that I may live to see another day.

I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know what Hell looked like, but surely this had to be it. The looks of sheer hatred in those dulled, stupid eyes as they ran up and down those aisles, grabbing anything that remotely looked like a deal. Is there a more terrifying sight in the world? If there is, I’ve yet to see it.

Now I have safely retreated to the world of advertising, where instead of taking orders from consumers, I instead tell them what to do. And I am now telling you, consumers of the world, as you set fire to all major metropolises today, don’t forget to force your way into “the back” and drag whatever young puke is hiding in the bread pallet free from his hiding spot. As you sacrifice him in a bloody ritual to the great god of capitalism, tell him that Erik says hi.