Boxing Day always brings out the most bargain-hungry shoppers looking to track down a deal on their favourite products and this year was no exception.

 Shoppers from all around piled into Cross Iron Mills to try and find the best deal. However, with all the shoppers come major traffic and potential conflicts. The drive there alone was crazy, with cars backed up bumped to bumped almost all the way from Airdrie.

Shoppers may have been prepared to take the brunt of the busy day, but employees were much more hesitant to face the onslaught of customers. Retail worker Chayce Vukic says although he had heard the stories and thought he was ready for the Boxing Day rush, nothing could have prepared him for the number of people stuffed into the mall.

"It was hectic as most Boxing Days. Unfortunately, this is the first year I've ever worked at the mall on Boxing Day so I had a really hard time finding parking. There were accidents; there were lineups all the way down to the turn (off) to where you get to the mall and from there it was about a 20-30 minute drive just to get to the mall. I had to, unfortunately, park over at the Volleydome across from the mall. It was easier to get parking there, that way I didn't have to deal with any of the craziness of other drivers so I just ended up walking to the mall from there which made me late for work. But, I made it."

The drive alone was not the worst part for Vukic, it was having to be pressed up against customers without much room to breathe, let alone move.

"Inside the mall was absolute chaos, it was a zoo there. The store alone was so packed that it was hard to even move around. We had employees just standing in selected areas and helping as many customers as they could but with the situation, it was kind of hard to keep track of everybody."

Luckily, Vukic did not have to do much to help the customers, as most seemed to know what they were doing.

"When you go shopping on boxing day, you kind of know, you kind of expect what it's going to be like so most customers weren't even looking for help. They just wanted to go in and out, get the sales that they wanted and get out of there as quickly as possible. We had lineups back to the changing rooms almost, so you could be waiting in line anywhere from like 5-15 minutes just standing in line."

However, despite all the madness, Vukic and the employees managed to keep everything in hand in the store.

"It went pretty smoothly. With things crowded like that and having minimal movement, some customers were getting a little frustrated, a little agitated with the situation. We did our best to help out those customers, but with some of them, they seemed to escalate their feelings. They were just kind of yelling or saying things to other customers, causing conflict that at some points eventually led to threats. Name calling, threats, even threats of violence. Thankfully, we managed to calm down those customers, and we got them out of the store as quickly as possible without anything major happening."

Vukic says that if he had the choice, we would have avoided the mall on Boxing Day.

"Absolutely not! I'm not the kind of guy to do that. I stay home most Boxing Days. Mostly because those sales usually tend to last for the week. Most stores understand not everyone can get out Boxing Day so they carry over those sales but for me, I'm a stay-at-home kind of guy. (I) don't like to deal with the crowds."

Vukic says the most difficult part of working during the day was a specific situation that could have been dangerous.

"It wasn't 100 percent clear to me, but it seemed to be that we had two separate groups that had come into the store who were, what looked to be, following each other around. They followed each other into the store. Now, I don't know if this was some sort of game they were playing or if this actually conflicted between these two groups but we had one side yelling at the other side, threatening weapons. One guy mentioned even a gun, so we weren't sure if they telling the truth or not or if they were being serious about this claim to have a weapon on them but we managed to escort these two groups out of the store and I'm pretty positive one of my managers did end up calling security on them as well. We got them out of the store as quickly as possible so nothing happened to any of the other customers or the employees."

The weapon was not confirmed and there have been no further reports on the incident.

 

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