Black Friday 2012 Rewind: Here Are America's Craziest Shoppers

Working retail sucks for a lot of reasons. Chief among them is Black Friday, the occasion when employees exchange their family time for a full-on, spittle-spraying encounter with America's hordes of bargain-crazed shoppers.

In terms of despair-for-humanity antics, the Black Friday of 2012 did not disappoint. Stores kicked off sales even earlier this year, on Thanksgiving evening, guaranteeing a marathon of pushing, shoving, passing out, chair throwing, lung-splitting screeching, angry police interventions and general crowd madness. Below are a few of the more arresting scenes we encountered, though please note that much of this footage contains profanity as well as plain bad behavior.