Students marked the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, by working long hours and shopping the sales.

Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, is known for early store openings, major discounts and “door-busters” — deals designed to get customers into the stores.

The Hudson Belk store in Crabtree Valley Mall was one of the early starters, opening its doors at 5 a.m.

Jenny Logan, an incoming freshman and sales associate at Belk, began her 12-hour shift at 4 a.m.

Logan said she was expecting to see people lined up outside the store, but that wasn’t the case.

“The only thing different about it is we wake up earlier and we open earlier,” she said. “I haven’t had a line of more than three people.”

Logan said although she was tired, her co-workers helped her stay motivated.

Logan’s co-worker, Gloria Guthrie, a sophomore in business management, said she agreed with Logan’s estimation of the traffic.

“It’s not as crazy as I thought it was gonna be,” Guthrie said. “I think it’s more hyped up than it really is.”

She likened the traffic in her section to a busy Saturday. While there were more people, she said her section had not been too busy sale-wise.

Another sales associate at Belk, JacQuetta Foushee, a senior in psychology, is a veteran of working on Black Friday.

Foushee has seen several years of Black Friday shopping at the mall.

“It’s picked up a lot. This year there’s a lot more people shopping,” she said. “They have more money to spend.”

According to Foushee, the most challenging parts of working on Black Friday are keeping her area organized and staying on top of the price changes during the day.

“The sales are changing,” Foushee said. “If we don’t keep up with it and it’s marked wrong, people get upset.”

Foushee said the mood among the customers was more stressful than usual.

“They’re more frantic … freaking out,” she said.

Foushee said the upside of the stress of working on Black Friday is, because she gets commission for sales, more people is a good thing.

On the other side of the fence, students were participating in some serious shopping. Leighann Barbour and Samantha Narron, rising freshmen in early child development, had been at the mall from the morning into the late afternoon.

“I don’t even know what time it was [when we got to the mall]. It was early,” Barbour said.

She said the long-haul shopping was tiring, but fun. According to Narron, she and Barbour were shopping for their parents and themselves.

“We’ve already taken a load to the car,” Narron said.

She said navigating the crowds was tough.

“It’s just really chaotic. [There are] a lot of people,” Narron said.

However, Narron said she enjoyed hitting the mall on Black Friday.

“It’s the best day of the year to shop. [There are] a lot of sales — great sales,” she said.