13 Unbelievable Stories From Sneaker Store Employees

Sneakers stores all hold a special place in our hearts. They're where we get the kicks we're crazy about. But there's a whole scene that goes down in these stores that most of us aren't privy to. The people who work in sneaker stores have stories that you wouldn't believe and they're not just about sneaker releases.

We talked to a bunch of former and current sneaker store employees and asked them a simple question: "What's the craziest story you can tell us?" And they did. We thought it was just going to do be stories of customers getting angry or someone who wanted to return some worn, dusty kicks. But it went way beyond that. There are true stories about NFL players making it rain in the middle of the store, and about sneakers that couldn't sell no matter what. We've kept some people anonymous because they are still employed by the same employer and wouldn't want to jeopardize their careers. Trust us, these stories are all real, and they'll blow your mind. Here are 13 Unbelievable Stories From Sneaker Store Employees.

RELATED: 10 Things That Working in a Sneaker Store Teaches You About Life
RELATED: Things Sneaker Stores Do to Make You Think They're Cooler Than They Really Are

"I was working at 21 Mercer Street at the Nike Sportswear store when the Galaxy Foamposite wristbands were given out in 2012 and it was the craziest shit I've ever seen. I wasn't even supposed to work that day, but everyone who worked in the store was called in to deal with the insanity.

I get to the store, and there are literally 600 people lined up on Mercer Street, we had nowhere near that many pairs of the sneakers. It was crazy, even with the whole staff there to handle the situation. Everyone was really rowdy, but we were trying our hardest to make sure nothing broke out or happened.

We had to call the cops and shut down the store for the rest of the day once the wristbands were given out. There were safety issues for the employees, but luckily nothing happened."

"I was working at King of Prussia mall in Pennsylvania at the Foot Locker. And The Freak, Jevon Kearse, walked into the store. He was buying 10 pairs of size 14 sneakers—whatever we had in his size—and a group of kids surrounded him.

They were asking him about the Eagles and everything, but they started to ask him for money. He reached into his pocket and must have pulled out $300 to $400 in twenty-dollar bills, and he started to make it rain in the middle of the store. He was throwing twenty-dollar bills at these little kids like they were ones.

He was saying to the kids, 'Here, you want some money? You want some money?'

There was money flying all around the store and all over the sales floor, and these kids just started to pick it up. The customers had no clue what was going on, but it's one of the craziest things I've ever seen in a sneaker store."

"Like every other guy my age, I was super into wrestling in the late-'90s, but I never knew it would be until 2009 when I would come face to face with one of the grappling behemoths, and it would scare the shit out of me.

I was working at the North Shore Mall in Peabody, Mass. at Foot Locker as an assistant manager, and we were trained to sell as much sneaker cleaner, waterproofer, and suede brushes as possible, to every customer that walked through the door. But I finally met a customer who was eager to buy a sneaker cleaner, and I was intimidated to tell him it worked.

I was approached by the largest human being I've ever seen in my life. Prince Albert, a former WWE superstar, walked up to me with a pair of scuffed Nike Sweet Classics that were on his feet. 'What will clean these?' he said as he towered over me.

I grabbed a bottle of sneaker cleaner and responded, 'This will.'

He took the bottle and inspected it with great and made sure I gave him the right stuff. 'OK, I'll take it,' he told me. 'But it better work, or else I'm going to come back here,'

I doubt he would have put me in the torture rack in the middle of the store, but at that moment, I felt I would have at least been choke-slammed into a wall of Nike Shox. I never saw him again, so I'm guessing the cleaner did its job. And my collarbone is still intact."

"I've spent a decade running a sneaker store, had a one-year gig with Nike, but I've never seen anything like the release of the Air Jordan Ray Allen XIIIs. Besides being super-excited to find out that my store was going to be one of the only stores in the world to carry this shoe, I was even more excited to know I wouldn't have to participate in any craziness to get my pair.

Everything was cool until the list of stores getting them hit the Internet, and then the madness began. A week's worth of calls from around the world poured in every day, dealing with people that flew into Boston just to get a pair and then the offers started rolling in. I'm talking men offering a night with their girlfriend, moms willing to do 'whatever' so their child can get a pair, a guy putting a thousand dollars in my hand and telling me, 'I'll come back Saturday with the $175 for the shoes,' turning down R&B artists, rappers, former American League MVP Vladimir Guerrero, to the girl that works in the mall sending tit pics so she could have a chance to get her boyfriend a pair. It was extreme chaos and by far the craziest sneaker store experience I've ever had. I didn't even get into the personal security that was hired for me, the fiery oil truck crash that didn't phase the campers at all, or the near riot that almost broke out when the state police tried to get people to go home."

"Allen Iverson was a big deal. He called the store at 9:30 p.m. as we were closing, and said his crew was going to come through and spend serious cash. We agreed to stay open late. Everyone was waiting for him to arrive and he showed up with three Escalades full of his entourage. He closed down the store and let him and his boys pick out whatever they wanted, but they could only purchase Reebok sneakers, because of his sneaker deal.

Everyone was all over Iverson, asking him a million questions and so eager to help him get a pair of sneakers. I was impressed by him, but I played it cool, I didn't want to seem starstruck.

He came up to me and had me help him with the sneakers. He bought a ton of pairs, so I knew my commission was going to look nice, but he genuinely appreciated the fact I didn't treat him like a celebrity.

After we rang him up and got ready to finally close the store for the evening, he handed me a white envelope. I put it in my pocket and didn't open it until later in the evening when everyone had left. I opened it up and there was $800—it was my tip for treating him like a regular guy."

"I had a store called Bobbito's Footwork on 9th Street between 1st and 2nd on the Lower East Side from 1996 to 2000. It was '98, Gene Smith was my sales rep from Nike, and it took me two years to get an account. That would never happen now with a boutique of someone with my status in the sneaker world. But back then it was very difficult to open a new account. So he comes in and shows me the catalogue for the upcoming season, and I see the Dunks and i'm like, 'Yo, those are crazy, I'm so happy you're bringing back the Dunks.'

I told him, 'I'll take every color in a full-size run.'

It was a tiny store. Bobbito's Footwork was a tiny store, it was literally smaller than the size of the bathroom in Complex. So for us to take a full-size run in all of the colors that were being offered, I was definitely pushing it.

Gene told me, 'Bob, don't order with your heart, you're getting emotional, you need to be smart. These sneakers haven't been out in a very long time.'

I told him, 'I'm not getting nostalgic about the Dunks when they came out in the '80s, I'm of that generation to see them being worn by Syracuse and hip-hop heads, and really believe that these sneakers will do well.'

He was just trying to be protective, most of the sneaker stores that he sold to in New York at that point, they weren't 'heads.' You had Udi at Training Camp, but very few of us came from that generation that experienced hip-hop and basketball.

I took the full-size run, and the truest heads, they knew, they copped them, they bought multiple colors. But they stood on the shelves. Outside of the core, core die-hard cats, people were not up on Dunks when they came back out in '99. They caught dust on my shelves. We had to put them on sale.

Now, I see kids who are like, 'Oh my god, the Dunks, the Dunks,'

And for awhile, the Dunks seemed to have a little more heat than the Air Force 1s. And i'm like, 'You're all late to it, you're all late to the game.'

It took a while for the lifestyle cats, streetwear cats, and the skateboard cats to pick back up on the Dunks."