The Store Mascot Got Stuck In The Automatic Doors

At our sporting goods store, we have a rather unusual, and frankly pretty brutal, tradition. If you happen to come in last during our weekly sales competition, you earn the dubious honor of spending your shift inside the Barnaby suit. Barnaby is our store mascot, a giant, foam-filled, honey-colored bear that looks more like a creature from a fever dream than an inviting character for children. It is truly a hot, smelly, and incredibly uncomfortable mess. The suit has seen better days, and the ventilation is virtually non-existent, making it feel like a portable sauna that smells faintly of old gym socks and industrial fabric cleaner. This past that day, it was Dave’s turn to step into the bear. Dave is a genuinely great guy, one of those people who is always willing to help out a customer, but he has one major flaw: he is almost entirely unaware of his surroundings. He is the type of person who walks into door frames while checking his phone or forgets he has a heavy box in his hands. Watching Dave put on the suit was an experience in itself; he had to shimmy, hop, and pull at the heavy foam while groaning about the heat. By mid-morning, the store was absolutely packed with families shopping for cleats, camping gear, and basketballs. Dave was stationed right by the front entrance, standing near the automatic glass sliding doors. He was doing his best to wave at the kids, though his movements were limited to clumsy, slow-motion paw swings. I was stationed at the main register just twenty feet away, keeping a close watch on the chaos of the checkout line. I watched Dave shuffle closer to the entrance, clearly trying to interact with a group of excited kids who were pointing and giggling at the giant bear. He stepped forward, leaning in with his oversized foam paw extended to give the smallest child a high-five. That was his first mistake. He completely misjudged the rhythm of the automatic sliding doors. As he extended his arm, the sensors overhead failed to pick up his bulky, foam-covered silhouette. They assumed the doorway was clear and began to glide shut with their usual mechanical precision. Because of the sheer width of the bear suit, the doors hit him mid-torso before they could finish their cycle. The doors did not sense him properly, and instead of stopping or sliding back open, they simply clamped down hard on his shoulders. He was instantly pinned against the door frame, trapped in a metallic, glass-walled embrace. It looked for all the world like the building itself was trying to eat our mascot. The glass shuddered under the pressure, the metal trim groaned in protest, and the motor overhead began to emit a high-pitched, strained whine that sounded like a blender fighting a rock. A muffled voice came from deep within the bear’s head. Dave said, 'Oh, man,' in the calmest, most casual tone you could imagine. A crowd gathered almost instantly. People stopped shopping, kids started cheering because they thought it was part of a show, and a teenager in the back pulled out his phone to record the entire spectacle. I immediately dropped my scanner and ran over to the scene, shouting for Dave to stay still. He was effectively blind in that suit, with only two small, mesh-covered eye holes that were now pressed against the glass. He could not reach the emergency stop button on the wall, and he certainly could not push the doors back manually because his arms were wedged tight. I had to weave through a group of confused parents to get to the front. I looked at Dave, who was now just wiggling his one free paw, and realized we were completely out of our depth. I sprinted toward the back office to find Sarah, our store manager. She was on the phone, looking stressed, but when she saw me panting in the doorway, she hung up immediately. I told her, 'Sarah, the bear is stuck. The doors are trying to consume Barnaby.' She didn’t even ask for clarification. She just sighed, grabbed her radio, and marched to the front. When she saw the spectacle—the glass bending, the motor wailing, and the teenager filming it for TikTok—she just closed her eyes for a second. She reached for her phone and dialed the local fire department. When the firefighters arrived, they were clearly annoyed by the call, but as soon as they saw a giant, foam bear vibrating against the automatic doors, their expressions changed to pure amusement. One of them actually had to suppress a laugh while he grabbed his toolkit. They had to force the doors open manually with a heavy-duty pry bar, working slowly to ensure they didn't shatter the glass or injure Dave further. Throughout the entire extraction process, Dave kept waving his one free paw like a celebrity greeting fans at a red carpet premiere. It was absurd. When they finally pried the doors wide enough, Dave stumbled out. The bear suit was completely lopsided, one ear was bent at a weird angle, and Dave looked like he had just run a marathon in a raincoat. He was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, but he was physically unharmed. Later that afternoon, Sarah posted the video of the accident to the store’s social media account. She captioned it, 'Bear with us.' It went viral almost instantly. It racked up more views in six hours than all our official promotional advertisements had earned over the last five years. People started coming into the store just to see the 'famous bear,' and Dave, to everyone’s shock, ended up winning the next sales contest because of the increased foot traffic. He has become a local legend; customers still walk in and ask, 'Is the bear here?' or 'Is this the store where the doors eat people?' Dave has officially retired from his mascot duties, though. He claims the bear is 'traumatized' from the event, but I suspect he just knows that standing near those sliding doors is a dangerous gamble he is not willing to take again. We ended up putting bright yellow caution tape on the floor to mark the danger zone, a permanent reminder of the day our mascot almost met his end in the middle of a that morning rush.