What do a horde of Spartan warriors on the verge of battle and a store full of Target employees on Black Friday have in common?
A dude who can give a kick-ass motivational speech, that's what.
Meet Scott Simms, an employee at a Target store in Westminster, Md., who hammered home a triumphant rallying cry to his co-workers before Black Friday shoppers descended on his store last week. We might never have known about the speech, or its echoes of the 2006 action movie "300," if not for a former co-worker who posted this video to Reddit:
"I prepared it in my head a little bit during the day," Simms told Carroll County Times, adding that he plans on giving a similar speech next year on Black Friday. "I kind of wanted to do it because every year there's that calm before the storm and it kind of reminded me of '300' or 'Braveheart.'"
Target confirmed to The Huffington Post that the video is authentic.
"We have long said that Thanksgiving weekend is to retail what a championship game is to sports," a Target spokeswoman wrote in an email. "Scott is clearly quite a coach."
The speech fits with Simms' general attitude toward work, the former coworker, Vincent Scellini, told The Huffington Post in a Reddit message. "He always carried this type of humor and energy with him and was very fun to be around," he wrote.
Simms is the second Target employee to go viral in as many months. In November, a Target employee named Alex Lee became an internet sensation when his photo got circulated on Twitter. Lee hit it so big that he was swamped with fans and at one point was afraid to leave the house, he told the New York Times.
(Hat tip: Buzzfeed)
This post has been updated to include a quote from Simms, as well as his full name.