This year's Black Friday behavior out of control
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It’s time to reconsider “Shop ‘til you drop.”
On Black Friday — the day retailers often see their bottom lines climb out from the negative — shoppers often congregate outside their bastions of retail religion for hours upon hours in the late-fall cold. They leave their Thanksgiving dinners early or skip them altogether. They brace themselves for the pandemonium and craze that comes with staying up all night to bust down the doors of a local Best Buy or Target at 4 a.m.
This year, though, Black Friday went too far. The family members of a fallen 34-year-old New York Wal-Mart employee will be wearing black to mourn him in the coming days, as he was trampled to death at 5:03 a.m., just minutes after the Valley Stream location opened. The store reopened at 1 p.m. that day.
Black Friday’s name originally came from businesses worried about their profits, but more recently it’s become associated with the blood thirstiness of sleep-deprived, bargain-driven consumers. The media can, at times, sensationalize the event by producing stories about shoppers who have been waiting for hours.
This year, shoppers are looking anywhere and everywhere to save money on the holiday season. But noting these hard economic times the country is facing, many of the holiday deals on Black Friday are expected to continue throughout the holiday season, which makes Friday’s events even more repulsive.
The retailers, though, are not devoid of blame. Surely America is a consumer culture, but when businesses run advertisements that highlight the ferocious nature associated with Black Friday, they only perpetuate the kind of behavior they train their employees to handle.
Hank Mullany, a senior vice president and president of Wal-Mart’s northeast division, said the company went to great lengths to ensure safety at all of its locations.
But how can anyone be prepared for hundreds of cold, anxious and financially distraught shoppers who decide that by using brute force, they can shatter a Wal-Mart’s glass doors and enter the store they have been eyeing down as they shiver to their very cores for hours? That mob mentality doomed the Wal-Mart employee who had the unfortunate responsibility of operating the door.
Knowing what happened this Black Friday, will businesses change their practices in the future? Best Buy hands out tickets to the first people in line, qualifying them for certain deals, but that also encourages people to skip their Thanksgiving holiday. Ultimately, it’s that individual’s choice, but businesses need to find ways to better handle Black Friday. It’s clear businesses depend on this one shopping day and they are unlikely to do away with it, but there is liability involved.
Liability also falls on the consumer. There are security cameras somewhere in that Wal-Mart, and the shoppers who initiated this tragic chain of events should be pursued in some legal manner. Anybody can say they were getting pushed around — even if they had noticed they were trampling a person, they would have shared the same fate had they stopped to help.
But if the mob cannot willingly change its way, the law must at least try.
Commentary
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How Politically Insensitive
(11/30/08 8:09pm)Report
“ .. Liability also falls on the consumer. There are security cameras somewhere in that Wal-Mart, and the shoppers who initiated this tragic chain of events should be pursued in some legal manner.”
If you saw the phone-cam video — you’d know, we’re not talking about the Harvard Book Club membership.
WORKER KILLED IN WAL-MART STAMPEDE
But the media — always trying to fix things “their way.”
Yeah, Wal-Mart has low IQ. Look at its customers. I went once — nearly got killed. Never again.
BTW: West-side Lansing Wal-Mart is 24×7 — NO PROBLEMS. Except for STUPID line-jumpers, some of whom got the 5-knuckle sandwich special.
Barney "FAT TOAD" Frank
(11/30/08 8:12pm)Report
“ .. But if the mob cannot willingly change its way, the law must at least try.”
Why .. yes. I have a Harvard JD, and ABD, and I think I know something about spending more TAX dollars to make things better, like Fannie/Freddie and ..
Uh .. Fannie/Freddie a disaster? Ruined global economy? Screwed MSU grads for next seven years?
Never mind.
Call my boyfriend at Fannie — he’ll help.
Don’t resort to something that uses common sense. Like a product lottery, or something like that. Let BIG GOVERNMENT help.
You SNews, You Lose
(11/30/08 9:55pm)Report
“The media can, at times, sensationalize the event by producing stories about shoppers who have been waiting for hours.”
Wow, this editorial is just full of gems like is. Talk about your irony! Are you guys not ‘the media’ as well? I swear I hate it when the news media refers to itself as the media.
JB
(11/30/08 10:29pm)Report
“The family members of a fallen 34-year-old New York Wal-Mart employee…”
Fallen is a terrible word choice, and a pun poor in taste too. Fallen is pretty much reserved for members of the military killed in duty. Getting run over by a bunch of materialistic idiots before 6 AM? That’s having a bad day.
Viking
(11/30/08 10:34pm)Report
In Viking culture, the highest honor is dying in battle. If you are unable to do so, dying in your battle clothes with your weapons at hand is the second most honorable way.
This poor guy died with a price gun in his hand and wearing blue vest with a smiley face on it.
Steve
(11/30/08 11:01pm)Report
A few things…
1. Christmas is the biggest crock of shit. Just because I am still alive by the time December 25th that means I have to spend a shitload of time and money shopping around to buy all the people around me a bunch of shit they probably don’t need. Then they will take all the gift receipts and exchange it for something else after Christmas. Why not just stop spending all the money that most people don’t have (obviously given the current state of the economy) and just save that money for the stuff you really need.
2. If you shop online, you can save just as much as in the stores and more and never wait in line!
3. What kind of moron gets up at 4am and sprints into the store trying not to get stampeded by the mob all in the need of saving $20. If you ask me, the few extra dollars I spend shopping on a different day was well worth not having to stand in line for hours and be surrounded by a bunch of out of control jack asses.
Viking
(11/30/08 11:57pm)Report
Steve, aka Scrooge
1. Bahh humbug!
2. You could sit in the basement like a troll in the cave and avoiding all human contact, yes. . .
3. You have never run with the bulls in Pamplona. You have to train for that, like in a marathon. Getting there early to beat the overweight housewives in sweats to the toy section is the closest thing you can get to bulls. It’s quite exhilarating. Would recommended!
butterpile
(12/01/08 11:08am)Report
To make a cake, you gotta break a few eggs.
whatever
(12/01/08 11:11am)Report
the deals were probably worth it, you don’t promote something as a “door buster” and expect people not to get passionate
Dan
(12/01/08 11:13am)Report
Ah, the evils of capitalism, right?
J. Edward Tremlett
(12/01/08 11:43am)Report
“Don’t resort to something that uses common sense. Like a product lottery, or something like that. Let BIG GOVERNMENT help.”
I don’t think they meant having big government come in and regulate black friday sales. I think they meant having the law charge the people who ran the poor guy down. Some time in jail for homicide might just change their ways.
You SNews, You Lose
(12/01/08 1:26pm)Report
the deals were probably worth it, you don’t promote something as a “door buster” and expect people not to get passionate
Yes, but they’re called door-buster sales not people-buster sales. Passion does not justify trampling someone to death.
I think they meant having the law charge the people who ran the poor guy down. Some time in jail for homicide might just change their ways.
While I agree that some jail time is needed for these people, who do we charge with homicide? Not all of these people trampled this poor man to death. At best, most were accessories to the crime because they stormed the doors, but how do we distinguish between the two when we’re dealing with a mob?
How Politically Insensitive
(12/01/08 3:22pm)Report
“Some time in jail for homicide might just change their ways.”
Sir .. look at the video.
It is one thing to prosecute white punks at Cedar Fest. Quite another with that group. Why .. “community organizers” will blame the entire thing on the oppressive white Wal-Mart power structure.
J. Edward Tremlett
(12/01/08 7:10pm)Report
“Why .. “community organizers” will blame the entire thing on the oppressive white Wal-Mart power structure.”
Sir, you need to stop huffing your homemade jenkem before you post. Either that or disguise your racist attitude better. Or were you being facetious? No stars for you!
Black, white, brown, no one is above the law. If they can find the people who knocked the poor fellow down and kept going, rather than stopping to pick him up, they can nail them for homicide to one degree or another. Not everyone is equally guilty in this regard, but if the closed circuit cameras are good enough to prosecute shoplifters, they should be able to figure out who ran him down.
You SNews, You Lose
(12/01/08 9:19pm)Report
Not everyone is equally guilty in this regard, but if the closed circuit cameras are good enough to prosecute shoplifters, they should be able to figure out who ran him down.
There’s a big difference between picking out a lone shoplifter and a a handful of crazied , sleep-deprived shoppers from an entire mob. In the case of the shoplifter, you’re picking out someone who is most likely not in a crowd of tens of hundreds of shoppers as these idiots were.
J. Edward Tremlett
(12/01/08 10:40pm)Report
Do they have stills of the first people to burst through the doors and run over him? If so, they can get them. If it’s too blurry to focus on, then they can’t.