That’s quite possibly true, but only serves to magnify the difference in the societies. If my kids were starving, I’d certainly consider a wrathful stampede for bread to keep them alive…I wouldn’t step foot near a Wal-Mart, let alone be a part of a mob that tramples someone for something I didn’t truly need.
Wal-Mart gets to take a pass on this, which is equally despicable. Bait And Switch has become a time-honored tradition at WM on the day after Thanksgiving. Sure, they had a large plasma monitor. A few of them. Sure they had other choice bits. A few of them. They figure that once you’ve fought your way past the dead bodies, you’ll settle for anything.
The mob doesn’t deserve to be mobbed. They deserve to be forced to spend every darned penny they would have spent, on a donation to the man’s family or next of kin.
The Family of Man, indeed…
Cartooniverse
I just heard a Wal-Mart ad on the TV. The tag line? “Save money. Live better.” How ironic.
And would somebody explain what “blitz line” means exactly in this context? Thanks.
p.s. I emailed to ask that “Greeter” in the title of this thread be changed to “Worker.”
I can’t speak to anyone else, but for several years my mother and aunt made a tradition of going to the Mall here in Rochester on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
The family would get together at my grandparents’ place around Sodus Bay (about 60 miles east of Rochester) which is a farm in a very rural community. At the farm the choices for entertainment were limited: There was one TV in the house, and it got two, maybe three channels. Space limitations in the vehicle meant that only a few books were available, and my grandparents were not much of readers themselves. (Or at least felt no need to keep a library around.) The children were not allowed to go play in the woods, there was the rusting logging equipment back there, and the near falling down pig sty and chicken coop - too much of a hazard. Running around the house got boring - quickly.
The neighbors were effectively limited to those across the street, who were always out of town visiting their own family in VA at this time.
And my grandmother, wonderful woman that she was, could not share a kitchen.
My uncle would try hunting, my father would read the papers, and nap. And my grandfather would get irascible if his routine were disturbed.
So, taking the kids and getting out of the house that day always seemed a good idea to my mother and aunt.
Multiply this by however many other families don’t really know how to deal with the situation when the nuclear family implodes for the holidays, and you see that suddenly the day after Thanksgiving starts to look important for those businesses that can make shopping an event.
So they start competing for the business, with various strategies - and one strategy that seems to work is the “first X customers get” deals. Add some Darwinian pressure to get more and more people in on this day… and then we get funerals.
I don’t really celebrate Christmas–we don’t do gifts–and so I have no real experience, and I would never expect the crowds to be bad enough to be actually dangerous: annoying, certainly, uncomfotable, perhaps, but enough to be actually dangerous? I wouldn’t expect that in a million years. And if she got there early when the crowd was forming, she may not have had the option to leave as it got larger and people were trapped.
Wal-Mart carries some of the blame for this. The tradition of having some very good loss leaders in a very limited quantity really encourages this sort of hysteria–they give the best bargains to the most aggressive people. If that has been leading to escalating violence every year (as every year more people learn that the “secret” is sheer aggression), then they should have taken steps to change the way the game is played long before it got to the “breaking the door down” stage.
This is one of the reasons why I think that Wal*Mart should be held the most responsible… according to this article, that store allowed people to start lining at 9:00 PM last night. Holy hell! No wonder there was an unbelievable push forward as soon as the damn doors opened.
But, that same piece states that there were dozens of folks also knocked to the floor in the stampede. So, although I agree that once your pushed along you may not see one person on the floor and have no choice about whether you go forward or not, you sure the fuck can tell when there’s a human roadblock under your feet. Further, although I can understand trying to brave these things for whatever reason (I’ve never tried it), you must consider your own abilities when doing so. Meaning if your pregnant / have a bad heart / claustrophobic / anger management issues, perhaps you need to skip something this intense.
And finally, I speak as the daughter of a long-time (26 year) WalMart employee. My dad has to work this stupid event every year despite his age (mid 70s) and the only saving grace is that he is indeed thankfully stuck in the lawn and garden department. But trust me, every possible manner is utilized for WalMart to not spend any extra money (like having enough employees present to prevent problems), especially on days when it’s needed the most badly. Perhaps this will finally put enough of a dent in their wallet to at least revise a couple of policies.
However, the hype won’t do anything but increase.
I didn’t say that at all.
However, you were the one who felt the need to comment on the race of people in the pictures but left it for someone else to supply statistics on what you’d commented on as it relates to racial groups.
You should feel free to make whatever comments you think are warranted with cites you can just as easily find yourself, and not leave it to someone else to the do the work for you, is all I’m saying.
How sadly eloquent. And an interesting take on the ongoing dissolution of the nuclear family, in a sense. I only see my brother on holidays anymore, and we were pretty close growing up, but I guess being in a military family conditions you to long periods of seperation combined with happy, albeit rare, family reunions.
To save thirty bucks on a DVD player?! May I suggest that if you need to spend the night outdoors to save 30 bucks for a DVD player, that you can’t afford the DVD player at any price?
I think I commented on it (with apparently justified worry) because other people were thinking the same thing. I only wanted to justify my apparent “latent racism” with statistics. Yes, I suppose I could have been more google-fu worthy, but I tend to speak/ask questions as I think them before I delve into research.
Fair enough?
A “blitz” is whatever highly advertised item they’ve got going at the moment. Say a laptop computer for only $299 or something. Those items are usually left on a pallet, shrink-wrapped, and when the clock hits the magic time, it’s cut open and everyone willing to push through can get as many as they’re able to grab (and hold on to).
I’m assuming the “blitz line” is to only wait for said specific item. My dad’s store does the former but has never had a spelled-out sign for the latter distinction.
Like I said, I’ve never done it, but I can understand for anyone who has a budget where they watch every single penny and then have the availability to do, decide it’s worth a shot.
I mean, I’ve stayed away because it sounded like my blood pressure would skyrocket, not because I was afraid I’d get killed. So perhaps others felt the same way. Until now?
I agree and think that beyond that, the problem lies with not only Wal-Mart for being fishers of men, so to speak, but the fact that there are ignorant, uncaring people that will do damn near anything to get what THEY want, when THEY want it.
This whole deal is a shame and need not have happened.
But if 150 bucks for a DVD player versus 120 bucks is such a big deal that you are willing to wait in a parking lot overnight, maybe you should reassess what you could better spend 120 bucks on.
It’s not a question of wasting money by not using sales, but wasting money by using sales for stuff you don’t need and can’t afford.
There are a lot of people for whom not giving significant gifts at Christmas is as unthinkable as slapping their mother, and in fact carries much the same connotation. I don’t understand it, myself, but cultural conditioning is a funny thing.
But it’s not up to other people to decide if that’s something really important or not spending-wise. Just using your imagination, surely you can come up with ideas on why that might be a big deal to someone. Maybe not to you or I, but anyone? I mean, in my own situation, I’m off and on agoraphobic, so therefore I’m not working when things are bad. If I’m in one of those spates, but could temporarily get out of the house, I wouldn’t have seen any huge deal with waiting in line overnight. And $30 is a lot of money for, say, a waitress (what I usually am these days whilst employed) who might have a specific reason for “wasting” her money. Just to explain the basic assumption.
I’ve worked in retail for years and I’ve always thought the bullshit that has become the black Friday tradition is a horrible way to treat the holidays. It’s totally unnecessary to open that early and have those limited early bird sales. Spread the good sales out over more days and give your shoppers and your employees a fucking break. We’ve all heard stories of people cussing each other and fighting over merchandise and that’s disgusting enough. One of my coworkers remembers seeing two women come to blows over an item. Now somebody has been killed and others taken to the hospital. I hope the fuck people see how awful the extremes of black Friday are and change it.
After the army during a recession, I worked retail at a large shopping center to make ends meet until my wife got discharged. Stacked up against the measley paycheck, it was easily the dirtiest, hardest, most thankless job I have ever performed, and that includes the military, washing dishes, and working on a dairy farm as a kid. For minimum wage, we got pushed, screamed at, cursed out, and once, literally, spit on by customers whom we were only trying to help while looking to get out of yet another exhausting day. And in case you were wondering, no, the store owners and supervisors didn’t give a shit. The supers had it every bit as bad as we did.
And yes, I worked Black Friday, and it was a scary experience. I once had to step into a crowd to rescue a female coworker who was literally having the life squeezed out of her by a bunch of abusive neanderthals who had shoved their way into the store at 5:00 AM, because our functionally retarded supervisors couldn’t be bothered to institute any sort of decent crowd control. There were fistfights and arrests in the store that day, and while I wasn’t caught up in them, my friends and coworkers were.
All this for minimum wage. So they could get their kids decent food and shoes, and I could buy my new wife something decent for Christmas.
You know, kind of like the temp who got killed was probably trying to do.
In other words, BrainGlutton, you’re a lowlife prick.
Wrong. But, I’ll give you another chance: what was my first thought on reading your post? Go!
I worked in retail in the 1980’s as a teenager and I do not recall the “holiday shopping season” ever being so unorganised, frantic, or deadly.
I think the mindsets of people and corporations have changed and combined to infuse this particular brand of selfish capitalism gone awry into people’s accepted behavior.
It’s sickening, uncalled for, unnecessary and brutal. For material things that ultimately mean squat.