News, Wal-Mart Worker Dies When Shoppers Break Down Doors. (deal, online, present)

[sailordave]

hasdrubal, there's a wedding dress store that every year throws open their doors for a clearance sale and every year those women trample each other to get to those dresses and fight tooth and nail to get them. What happened at that walmart has nothing to do with the income of their customers and everything to do with a combination of extreme competitiveness and mob mentality. This time of the year brings out the worst in the most competitive people. They want to be the first to get this or that and will not only trample and fight other people to get what they want, they'll brag about it after it's over. Combine that with a mob mentality and you have the potential for disaster. This type of stuff has happened at shopping malls, toy stores, and electronics stores for decades. You people are making more out of this story because it's a Walmart.

[sailordave]

Perhaps you people should be blaming the customers at that location rather than Walmart itself. How many thousands of Walmart stores are there in the world and out of that many only one had this incident

[Movie Lover]

Originally Posted by sailordave

Perhaps you people should be blaming the customers at that location rather than Walmart itself. How many thousands of Walmart stores are there in the world and out of that many only one had this incident

Yeah, the one and only. In the USA!

[emstee22]

Originally Posted by swagger

I saw this thread title and knew someone was going to try to blame Wal*Mart. I'm surprised it was the second reply, though - I expected it to be the first.

some of the blame HAS to be put on walmart. they made the man work in an unsafe environment. then, after this happened, all they said about it was "We expected a large crowd this morning and added additional internal security, additional third-party security, additional store associates and we worked closely with the Nassau County police. We also erected barricades. Despite all of our precautions, this unfortunate event occurred."


Unfortunate event? are you KIDDING me? some man got trampled to death the day after thanksgiving and all they can do is call it an unfortunate event?

it is the fault of the animals trying to get into the store but walmart does deserve some portion of the blame here.

[Alaskapat528]

Originally Posted by younglisa7

I am amazed that people think "things" are that important. This is a horrible display of the animals we have become. It's sickening.

Actually, to compare this crowd to animals is insulting to animals. They are the lowest of the low in life. They continued shopping yelling and swearing when they were told the store was closing; no concern for this poor man that was trampeled. The paper today said the police and emergency medical workers were even jostled and pushed by the crowds coming in. Makes you sick doesn't it? BTW how is your house coming along? I love following your posts.

[Bella52]

Originally Posted by eevee

ok, so after reading some more recent reports, it doesn't look like the pregnant woman miscarried and the baby is okay (earlier reports stated she'd miscarried, but it looks like they were wrong)

Walmart isn't 100% to blame, but they DO share some of the blame, absolutely no question about it. they should have implemented ways of controlling the crowds so as to keep them from stampeding. there should have been more security (especially after the line swelled to over 2000 people!), and they could have let in small batches of people in at a time. Black Friday rushes aren't uncommon, it's just that this year, it ended in tragedy. I worked at a store not too dissimilar from Walmart/Target/Kmart and while i never worked during the early morning rush, I've seen some chaos on Black Friday. maybe the worsening economy has made people even more desperate for sales, who knows.

I for one HATE the tricks stores play on Black Friday. they advertise a product at a ridiculous discount, but neglect to tell you (not even neglect, in some cases, flat out refuse to tell you) their quantities. I know everything has a "while supplies last" disclaimer, but when you have 500 people lined up for hot item of which you only have 5 of, you have to realize, there's going to be issues. look at the Xbox 360/Wii/PS3 mayhem of last year and the year before. some stores were smart enough to issue tickets for people to come pick up the item later, and these stores avoided the mayhem other store saw. oh, and I firmly believe in some cases, this is either extremely poor planning, or done on purpose. not in cases where a popular new product is set to be released, like the game systems above, but in cases where certain items were regularly in stock before Black Friday, but then mysteriously became "limited" on the day itself. I think in some cases, stores hold back items just ot force customers to buy other items (b/c if you always found what you needed right when you got in, you'd be in and out in a few minutes. but if you don't find what you wanted, you may feel you have to look for a suitable, and probably more expensive, replacement so you don't feel like you've wasted your time in line for nothing)

Black Friday, as it is, can't go on like this for long. it's just too chaotic. talk to people who have to work on this day, especially in certain stores (toy stores, electronics stores, bog box stores like Walmart, etc) and they'll tell you some horror stories. these stores either need to cough up thee cash for more security (and not just at the door; every major fight I saw working on this day happened in the aisles), they need to set up a system for a more orderly entrance, and they should try to set up some type of system where hundreds of people aren't stampeding into the store for the 5 laptops/flat screens/ whatever in stock

I honestly don't know how the Running of the Brides at Filene's Basement manages to not end up like this? I've been to one, and it's chaotic, but NOTHING AT ALL like the chaos experience during a typical Black Friday sale

just came back from work and am so grateful that, while I work in retail, I work at an airport and don't have to experience this brand of madness (again, I will never work another Black Friday in my life, unless it's at a place that gets low traffic on that day! it's just not worth the stress and tears and the potential hazard to your health)

Great post. Agree 100%

[HighPlainsDrifter73]

Originally Posted by Jaxson

That thought also crossed my mind but people are feeding frenzies whenever a sale goes on. Just look at a store going out of business how people flock to pick the shelves clean. Now mind you I have bargained hunted in my day but never over the top like I have seen some people.

You got that right about stores going out of business. I was in Montgomery Wards a couple of times during their going out of business sale. I remarked to a friend of mine how these people resemble vultures circling over a dead carcass. Sad, but true.

[pitt_transplant]

I hope they make examples out of the people. Its not wal-marts fault. Its the crowds'. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. You shouldnt need a SWAT team to over see shopping.
Thats stupid. If people cant control themselves shopping they belong in a mental hospital or in this case jail.

[Alaskapat528]

As far as Wal-Mart being responsible I would quess they are facing a major lawsuit and rightfully so. They obviously saw the massive crowd waiting who were pushing the doors even before 5 a.m., since the crowd there didn't understand what "open at 5 am" meant! On the other hand, I'm sure they never thought of something like that happening, otherwise they would have taken steps to avoid lawsuits; remember they care little about people, only profit.

BUT Wal-Mart is not responsible for the savages waiting outside like a bunch of wild banchees. The people bursting in the door, ripping doors off hinges, stampeding on top of others ARE the ones to blame. They couldn't act like civilized human beings, because it's not in them. How they tried to continue to shop while this poor man was being worked on makes me sick! I only wish they would have called for a massive police back-up and arrested them; they should have maced them. My heart goes out to this man's family and how sad he had to die this way. I hope ALL of those wild savages responsible for this are proud of their greedy, pathetic selves, and somehow I doubt it phased any of them.

[The Dissenter]

Wal-mart AND the customers should both be held responsible for this man's death. The customers should be charged with manslaughter and Wal-Mart should be fined and held financially responsible.