Trampled to death: That's some Merry Christmas for Wal-Mart workers
By David Neiwert Friday Nov 28, 2008 9:00amThere's probably no more dangerous place on the planet than being positioned between marauding shoppers and their objects of desire on the morning of Black Friday -- as one unfortunate man discovered today:
A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.
The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.
Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
Maybe it's time for people to start getting some perspective on "holiday bargains." Because this is just sick.
Of course, we are supporters of avoiding this madness altogether by supporting Buy Nothing Day.
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My heart goes out to those two...but the fucking sheep that trampled him are just...hell...what the fuck is wrong with people?
are standing in line to buy at Walmart because they don't have the money to shop elsewhere and are worried that they won't be able to buy Christmas presents/clothes/etc. for their children if they can't get into the Black Friday sale.
Greed is not new. Desperation is not new. Being trampled by a mob is not new.
Cynically manipulating the poor by having a single "deep discount" day -- that's much newer.
And yes I am feelin a bit cranky today...excuse me if I don't play nice.
There's always an alternative.
and I know that buying at Walmart will ultimately cost more in the long run. Cheap crap fails more often than not. You can replace it 10 times over or just spend twice as much to buy something that will last 20 times as long.
I don't shop at walmart simply because I believe you should support companies who support their employees. it's the same reason I never shop at Circuit City and after they way they gave their loyal sales staff the shaft in the name of saving a few dollars, they are still going out of business...and I can only hope the same one day for walmart.
... unbriddled capitalism have sacrificed the poor man on the Alter of their Averice.
We are ravenous fire ants consuming everything in our path... even ourselves!
Walmart gets none of my cash - I'll go without first.
I haven't shopped there in years, I'd rather have less purchasing power with my shrinking dollar but spend it on local businesses than help billionaires cheat minimum-wage workers of health care or benefits.
When Sam Walton was alive, his stores were packed with American made goods, because he insisted on it. He wasn't cold in the ground before his greedy heirs made sure that China became an economic world power, at our expense, by replacing American made goods with cheap Chinese crap.
So when Walmart commercials pretend to celebrate saving money, all I see is more of our money leaving towns all over the US and going to support the Communist Chinese government, which preaches hatred of the US, and tax shelters for the Walton heirs.
No surprise, the Walton heirs are big Republican donors.
Largest class-action suit in US history is against Walmart for discrimination.
Shopping at Walmart because you can get cheap Chinese shit is just more of Americans acting against their own best long-term interests in the hope of short-term gain, like desperately shoving into a Walmart at 5am to save a couple of bucks.
All for material crap.
Greed and blindness.
Snap out of it. None of this is necessary for any reason.
You might consider alternatives to mass consumerism for the holidays. Love isn't giving a shiny new bauble (not to make anyone here gag with such triteness). Bake some cookies, cook a meal, clean someone's house, knit something, clean a yard.
[Deleted. Racism. I want you to be successful in your quest. Look in the mirror. There. You've found one-Sitemonitor]
"Christmas" should simply be re-named "Consumermas" because that's all it is. Christmas, as it used to be back in the day (50's-60's), was truly about Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward Men. In our community in Ohio I recall Christmas being more about being together and eating good food and making fun cookies and going out and singing Christmas carols at nursing homes, then going to church on Christmas Eve. When we came home around 10pm we'd open our few gifts and they were always simple things that had meaning.
Every year now that Christmas comes around I loathe it even more, as I now know it is a leading indicator of how our economy is doing. Businesses (like WalMart) rely on suckers to max out their credit cards every December to buy "gifts" for people, most of which I'll bet are not wanted or needed by the persons.
And all this is not to mention the millions of "Christmas" trees that are cut down after growing for up to ten years! only to be unceremoniously dumped in a trash can after New Years Day. Environmentalism. Tut, tut.
I really do wonder, what would Jesus say about the WalMart incident today? What would Jesus say about how we honor His birth, especially considering his disdain for money?
I'm not just boycotting shopping today. I'm boycotting the entire craven holiday Christmas has become and will spend it in quiet reflection instead. With a few Rum Balls and some treats for the hungry birds in the back yard.
Enough of this consumerist insanity already!
Bush will declare the Friday after Thanksgiving, "Entertainment Day".
"Ahh....... it's almosts better den dat football stuff, duh ahhh".
In fairness to the fucking sheep, once the man went down, it would have been impossible for them to stop due to the pressure of hundreds of people behind the ones who were first in the door.
I wonder if there is any way for people in a stampede to stop the momentum? Maybe if several people all pulled each other down, the crowd would have to stop ... but the people on the bottom would still likely suffocate...
It'd probably be best to require every large retailer to install effective crowd-control barricades and security staff who are trained in crowd control at these events.
And I hope Wal-Mart is not allowed to get away with keeping any "dead peasant insurance" in this case. (See miss_kitty's excellent comment at 12:19, below.)
BTW, I have never shopped at Wal-Mart and never will; I loathe them for the way they treat their workers and how they ruin smaller businesses when they move into an area.
But that doesn't excuse the mindless gimme gimme gimme, mine mine mine mentality that cause the poor man to be trampled.
Yeah walmart is the microsoft of dept stores.
Everyone involved should be made to pay for this man's funeral. Disgusting fucks. I mean, you're rushing in to buy shit from Wal-mart? Goddamn those stupid shitheads.
I mean this is just disgusting..those responsible should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law...
I agree. Every last one of them should be tried for manslaughter.
WalMart isn't likely to even pay out for this.
Their team of crack lawyers will worm their way outta this mess...
I wouldn't be surprised if walmart's lawyers figured out a way to make the dead man's family pay damages to walmart.
see my comment about dead peasant insurance, something Wal Mart invests in.
For insurance purposes, the dead guy did not have that valuable a job.
they don't also call it 'Janitors' Insurance' for nothing.
...is to boycott them.... their crap isn't any cheaper than anywhere else... their employees get treated like crap and so do the slave wages who make crap for producing their crap to sell to the desperately under-employed and under-educated people who've bought into their advertising crap... the only people who benefit in any way from wal-mart are the greedy jackanapes sitting atop that crappy empire...
THIS is the true spirit of Christmas, 2008 style. Spend, buy, "give".
Congratulations, corporate America: You've succeeded in the turning the holidays into an orgy of greed.
KW*hr's from PG&E. I'm buying nothing else, but sorry, i refuse to sit here in the dark all day :)
I may buy a pizza...but I ain't sharing with my brother.
I saw you other post, in the other thread. I know you're angry, but this comment made me laugh. You really stick to your guns. Holy!!
Yeah...he's a right bastard, that brother o' mine...I didn't get pizza...I brought home some churrasco steak...I did give him a tiny piece of it...but no beans and rice by golly!
Every year, someone is injured trying to get a bargain or some cheaply made, overpriced must-have toy. It's fucking Wal-mart! Instead of spending a day, relaxing with family and eating leftover turkey, people are up at the crack of dawn to buy shit. I feel sorry for the dead man who was just trying to earn an honest living, and the woman that miscarried. Jesus, some people need to have some perspective.
liberal Wal Marts for ya ;)
Just wait until the money really runs out, them poor people will be trampling the food banks next
Damn shame! For people to save a few $$, a man loses his life. Gives new meaning to Black Friday.
I've always looked at black friday to be the disaster this poor man found it to be today.
You want some perspective they killed a man trying to save money buying a gift to give someone (not Jesus) on Jesus's Birthday.
A couple of the immigrants I've tutored in English over the years have asked me if it's true that in New York City, someone can get stabbed or beaten up and nobody will even try to help the victim. Now we have a new and fitting story to characterize Americans (deservedly) as cruel, superficial, consumerist, and self-absorbed.
There's also the recent case of the Florida guy who killed himself in despair in full view of people on line and the viewers, almost all Americans, insulted him and urged him to do it. He died.
But Americans believe it's unnatural to be concerned about anyone but yourself, that everything's about beating others in a competitive race. Yay, America! We're number one!
This country is in the fuckin shitter...
One of the largest mobs to ever go on the attack and walk away perpetrated an assault and battery of a poster on Daily Kos.
... even after having turned a big portion of the population of this country into perfect consumer zombies, corporate America still depends on hand outs to survive.
That poor man's family.
It would have been cheaper for WalMart to hire some security than the millions they will be paying this man's family as well as the woman who miscarried.
I haven't shopped at WalMart in years and never will.
Same as Dollar Store did with their clerk stabbed to death by a racist customer.
It was a racist attack therefore a non work related incident, kerching, Dollar Store saves a measly $10,000 death benefit payout.
Uh uh. he was a shelfstocker. they'll pay millions to legal teams to keep from paying millions to the family, should they attempt to sue.
They'll probably be strong armed into taking a small settlement, no doubt paid for in part by the secret dead peasant insurance policy WalMart probably had out on him.
From my link:
MsK: Thanks for that most enlightening link.
As individuals we can not buy life insurance on complete strangers. We have to have an insurable interest such as a relative (usually the bread winner) or a business partner. The obvious reasons being financial loss due to the death of the insured. These employer owned policies on employees makes the whole notion nothing more than a macabre gambling casino where the employer insures an employee's life not to sustain itself in the event of death but to enrich itself. What possible motivation for the health and safety of an employee does the company have while holding such a policy?
If anything ever cried out to have a spotlight shown upon it until America as a whole demanded its demise it is this.
I hope C&L will focus some attention on this abomination until this practice is outlawed.
mendacity ... the corporation and its symbiotic complicit media along with greedy/grabby consumers are the proximate cause of this death by manufactured mayhem (aka christmas advertising). pathological.
and their "Steps Of Progressive Discipline" with regard to Employee Attendance, the man's death was counted against him and he was suspended for the rest of the week, without pay.
They will take the cost of the workers who tried to help him out of his next paycheck.
So they only pay his estate for monday of this week.
Oh, is this what Christians mean when they are overcome by the spirit? Now I understand what that spirit of the holidays is, insane greed and lust for material possessions.
"a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning'
Sure hope that unborn child wasn't Baby Jesus Mach 2.
It's the day of the year when prices are at their highest in anticipation of stupid consumers buying as they are told to, and said sheep go out in droves.
And people wonder why a third of Americans still think Saddam was linked to 9/11.
Walmart is an ugly festering and filthy place. I hope they reap what they sow. Kharma is a bitch.
Terrible what happened to that employee. Maybe the security cameras caught it on tape and that man's family can sue the store and the shoppers who killed him.
Shop till you drop(em)
That will teach the workers to get in the way of these idiots looking for some super cheap Chinese crap. What the hell were these jokers trying to buy? Martha Stewart towels? A Dennis Miller stand up comedy DVD? Bill O'Reilly's stupid book? WTF is going on with these people? They will buy this shit and it will sit in a drawer or in a corner until it is taken to the dump. These are the same idiots who are afraid of Bill Ayers.
... it seems I've already spent $700 billion this holiday season.
As for the shopping frenzy, it's not just that we're pushing buy-buy-buy and gimme-gimme-gimme well before our 'National Day of Thanksgiving,' but the leftovers aren't even digested before we're breaking down doors and trampling people.
Disgusting.
Thats the reality of the fantasy bailout/free money to the corporate raiders.
Why hurt small, local, and green businesses by boycotting them? Why not just buy *reasonable* things all the time? Use your head.
This is NO TIME for logical thinkin!
No, it isn't. It's to make people think deeply about their consumer habits.
Plenty of religions observe things like lent, to make people think about their blessings on this planet. You know, put things in perspective.
Lent: period before Easter in Christian calendar: the period of 40 weekdays before Easter observed in some Christian churches as a period of prayer, penance, fasting, and self-denial. This period, starting on Ash Wednesday in Western churches, commemorates the 40 days that Jesus Christ spent fasting in the wilderness.
Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2003. ⓒ 1993-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Just don't buy a lot of stupid shit that you don't need, particularly if you can't afford it. No need to punish reputable businesses in order to give yourself an ego buzz.
The analogy with religion is apt. They tend to way over-dramatize things and throw the baby out with the bathwater. E.g. they don't need to have concepts of guilt and hell in order to behave decently, in fact, their metaphysics *interferes* with behaving decently.
Same with the self-congratulatory and demonizing manichaeanism of Buy Nothing Day.
Rampaging consumerism at its finest.
...literally.
How much do you have to save to make it worth being part of a stampeding horde and put your own as well as others lives at stake?
20$ . . 50$ . . more?
In college, I worked seasonal retail. I used to have "Christmas spirit" until I worked with blood crazy store managers who didn't give a shit about anything or anybody but "making goal". Then there were the customers actually fighting in the store over sweaters and other dumb shit. Usually around 2 in the afternoon we'd get our regular legion of shoplifters all over the store...I learned quickly to hate material items.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if that store manager didn't even blink once after hearing this horrific news concerning that poor soul.
It was only because of a fear of losing business at this time of year...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8973616/
when i read about anything like this i become livid and want to personally strangle those responsible. how can there be such beasts
Peace on Earth...Goodwill to Man...
Now get the f**k out of my way!
of the worker crushed to death by the customers, right in the lobby by the main entrance, so that the customers can see their victim (and look into his eyes) every time they go back to shop there.
Given the cruelty that passes for comedy in the US these days, a lot of them would just think it's funny and make jokes about it.
Right now.
I'm usually a gallows humor type of guy...but some things are just too damn tragic to make fun of.
Yeah, I got chastised in the weeks following 91101 just for laughing and joking a few times about nothing related to the attacks by people who felt the tragedy was still too recent. Wish Americans would feel that seriousness more often.
A lot of people these days think they're being different and rebellious by finding gallows humor funny, but it's really become a norm in the US. Many (most?) Americans only think something's funny if someone's getting hurt, ridiculed, or killed.
I'm a gallow humor oriented guy too. In fact, the more tragic the event the more it's likely to kick in. It seems to be a survival instinct.
However, I'm not a fan of cruel humor. I have a hard time watching The Three Stooges, and humor built on put-downs or embarassaing the characters.
My admission right after 9-11 that I wasn't at first sure whether I was watching a movie or not offended some people. Also I immediately started dissecting the event. That it wasn't just American people that were killed inside the building, but people of all nationalities and religions. I said it was the dumbest thing the terrorists could do, because it was certainly going to cause a rally-around-the-flag effect. Although most didn't understand that last reference, all of this was considered offensive.
The problem with mob scenes like this is you can't necessarily pinpoint who in the crowd is the most reponsible. Security cameras might help. In the 1973 book, Billion Dollar Babies, Alice Cooper was compalaining abour arenas that use "Festival Seating." Essentially it means first come--first serve, with only one door open. So you feel so much pressure building behind you to enter the building, that you either become a part of a crushing mob, or you fall to the floor, and become crushed yourself. Something like that actually happened a couple years earlier at a Who Concert. There never were any reforms.
Did some really stupid things with gates a few times,
they were responsible for killing 10 or 20 at one match.
Its not a new problem, been known about for 100s/1000s of years, its the problem of moronic and cheapskate management training, and people who dont give a f*** beyond a few bucks profit.
Alice Cooper mentioned that every so often security had to be used to lift people out of the crowd, because it was panicking certain people. The impression he gave, was that his security detail was both to protect the band, as well as the crowd from themselves.
I've seen film clips of British police (real police/not security) lifting girls up and passing them overhead, presumably for that reason, in film clips taken during Beatlemania.
96 people died going through the gate system after police screwed up.
1989, witnesses claimed some police officers at the gates were laughing at the crush, they didnt knowing what was happening at the front, ie people dying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_Dis...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
Is it Wal-Mart's fault or is it the fault of the mob
assembled outside the store hell-bent on any and every
possible savings as quickly as possible before the
desired items are sold out.
It's greed and bad manners combining to cause this
sad situation.
I've always believed that the larger the group, the lower
the collective intelligence. Mob mentality ensues and
people get hurt.
This is also how groups of demonstrators turn ugly and
become rioting mobs.
A pity for the worker's family and a pox on the over-eager
greedy American consumer.
Its part of the mystic of special days, Walmart and other retail companies that encourage this wild shopping are partly to blame.
Theres a case for licenses and emergency planning for such events, treat them like any other public crowd events/demos/protests etc.
You're right, and if you are in the middle of the stampede, you often have no choice but to move forward or you will get trampled as well. Some of these swarms you can pick your feet off the ground and still be moved forward. Then people try desperately to avoid stepping on someone on the ground, but almost always after they have already done so. And someone is dead. Mobs are not going to stop and think about it when they are corralled near the doors, smashed together, everyone in competition.
Get rid of these mobs in front of the stores is the way to fix it. Traffic management, get those city supervisors off their asses at Xmas
and I pulled a girl out of the beginnings of a stampede when the Chili Peppers started...she was hysterical...I was trippin my balls off, but saw it coming and edged out and grabbed her before the mad rush to stage...
People in large crowds lose intelligence by the second.
Same thing happened to me at the train station, New Years Eve 1999, in Amsterdam. Trains were shut down for the night and no one knew about it, until you hit a locked gate. The crowd was pushing toward a dead end and I grabbed my traveling partners cause I knew something was wrong, I sensed it. You got to avoid getting in the middle of these things, always stay on the edges
Scared the crap out of me. It was so crowded I actually felt like I couldn't get enough air, now I know I probably wasn't getting enough air. For one moment I thought I wasn't going to make it and I started to panic.
Needless to say, large crowds lost their appeal to me after that.
The cameras should get a pretty good shot of that area.
this sounds old fogie, but i stopped doing any of these sales when people got violent over cabbage patch dolls...lessee, maybe 35 years ago?
this is another sign of our sick society....like Abu Grhaib, like 4 teens dying at the WHO concert, in the city right where I live.
when will we learn?
When there's not enough humans left to propagate the species.
That's when there's plenty of time to reflect.
... some evangelical thug like John Gibson will say it's retribution for not saying 'Merry Christmas.'
He'll have to run it past BillO for the green light
They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back
Damn.
Reading the Daily News article, I read the comments and OMG. So many of them are racist in the manner of "what do you expect from those (i.e., black) people.
This story is disturbing and disgusting from so many angles. The whole 4 am shopping bonanza thing to whip up working class people, who can't otherwise afford Christmas, into a frenzy...disgusting. People stampeding and killing someone just to get a bargain...disgusting. Seeing this as a confirmation of one's racism...disgusting.
Why should one have to "afford" a day? In that case, I can't afford Mondays.
ainta gonna 'change' these greedy, desperate, grasping barbarians.
This to me is emblematic of the disease that has overtaken the 'people.'
Save Murka!!! Go SHOP, you fucking lemmings...
Well, I don't know about you guys, but in our family, we always trample and kill a low-wage employee while rushing to purchase a flat-screen television to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
in the crush.
We have a CRISIS here, friends. They have got to learn to SACRIFICE.
wwjt ??
(who would jesus trample?)
You ought to make t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, baseball caps, and mouse pads with that slogan.
I'm sure Walmart would sell them.
That's good, thick dark humor. I'd be laughing if it wasn't fucking true.
Jeebus.
Sounds like my favorite beer:
Guiness.
Holiday irony is finding a man who has hanged himself from his Christmas tree.
that Walmart sells.
Almost but not quite a copy of the Waffen SS deaths head logo.
Supposed to be an innocent death metal tshirt...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_mo...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I31hQ8TrT5M
Presumably this is why Olvier Wendell Holmes said your freedom of speech doesn't include yelling fire in a crowded theatre
Unless of course there is a fire.
I also remember how hearing that once in the late 19th century there was an incident like a fire at the Lyceum theatre. One man in the audience panicked and started running up the aisle to escape, when the stage manager, Bram Stoker (Dracula), stopped him and said, "Please sir, there are ladies present." Stoker had the men stand by while the women were led to escape, and then the men left.
It's always been shown as a rather corn-ball chivalry on Stoker's part, which indubitably it was, but now it also sounds like crowd control.
When you run with wolves, don't trip.
I believe this has happened at Wal-Mart before. If so then they have a great deal of responsibility in this death.
(and I'm sure they've got one) before I got too judgmental. I was once standing outside a concert at an arena in London, Ont. waiting for a Rush concert when a similar thing happened. It was festival seating so when they opened one of the twelve doors to let everyone in the crush was instant and overpowering. Even then I weighed nearly 200 lbs and had a 42 inch chest but within seconds my arms were locked at my sides and I could not breathe. I could not see where my feet were landing and I had absolutely no control. The weight of people pushing from behind was unbelievable. Four thousand people trying to do a three stooges act getting through a three foot wide door is frightening when you're at the front. The people at the front of the pack were actually trying to push back so they could breathe. I was popped through that door like a zit when the force of the crowd carried me there. If the adjacent doors had not given way under the force of the crowd I'm quite certain someone would have died. I think my most vivid memory of the whole very scary experience was seeing the bank of London cops standing just inside the doors laughing at the whole thing.
Why would anyone be so anxious to see Rush?
you have a point. Back then, and were talking the mid-seventies, three chord power rock was good enough for me.
Rush could never seem to figure out whether they were art rock or a heavy metal band.
And the singer made the Yes singer sound pleasant.
I don't understand why I ever bought that crap album...I guess it was because I was 16.
I actually was a fan of Yes off and on, but could rarely listen to an entire album at one sitting.
I was also into Emerson Lake & Palmer, and could listen to Lake all day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqOfXumI18A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od7QWeR8c9Q
I also like Renaissance, but they tended to be too stately. The singer was from a British opera company, and the band from various British symphonies.
Tom Servo had some thoughts on Yes, as seen here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RRn7c5EJd4&fe...
can drive away clouds of mosquitoes and black flies, an important consideration in the Great White North.
one which I understand is legend, locally. Someone threw a flare -- launched it, from the back -- I saw it arc over the crowd. It hit the wall at the back of the stage, rolled forward and stopped under the drum kit and flared up. I was in the front, and people push forward when shit like that happens.
9 people were crushed to death at a Pearl Jam concert in Denmark, IIRC. They seriously thought about quitting. But then they're human beings with hearts, souls and consciences. WalMart, not so much.
I was nearly crushed at an Iggy Pop concert
What happened, your boyfriend left with another guy?
..they blamed rock 'n' roll. Do we blame capitalism here of just low, low prices?
LanceThruster
I would say that capitalism qualifies as the overall villain of this piece. Capitalism is not concerned with the welfare of the people but how to make a profit. That is the bottom line of a corporation, especially a large corporation, which is to ensure a profit for the owners of a business. The bourgeois, the ruling class, the vested interests-their main concern, their only concern, is to make the owners prosperous at the expense of the working class.
Advertising undoubtedly convinced that mob that their lives would not be enriched unless they got their hands on those coveted electronic items. Their greed, instigated by the corporate giant Wal-Mart, cost the life of that employee. When the employees of the store were attempting to go the aid of that crushed employee, there were those in the mob who had said that they had stood on line many hours to get into the store and that they were not going to be denied their due. A less than shining example of how consumerism has overcome the boundaries of morality in modern day America.
When Who concert goers got trampled to death..they blamed rock 'n' roll. Do we blame capitalism here of just low, low prices?
unlikely headline; news at 11 teaser-->capitalism kills!!
oh wait, too many entries on that one and jails already full...
They call it "excitement," perhaps.
But what it is is incitement to "commercial" riot.
The survivors of this victim should sue the SHIT out of Wal-Mart...
This is why I stay off the roads and out of the stores on "Black Friday". I can't stand the rush to buy things for a commercial-based "holiday". I look around and see people in this country, and I'm guilty of it, too, buying meaningless crap while poor people in this country, and around the world, are surviving on very little and are grateful for what they do have. The fact that someone lost their life during a mad rush for THINGS is beyond sad. I blame the throngs of sheeple who get caught up in the feeding frenzy, but I also blame Wal-Mart for not having a better way of dealing with crowd control.
Today I will buy nothing. Tomorrow I will go online and honor my family's commitment to keep within $50 for each person. On December 25th, we will eat a reasonably-sized meal and hang out in front of the fire looking at old photos and reminiscing.
Was Walmart playing this over the loudspeakers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVd117zCTOM
Well, time to go shopping...
Kinda sorta related to the thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jCr8QSGYss
Hope your cheap crap was worth it.
If only people would storm the offices of corrupt government with the same energy.
if they thought they could get one of 3 bigscreen tvs available for hundreds of dollars off...
Absolute rampant consumerism...too busy keepin up with the Joneses to care about how hard they're gettin fucked by the govt.
like a judgemental asshole....
This to me exemplifies the mentality of your typical Walmart shopper...
They don't give a damn about the person next to them in their blind rush to buy bullshit from China.
there is no other place to shop besides Walmart. We're one of those places where Walmart moved in and put the smaller stores out of business. If you want anything besides groceries or drugstore items you have to go to Walmart. The next nearest town is 30 miles away, in another state even, and when you live in a place that has the highest gas prices in the country you don't take a 30 mile drive to shop very often.
Even so, you couldn't pay me to shop at Walmart. I literally do without things for long periods of time until I have a big enough list to make that 30 miles drive worthwhile.
Now if only more people were like that!
there is nothing like going without in order to maintain a boycott. It makes me feel very virtuous. :)
getting kinda that feeling of accomplishment...I dunno...I'm one of those people who can make do with very little anyway...but when it's for a cause greater than myself...that is a good feeling
Never been to Wal Mart, either.
Same here. In Canada we have Boxing Day sales (December 26, and a holiday). I've never been to one, nor will I ever go. There's just NOTHING in the world I want that much.
Is that when the upstairs maid seduces the employer?
Unfortunately people ignore that it's the 12 Days of Christmas (ending on Epiphany January 6), and go right to artificially contrived "holidays" like Kwanzaa.
I've been listening to the public broadcast classical music station, this morning, and they're already playing way TOOOO much holiday music.
Something to put you into the holiday mood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKhJ9IQdWQ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKhJ9IQdWQ8
This is part of "OUR WAY OF LIFE" that the "Islamofascists want to destroy"(per Bush, Cheney, etc)!!!!!!!!!
...or even "Listen to no talk radio week"?
If you're really, really serious about this buy nothing day, why not do something equally more fulfilling.
Don't watch sports on TV or listen to the radio, or even go to an event. Instead, why not read a book or listen to a CD in the 3-4 hrs. it takes to watch a game that in about 100 yrs. no one's gonna care about anyway.
Don't listen to talk radio i.e. Billo..Rush, and so on (ad nauseum), and just find some other station to listen to instead...
Why not hit the so-called 'culture warriors' where it really hurts..?
I'm in. Sounds like a normal day for me. What I really like is a day working in the garden. In my own way I can be very happily "unplugged."
it reminds me of rumsfeld's "who knew?" retort
crowd psychology is not new. just read the number of people who experienced this at various venues, entertainment/sport, and scarcity handouts,etc.
mission accomplished. it's cheaper to deal with the negative outcomes, spread out the blame, especially if the customers appear "rabble-ly"--> given the profits reaped by those shielded from the consequences.
and it's more apparent as I've gotten older, and it's this: People in this country would rather manage a crisis than invest in prevention.
I mean, look at that supreme asshole Lee Iaccoca signing off on the exploding Pinto. Cost analysis indicated that it would be cheaper to pay off the families of the immolated and the surviving messed up piles of flesh than it would be to fix a deadly problem with a 50 cent plastic part.
factoring in cost/benefit and ethics not on ledger - seems like
that Iacocca ever headed Ford. I thought he was always at Chrysler.
The REAL Christmas tragedy is when all those meanie lefty Scrooges demand everybody (under threat of torture) say "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" instead of "Merry Christmas." Fox News and the WSJ say so!
"We need to seriously consider establishing Capitalism Day so that we never forget what it was."
Methinks the Walmart worker who died today would make a terrific poster boy for this holiday...
Overall, I think people file lawsuits way too much in our society, BUT...I hope this poor man's family sues the pants off of Wal-Mart. No one's life is worth a cheap TV or computer. And the stores just foster this kind of atmosphere, with the deep price cuts, which they always accompany with intentionally limited stock. Couple that with completely ineffective or downright non-existent security, and something like this was sadly inevitable.
I hate the whole Black Friday hoopla, and this makes me hate it even more. This is also the kind of thing that really makes me realize and understand why there are people around the world who hate America. Our priorities are completely and thoroughly screwed up.
Wal-Mart and every single person who stepped on or over this poor man as he lay there dying should be ashamed of themselves. And as a society, we should be ashamed of ourselves too.
I'm so short and heavy set any lawsuit would have to be taken in to be altered.
Christmas-y, enough to make a fella break out in song-
"Here at the long Island Wal-Mart, fa la la la la, la la, la la.
There lies trampled some dead old fart, fa la la la la, la la, la la
And an injured pregnant lady, fa la la la la, la la, la la
See how much cash I can save me, fa la la la la, la la, la la."
I don't get shit from Walmart. It starts with no contributions to the Walton family's coffers, treatments of employees - treatment of WOMEN employees, and goes downhill from there.
the child slave labor they employ overseas and that they don't pay their fair share of state taxes. Fuck them. I am a reformed Walmart shopper and will never sully myself by crossing their doors again.
I tried to get my friends kid on board but the cheapness wins out. Even though he used to work for Walmart and knows how poorly they treat their employees. We had this long discussion yesterday about their plans for today and I went over all of why they shouldn't shop there, and practically begged them to go anywhere else. 20 minutes later, when someone else asked what they were doing today, his wife immediately chimed in with "going to Walmart at 3am." I just shook my head. It was like what we were talking about less than half an hour earlier didn't register.
I remember reading of an American experiment where they took a macaque and trained him to do certain tasks in his cage for food pellets (primary reinforcement). Then they trained him to do tasks in his cage for tokens, that he could put in a slot and receive his food pellets (secondary reinforcement). The macaque easily learned to do this.
Then in a cage visible to the first macaque they set another cage with a macaque unknown to him. After a few times of receiving his food for tokens he realized that the second macaque was screaming in pain. The scientists had wired their cages so everytime the first macaque got his food from the machine, the other one got an electrical shock. Of course the macaques did not understand the cause, but the first one seemed to recognize he was the cause. So he refused to "buy" anymore food. I heard he starved himself close to two weeks rather than hurt that stranger macaque.
Then the scientists ended the experiment and concluded that the first macaque's behavior was due to intellectual limitations. He couldn't tell the difference between himself and the other, as two seperate individuals.
To amplify a point others have made: in a situation like this, you don't even have a choice of trample or be trampled. You're going to go in whichever direction the thousands of pounds of human bodies are pushing you. It's like being stuck in a human avalanche. I've been to rock concerts that fortunately had better crowd control than this, but where there was still enough of a crowd surge to be scary.
...will find a way to blame the blue-vested little miscreant for the stampede so they won't have to pay his piddly insurance payout.
Or maybe, if they were industrious, they took out Dead Peasant's insurance on him and cut out the middleman (or his widow and kids) altogether.
I recall about 10 years ago a seaman was killed at sea when a ship's boiler exploded. They Navy tried to blame him for the explosion, only later to admit there was something wrong with the boiler.
My newspaper this morning weighed in at about 10 ounces. The 75 hyper advertising inserts weighed more than eight pounds.
The went into the recycling bin unread.
What a colossal waste.
Now we get to add human carnage to the mix.
What a great country we live in.
Goodbye Xmas. You are now officially history in our family.
This year we are asking our family to take the money they would pay for gifts for us and instead buy food for their local food pantries. We are doing the same in our family members name. Time to forget opening presents and open hearts instead.
Great idea.
I don't like receiving presents, nor do I want them. Is that weird?
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