A Pox on Black Friday

If our economy ever needed a black Friday it was probably this year. With the stock market in a downward spiral and people in a tizzy about whether or not they would be thrown out of their homes, many retailers were wondering if people would make their yearly trips to the shopping malls and stores in the pre-dawn hours on the day after Thanksgiving for the yearly Black Friday sales rush. Sure you can get great bargains and nice deals but being part of the madcap mayhem that has come to define Black Friday has led me to avoid going shopping that day as if it would lead me to catch the plague.

There have been years where on my way to Thanksgiving at a relative's house I would pass by big name stores like Best Buy or Wal-Mart and one year I remember while driving over to dinner I saw ten people in line nearly 12 hours before the store was to start their sale. When driving back home around midnight there were already 50 people in line. The very next year I saw 50 people in line with 12 hours to go and when I was going home I saw over 100. It's come to the point now where I wonder if Thanksgiving is being replaced as nothing more than the day before Black Friday. I mean rather than celebrating family and friends and being thankful for anything at all we are subverting ourselves into crazy insatiable maniacs all in the name of finding a good bargain.

True there are sales this year but does that justify causing a homicide? What do I mean? Well if you look through the news every year for the past few decades that Black Friday has taken on this pre-dawn tradition you will find at least one story per year about a person being trampled to death and being left to die on the floor because shoppers aren't to be kept from their bargain hunting. Case in point is the late 34-year-old temporary Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour who was crushed to death at a New York Wal-Mart as people rushed into the store just as he opened the doors at 5 A.M. last Friday. Now people are quick to lay the blame on Wal-Mart for 'not having enough safety barriers in place' and 'not creating a safe work atmosphere'.

What? Do these people really think that those little fabric barriers are going to keep people in order? Have you seen the selfish madness that infects people like this? If you tell someone that you can get a DVD player for $50 they will go into a frenzy and come Hell or highwater they are going to take anything and everyone out before the let that bargain slip away. Never mind that that same DVD player sells for $50 anyways and has been on sale at Wal-Mart for the past six months at that price. Retailers are doing what they can to spur shoppers into buying during this time of recession in our economy so then holding them accountable for the death of an employee who was trampled by shoppers seems very backwards to me. Did the store kill him by employing him or did that rush of people who stepped on him kill him?

The holidays are supposed to be about giving and caring and while I'm sure all shoppers out there are going with that emotion somewhere deep in their heart I don't like what I see people becoming at times like this. Selfish raving maniacs who don't care who or what they hurt that comes in their way when the doors to the mall open. I've read about elderly people dying in rushes like this and the age categories are getting younger and younger. I don't think it will be long before we hear of children being trampled and then maybe... maybe... people will begin to pay some level of attention to this thing. Airlines like Southwest used to have this free for all policy and now they let people in groups at a time. I guess maybe it's time for stores to begin allowing entry by group number. At least this can help control the flow and the idiocy that seems to follow. But no matter what I'm going to continue avoiding going shopping on that day. It's just a nightmare and an accident waiting to happen.