.
Link to Kimberly’s onthewilderside commentary is: here.
WalMart Black Friday stampede kills greeter employed by Long Island Store — Newsday.com
A 34-year-old Wal-Mart worker died Friday morning after “a throng of shoppers . . . physically broke down the doors” and knocked him to the ground as the crowd pushed its way into the store at a Valley Stream mall, Nassau police said.
Four other Wal-Mart shoppers at the Valley Stream store were taken to hospitals Friday morning. A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital for observation, and three other shoppers suffered minor injuries and were taken to hospitals for treatment, and they were expected to be released.
Marco.org: Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede
Cause of death: an incredibly dysfunctional society where overconsumption and consumerism are out of control while education and adulthood are neglected.
We should be ashamed of ourselves for letting this ridiculous mess happen. Everything about it. The Wal-Mart store’s existence in its current state. The massive hype of “deals” that are never really good (it’s retail). The psychosis of Black Friday early-morning rushing and the artificial scarcity created by the retailers to inflate this mania more every year. The mental state of hundreds of people willing to wake up at 4 AM to wait in a giant mob in the cold for an hour then trample a man to death to save $30 on a crappy off-brand TV — all under the guise of giving people stuff they don’t need to celebrate the birth of a man who told people 2000 years ago to be kind to each other, be humble, live beneath your means, and help those less fortunate. (An out-of-control society killed him, too.)
Filed under: Holidays, local, long island Tagged: | Walmart
this is so sad, Walmart should be ashamed! give me a break, they know how people are and this was one of their own. They should be banned from this, people will still be stupid its up to the stores to be responsible for saftey!!!
KW: Great point. I had just started to be thinking that myself.
What are some things Wal-Mart could have done to prevent this tragedy?:
1. Had a better, wider, entrance.
2. Not tried to lure people to their place of business at a certain time, creating an unneeded sense of rush and frenzy. (But, the rush and frenzy helps create sales)
3. Better trained the security guard so that he knew to either 1. handle the crowd better or 2. give up and not stand in the way.
4. Had more employees and greeters at the door, maybe even on the outside. Everywhere from a classroom to the Department of Motor Vehicles, to a busy bank, businesses know that with more crowd you need more crowd control.
It is disappointing the way that the shoppers acted. But, some of them might not have understood what was happening.
We can’t take our eyes of Wal-Mart. They were profiting from the situation that led up to this tragedy.
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