BillyTheMountain, I hate to ask you about this, but what are your thoughts on this tragic story, as a happy Wal-Mart employee? Here’s a link to a Google list of articles about it:
I assume the lawsuits will be inevitable. But even without them, I wonder if this will change retail stores’ approach to doing their Black Friday sales?
Funny, on Thursday night we watched something on TV about “World’s Stupidest Shoppers” or similar (on Tru TV). Many of the incidents they covered were stampedes at Black Friday sales. Anyone go to any of these ultra-early openings? What were your experiences?
That is an excellent idea that should be put into effect immediately. When crazy people get through the paintballs, there will be another line of employees with slingshots and marbles to stop them.
EDIT: And to stay on topic, this kind of behavior shocks and sickens me. People will actually feel themselves step on him, maybe even see him, and keep running to try to get to the sales before everyone else. Someone died because a few people wanted to save a couple bucks. There should be lawsuits.
Last year I went out super early to do shopping at circuit city and best buy and other places, but none of them were rushed. Maybe spokane is a little more mature, or maybe its mainly Walmartians who do it?
Not saying that this isn’t sad but it is stupid to have sales like this. It’s dangerous. I guess they do it for the publicity? Because they’re definitely make a loss on stuff they sold wouldn’t they? Stuff must’ve been really cheap for 2000 people to gather and then push the doors in.
(Note: not really. By the way, this is definitely not meant to be humorous. In fact, just the opposite. The people who trampled that poor guy are lowly, greedy pigs. That’s the commentary. Watch it with imagination and outrage.)
Lame! It makes me feel bad to be a human being. I also heard that shoppers were complaining and refusing to leave the store after the murder. People have lost their damn minds.
At first, I gave people the benefit of the doubt. When a crowd surges, you either keep moving or be trampled yourself. That could have accounted for some of the people stepping over the guy when he first fell. But when I read the news reports, my “benefit of the doubt” went out the window. I was actually looking for videos of animal stampedes where an animal is trampled to see how stampede dynamics works. Once the crowd starts pushing, you don’t really have much choice of what to do.
Those same people drive cars. Every time I drive (the speed limit), I feel like I’m on the verge of being trampled. This tragedy helps me understand how people’s sick minds work (and the mentality I’m up against).
From what little I read/watched, that’s what people said about the ugly situation. Once the crowd broke in and mowed down the employees, there was so much press behind them that they couldn’t stop if they wanted to. The best someone could do was fall on top of the guy instead of stepping on him, in which case they might have been injured or killed too.
Having been in many a huge crowd rush, there is nothing you can do if several thousand people are pushing you. It doesn’t matter if you’re standing on someone, if you don’t have room to bend over or move your arms there is nothing you can do to help them. I don’t see it as a matter of indifference, I think if people had known what was going on they’d have backed off.
In the words of Stalin, the death of one is a tragey, the death of millions just a statistic. If you want real tragedy go and look at road traffic accident statistics.
I’ve seen the Meteors and also the Reverend Horton Heat, and the danse de rigeur at such events is “wrecking” which is considerably more violent than moshing, but when someone goes down, the biggest lads clear a space and help them up. And when it gets hot, beakers of water are passed to the front over the heads of the crowd. Far more civilised than suburban moms fighting over cheap tat in a shop.
