Wal-Mart employee trampled to death in store spree

December 3, 1979, at the coliseum in Cincinnati 11 people were killed plowing into the arena for a Who concert. Isn’t festival seating still banned in the USA? Seems like the same principle would apply.
The wallmart managment knew (or should have known) the risks of this type of marketing. They know shoppers are going to behave like animals at these sales.

The Running of the Shoppers always gets on the evening news reports. That makes free publicity for the stores. It is way past time that running for bargains and fighting over merchandise should be stopped but people walking politely into a store and quietly selecting their items does not make the evening news.

Ooops. I’ve been pm’d that festival seating is still allowed. I stand corrected.
Looks like the “running of the shoppers” tradition will continue.

Whereas in the UK, football supporters have been forced to use seats, rather than stand, because of a similar (but much larger) disaster at Hillsborough in 1989. Strangely, the fans blamed the police. I blame every person who pushed forward even a little bit harder than they were pushed from behind.

People with any amount of common sense must know that pushing in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd is dangerous. You barely have room to move your feet. You can’t bend over. You can’t stop.

But disregarding my opinion above and all reported opinion (“they acted like savages”) and disregarding stampede dynamics (“they stepped on and over him” – which they may have had no choice), we still have the following facts, which reveal much about what went on, how it started, and the attitudes of the people involved. Especially the last quote.

[I]“Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.”

“Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains.”

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!’ They kept shopping.”[/I]

My blog post after I read about it: http://evillenick.livejournal.com/72769.html

The first two could be attributalbe to the crush of the crowd behind them. If I was being squashed by 2000 (or was it 200) people, I would bang and shriek. But the final quote is telling.

I would attribute that quote to Black Friday sales, but not in general unless you leave off the last part. Being a consumer is not the same as demanding more for less at all costs. Many of us make the effort to buy organic, buy locally made, etc. And it costs more.

Still waiting to hear from Billy. Billy, if you’re not allowed to comment just post that you’re not allowed to comment and we’ll fully understand. Are you still a happy Wal-Mart employee?

Many of these “nutty” Black Friday sales are based on some really deep discounts on a very limited number of items. You might have 2000 people wait in line to claim 8 super-cheap TVs. Do the people toward the back of the line really think they’re getting one of those TVs? So what a merchant might do is go out after the line has formed and give out numbers to the first 8 people in line who want the TVs.

There are other sales in the store, but would the knowledge of that take away the hype? The hype drives much larger numbers of people to the stores doing the nutty sales. But I think if there isn’t something there to make some level of excitement, merchants might fear not attracting the crowds. Like an acrobat getting killed in a circus performance, (almost) any publicity is good publicity. Is this really true? I hope not for store sales…

And being a consumer is not the same as “consumerism”. I am a consumer, but not a consumerist. I suspect you may be the same.

A consumer is simply one who consumes. Consumption is necessary: we need food, clothes, and we would like a few toys.

Consumerism (in the sense that I used it) is where consumption has become the objective in its own right, rather than a necessary means. It is the basis of our society to this damning extent: we have an international economic meltdown caused by irresponsible lending (and borrowing!) and our governments are trying to alleviate the symptoms by making it easier for people to borrow money.

Consumerism is perhaps best expressed by the expression “retail therapy” which although made in jest describes a situation in which a state of melancholy can be alleviated by buying goods for the sake of buying goods. The person has a hole in their life they think they can fill with a new pair of shoes, or a larger TV - but strangely, the act of purchasing gives more satisfaction than the goods purchased.

Who needs a TV, cheap or otherwise? No one, because it is a leisure product, and for most of history, it has not been available. Who needs the latest designer clothing, or the latest MP3 player, or to replace their mobile phone every 6 months?

Who needs a unicycle, then? I’m on your side re consumerism in general, but that example is crappy to me.

at the big walmart in spokane, you know they always have like 10 computers for $200 or something…

anyway… they make everyone line up at the wallmart here and then gives the people at the head of the line a voucher for the limited item they want to buy. and when all the vouchers are gone the let everyone know that whatever items are gone…

keeps lines down and cuts down the rush

lmao.

And yeah it’s true.

Nice.

That sucks.

I want to get a bunch of people and start slam dancing and moshing in a crowd like that. Though I have never moshed, I do suppose moshing with fat turkey stuffed soccer mommies is a good start.

No one. Note even you or me. But it’s nice to have one. It would become consumerism if you rushed out to buy the 09 KH even though there was nothing wrong with your 08 KH, and your riding was not nearly good enough for you to be able to appreciate the difference.

But then, consumerism drives technology by creating an excess, a surplus of demand, necessary to sustain the post-industrial capitalist society.

I think the interesting commentary behind this scenario is that low, low prices are based on exploiting foreign labor conditions and the violence involved in creating bargain merchandise is, at least on some ethical plane, synonymous with the violence involved in stampeding towards that same merchandise.

Two interesting points.

But if X is necessary to sustain Y, it doesn’t mean that Y is either necessary or a Good Thing.

If we were any happier in our post industrial society, would we have the crime, drugs problems, suicide rate, and metal health issues that blight the “affluent west”? And why would contented people queue like sheep and fight like dogs for discount TVs that they can watch like morons?

Necessary? Absolutely not. It’s actually very damaging to a society that has many elements of capitalism. There is no need for excess demand through the use of monetary manipulations. Allowing people to act in their best interest, by saving and spending as they see fit would produce the right signals in the marketplace and drive technology. It’d be more prosperous.

SHHH!! Within the unicycling market, that approach is very good for the rest of us. It allows Kris and the other designers/builders to focus more on improvements to the machine and building better unicycles for all of us. :slight_smile:

I learned this from Brett Bymaster back in the early days of MUni. When you could either buy something relatively crappy, or pay at least $600 for something custom-built. We would see the weekend warriors on the local trails, riding their $4000 mountain bikes with beginner-rider skills. “Why does that guy need that bike?” people would ask. Brett reminded us that every time someone like that buys “high”, it promotes the R&D that keeps the improvements coming, and gradually brings down the price of today’s cool stuff. Regardless of where it’s being made.

Those all sound like mental health issues.

Either we live as animals or we negate our nature and live modern or we do both, poorly.

I think we have widely divergent views of the “post-industrial capitalist society” and what’s necessary to sustain those definitions. Surplus consumption is corrosive, but it supports the intricate divisions of labor that are necessary in highly organized societies. Surplus consumption floats surplus employment and creates a “buffer zone”, a soft economy of expendables that allows capital to flow in indirect support of the demand economy that you advocate. It’s a device for keeping expendable cash in play which essentially raises the growth ceiling for the demand economy, artificially, until it can catch up. I don’t think it (consumerism) can be separated from society without fundamental changes to how we organize labor.