Greener Pastures: Personal Finance

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Today is Wednesday, January 07th, 2009

“Snap” Sunday Sermon: A Truly Black Friday at Wal-Mart

November 30th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

I’ve read about these tragedies at concerts - in an environment of blasting frenzied music and crazed young fans, drinking and smoking who knows what.

Now imagine a similar scenario in front of Wal-Mart.

2000 coffee and sugar-glazed-donut charged shoppers, chilled by the night air,

“chanting “push the doors in,” … pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening. Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers.

It didn’t work.

The mob barreled in and overwhelmed workers.

“They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door,” said Pat Alexander, 53, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over.”

Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like “savages.”

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

What were the 5 am “while they last” bargains that spawned this?

“Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.”…

“Said one employee, “How could you take a man’s life to save $20 on a TV?”"

For those that mark Black Friday as a festive holiday sport, a fun way to kick off the season, it was a chilling tragedy.

If Wal-mart wasn’t such a lost cause, they might re-think these 5 AM instigated frenzies. They could at least have enough help on to provide proper crowd control.

And for all of us, maybe it’s time to re-think our priorities.