It's amazing this hasn't happened before. Today in search of the perfect sale, 2000 people in line at a Walmart in Queens pushed and broke open a door that an employee was trying to open. The employee was knocked down and trampled.
I hope it was a damn good sale, because the cost was too high.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/28/black.friday.violence/index...
Our thoughts are with this person's family.
Kristy
Comments
Two others killed in shooting
Also saw on the evening news that some people got into an argument over a toy in a 'ToysRUs' store and the end result was two people shot dead.
What the hell is wrong with people these days!? (That's a rhetorical question)
KJT
"Being a girl is wonderful and to torture someone into that would be like the exact opposite of what it's like. I don’t know how anyone could act that way." College Girl - poetheather
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
The article on CNN talked
The article on CNN talked about that too. They said that turned out to actually be two people that knew each other and the argument was not over the toy, it just happened at the store. But either way... I agree.
Kristy
Insanity!
My brother-in-law's mother has worked for Wal-Mart for many years and has been there for many "Black Friday" sales. She has seen knockdown drag-out fights break out in the aisles. The year that "Tickle Me Elmo" came out, two women took all of five minutes to be charged with assault and battery. It was really stupid! Not only did they not get what they came for, they went to jail and had to pay more in fines and court costs than the damn toy was worth. I think that many parents must lose their minds at this time every year. They are trying to buy their children's love rather than spending quality time with them. It is really sad that it ended up costing a man his life and a pregnant woman to be seriously injured over this insanity. People need to get their priorities straight and quit allowing material things to matter more than giving love and attention to their children.
Hugs,
Jen
Insanity indeed
Logic is not one of humanity more refined skills.. Its kind of rare for most people to really take a step back in any type of emotional situation and look at something objectively. we simple arn't wired to do so, and when we do its normally a very mentally engaging affair where a good deal of our brain power is being used to solve a problem at hand.
In normal day to day life people fall back on rather emotional driven mental short cuts and bias which gets us through 99% our simple mundane choices. The big downside to these wonderful little mental short cuts is the case above , i.e. the effect of Diffusion of responsibility.
Everyone in that group wanted into the store, because of the sales. So they had very powerful motivator. The next factor involved in this would be that because of the line up each of the shopper in the group were worried about someone else taking the best items for themselves. i.e. $1000 tv for $300 etc. so greed.
So when one of the shoppers at the front rattles the door the next guy/girl to him thinks hey why not, might speed up the clerks to open up the place. soon two people become four etc. each time someone else gets involved the responsibility for the action become more diffused into the group because he or she doesn't feel like there doing something wrong, because the group is reinforcing the behavior. which can progress into the event above or the infamous tickle me Elmo incidents.
The Milgram experiment can really highlight this although in that experiment the responsibility was transferred to an authority figure and not a group. It still can show what people are willing to do as long as they feel themselves not responsible for the action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w
*sigh* Idiots. I bet they
*sigh* Idiots. I bet they didn't even notice.
I'd ask where their brains were, except that I know how mob mentality works quite well.
My wife..
True to our dismal economic condition, is working at the Walmart up here.
When I dropped her off, the huge parking lot was overflowing. She said that
when the opened the doors, people came running into the store here as well.
I've been disgusted to note, that there is a syndrome that it all too common
here. Some of the lowest order of people seem to take pleasure in comming
into these stores, and treating the people who work there as badly as they
possibly can. They behave in ways that seem to be unrelated to the economic
times, and are more related to some kind of release for these 'people.' It
would be hard to discribe just how bad some of them can be, but suffice it
to say, that the prime motivation is that none of the floor employees can
do anything in return. If they say anything, the corporation protects itself
by firing the employee.
My point is, that this behavior is allowed by the company and managers in
these stores. It trains the people not only that they will not be ejected
under most circumstances, but that the more obnoxious they are, the more
likely they are to just get what they want.
This is a very sad to read, Kristine. You have to shake your head and
wonder what the heck is going on.
Sarah Lynn
The stores are at fault in my opinion
It'ns not only Walmart. I'm not a fan of Walmart by any means, but they are not the only ones that do this.
"Door Buster" sales promote a mob mentality by having limited numbers of items available at a large discount, is going to encourage such behavior. They have to be held liable for this!
I hope that something is done about it, because frankly it really is not good for consumers either. Stores should be encouraged to have good prices on everything in order to get customers to shop there, not this bait and switch nonsense. Of course we as consumers are at fault because we fall for this garbage.
Kristy