What? Just ... no

[veronica_rich]

Wherein I rant and you can look at me like I'm bugeyed or touched in the head (which I probably am, but at least it's usually for a good cause). Fortunately, it's not a long one.

Would someone tell me HOW one can participate in such a press of people in a crowded space that nobody at all notices that the ground beneath them no longer feels like floor and instead, like human? I need an explanation other than "well, you just don't know that big a crowd ..." Because yes, I do; I really do. I was in the Hong Kong equivalent of Times Square the Saturday right before Easter Sunday in 2001. There were thousands of us in the streets, *literally* in a press of people, to the point if you didn't want to lose track of your group, you physically held on to one of them, and so forth. And I still was aware of the fact there was always concrete or asphalt beneath my sneakers, NOT a person-lump. (For which I would have stopped or at least yelled and pointed.)

No offense to retail workers on my list, but let's face it - working as an associate at Wal-Mart is not the kind of job that's worth being killed while doing. Reporting in a war zone, governmental spy, Army captain, jet pilot, space shuttle crew ... these all come with certain risks. BUT WORKING A GODDAMNED MINIMUM-WAGE JOB SHOULD NOT. Especially not serving a bunch of assholes who can't be bothered to give up a fucking $12 Tickle Me Elmo or whatever, to stop and check on someone being trampled to death.

Dad said, "If I were that guy's family, I believe I'd end up owning Wal-Mart, or at least a healthy percentage of the company." You know, it's one of the few times I agree with him. Hopefully several enterprising lawyers licensed in New York were watching and are salivating at the possibility of filing that lawsuit. (Although what would really be great is if there had been a security camera trained on the area that could pick up individual crushers well enough to identify them as co-defendants.)

Comments

[x-pixel-x.livejournal.com]

"If I were that guy's family, I believe I'd end up owning Wal-Mart, or at least a healthy percentage of the company."
I really REALLY hope so. I hope someone can stick it to Wally-World big time. (I don't even shop there unless I've got no other choice.)

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I try to avoid it, but there are just days it's either the much cheaper or closer option. Otherwise I'd eschew it altogether.

[porridgebird.livejournal.com]

Problem is, when a crowd like that is running as if for their very lives, you are going where they are going, or you're going under them. You don't have a choice. By the time it registers that your feet have landed on something other than floor, you're way past it. There's no stopping and pointing, when you've got several hundred people pushing you along who can't see you stopping and pointing.

Hindsight's 20:20, but the sad reality is that once somebody's down, there's not much (if anything) that can be done. The solution has to be prevention!

And for several hundred people crowding outside, they have maybe three of those $200 HD-TVs in stock. Black Friday is not a sale. It's a contest. It needs to be acknowledged and treated as such, and a safer means of competition substituted.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why any employee would've been in the way of a crowd that large, anyway. I'd say stay behind the registers and let them go around those banks of counters!

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

He was unlocking the doors, I think. So, he couldn't exactly dodge them.

[porridgebird.livejournal.com]

Yup, apparently he was part of a "human chain" of employees trying to get the doors open and keep the crowd orderly. (I believe they all were knocked down once the doors broke).

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

Agreed about the competition, and about the inability of people to tell what's beneath their feet or to stop. I've been at a few concerts where people were being crushed against the barriers until they had to stop the music and move them. Nobody behind them seemed to be able to get it through their thick skulls that pushing forward wasn't a good idea. My s.o. was all for tasering the ones at the back who were the impetus for the forward push. I'm beginning to agree with that.

[porridgebird.livejournal.com]

I based the post above on the accounts of some friends who were at that Who concert in '79. I hope this tragedy results in changes in the approach to "black Friday" the way the Who concert did for concert seating.

This video is really enlightening (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB-CFFM68zs). These guys have no idea what's going on at the head of the line (and would have no way of knowing). They're just continuing to move forward.

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

I tried watching that. Couldn't get past the first five seconds or so, knowing what happened to that poor employee.

[ellie-pierson.livejournal.com]

I really hope the security cameras are able to pick up what happened. As a reporter said, while they can determine who stepped on this poor man, it will be difficult to determine which person or persons killed him. Somehow I think all who touched him when he was down should be held accountable.

As much as this was a mob mentality, it is also the fault of Walmart. They created this frenzy. They are the ones who advertised these deeply discounted products and then only chose to only have a few available. They are the ones who did not have adaquate security.

There is absolutely nothing inside that store that is A)worth standing in line at the ass-crack of dawn for and B)worth anyone's life. I hope the people who stormed the doors feel like shit for what they did. I hope those people have a crappy holiday, because the family of this man will not be having a happy holiday.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Agreed on the crappy holiday part. If I were his family, I'd be mad as hell.

[lizzie-omalley.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately Porridgebird is probably right in so far as a human stampede is concerned and this was definitely that. I also think that the employee's family may well have grounds for a complaint if the witness reports that the store let in a few people and then tried to hold back the rest are true. Like that would ever be a good plan.

Having worked more than my share of minimum wage jobs though, I know that I would not have been the one trying to hold the crowds back. If I saw that writing on the wall, I would have gotten the hell out of the way. There isn't enough money (or jobs) on earth that would make me think my life was worth less than a 200 dollar TV.

It is a sad testament to people that right now we are more concerned with "stuff" than we are with each other and that we think we need to fight over a 200 dollar TV like jackels over a zebra.

edited to fix a typo.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

No, I would not stand in the way of all those crazy people. I'm wondering why the guy was there in the first place - was he a greeter? Why the heck would a greeter be needed for 2,000 people already eager to buy?

[porridgebird.livejournal.com]

He was part of a "human chain" of employees. The doors were bowing, under the pressure of the crowd, and the employees were trying to push back. Then the doors broke.

[vejiicakes.livejournal.com]

There is something unspeakably vile about our culture and the mindset of people that something so completely cartoonish like this could happen. Ridiculous enough that people would wait outside a store as early as they do on Black Fridays, but to literally trample an adult to death in a Wal-Mart store rush, are you kidding me with this, America? D:<

I hope you're right about the lawyers, GOD I hope so.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

It's like something that would happen in a movie, really. Not in real life, for pete's sake.

[pktaxwench.livejournal.com]

And that, my friend, is why I chose to go play pirate instead. :)

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

I'd heard one report where prospective shoppers were actually COMPLAINING when the store closed down due to the death. Yeah, I get that some of those in the stampede were likely trying to avoid getting trampled themselves, but when people treat a tragic situation like it's only there to inconvenience them, that says something about our society as a whole. I'd like to see the complainers on Olbermann's "worst people in the world" list.

And agreed 100% on the lawyers.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

From your words to Keith's ear. I'm sure he'll have something to say Monday about this ...

[a-silver-rose.livejournal.com]

Erk, I missed Keith today. Forgot to turn his show on while I was putting ornaments on the tree. Did he say anything about it?

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think he did - he was pretty political tonight.

[justawench.livejournal.com]

Did he actually die due to being trampled? The initial reports I saw claimed he had a heart attack.

Something I saw said that someone took the doors off the tracks (it said "workers" but that doesn't make sense). If it was the crowd, whoever did that should be charged with something.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I suppose he could've had a heart attack. But at 34? I wouldn't think so - unless he had the heart attack *because* he was being trampled.

[elibad.livejournal.com]

I just don't even understand this at all. Wal-Mart tramplings, Toys R' Us shootings, it's crazy.

Just a couple of days ago I was reading an article on 'shopping rage syndrome' and how retailers were supposed to be taking precautions for Black Friday. Doesn't seem like that actually worked out to well.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I don't get it. What do you want to bet most of those people weren't buying gifts anyway - they were getting good deals on big items for themselves?

[gobsmacked.livejournal.com]

Ah Walmart. They've even crossed borders. I'd love to avoid it altogether but we are always hurting for money. Since we moved to a new neighbourhood I've been able to mostly avoid it. We have a Canadian version of Walmart (Zellers) for $12 Tickle-Me Elmos that's much closer so I can be cheap *and* patriotic.

[johnnypenn.livejournal.com]

This is just sad in so many ways. One would hope that people would be curtious. This is why that whenever my parents go shopping opn BF - they don't take us kids, I hate Black Friday, crowds make me cloustrophobic. And here I go to a huge church, ah, whatever.

THis is sad, I hope that the autopsy will show that the man was trampled before he had a heart attack. WM will try and find a way out of giing the family anything, you know, because they're corporate bastards who don't follow the rules. Pisses me off.