Why I sleep until 10 on Black Friday
I don’t have to worry about things like this:
A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.
The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.
Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
If this event is an outlier, it’s not much of one. The obligatory Black Friday story at NewsOK.com has this reader comment:
The [Midwest City] police were already answering fight calls in the parking lot on 29th by Target & Kohl’s before 6 a.m.
For what doth it profit a man, if he gain $300 savings on a big-screen TV, and suffer the loss of his ass in the parking lot?
(Via Dan Collins.)
Lisa Paul »
28 November 2008 · 12:02 pm
Whew! Safest really to stay inside, watch videos and eat leftover turkey.
Tatyana »
28 November 2008 · 3:08 pm
Boy, am I glad to be sick and home alone!
CGHill »
28 November 2008 · 5:36 pm
It gets worse. There was a gunfight inside a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California, though the motivation seems to be more gang and less mob.
fillyjonk »
30 November 2008 · 2:30 pm
My father originally wanted to go out – for a particular item (which it seems to me would be an At Your Peril type situation) on Black Friday. Fortunately, my mother and I both overrode his suggestion.
We did go out on Saturday; it was bad enough. I’m all the more thankful for Internet shopping.
Nothing can make me hate my fellow man faster than being trapped in a crowd slavering over the latest item deemed to be “must have” by the media. I’m old enough to remember the Cabbage Patch Doll riots.