1. Managing the crowd. Wal-Mart took a very nonchalant approach to the massive crowd gathering outside its store and as a result, things got out of hand. It had no crowd control and no order to the madness brewing outside its door.
2. Respecting its employees. Wal-Mart had no one trained to handle crowds and so they appointed Mr. Damour, who had been hired by a private temp agency to do maintenance work, to deal with the crowd. Reports are surfacing that “Damour was asphyxiated last Friday while trying to shield a pregnant shopper from the throngs of bargain hunters.”
3. Not putting blood in the waters. Wal-Mart invited a mad rush by advertising about the “blitz” on deals and showcasing “door-buster” sales. They routinely show ads of frenzied mobs outside their stores. This encourages civil unrest and violent behavior. Wal-Mart needs to act more responsibly.
Wal-Mart’s first and only objective is to make money. It’s why they don’t blink an eye about outsourcing jobs to China, polluting waterways, paving marshland, steamrolling local economies or busting unions. But worker rights and safety matter and Wal-Mart needs to treat its employees better.
This death didn’t have to happen.
A company like Guardmark, see: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms… , or Appollo security http://www.apollosecurity.com/ who tend to hire ex-marines and criminal justice graduates and train them. The cost would have been actually quite minimal – compared to a wrongful death suit, or even the day’s profits.
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p>I expect to see a civil suit, like the one with the tunnel collapse. This was wanton and reckless negligence by WalMart and should be taken out of the corporate hide.
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p>Your “capitalist” only cares about $$$ so hit them where they hurt, with a solid civil suit and massive payment.
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p>I have said it before: Until WalMart cleans up its act I will not shop at a Walmart. Now this company has, in my view, committed a form of manslaughter.
Sure there’s a lot of shoulda, coulda, woulda and maybe some lessons to be learned. However, there is absolutely no excuse for the behavior of these customers. You complain that Wal-Mart is only in it for the money, which is true, but its tactics wouldn’t work if consumers were not willing to trample each other and store staff. Guess what, folks – you don’t HAVE to be first to get the latest thing going! As far as I’m concerned civilized adults shouldn’t need crowd control. They should be able to take care of themselves and show some manners while they’re at it.
Unfortunately, crowd behavior is as it is – and in my opinion, well known. No, adults should not act like greed crazed morons, nor should college students booze up, and set cars on fire. But…the issue becomes “who had the last best chance to prevent harm” and “what was reasonably foreseeable”. We differ.
I certainly see the reason to have additional security for bigger crowds; lots of large events do it (thuogh don’t get me started on the hooliganism associated with some big athletic events – that’s inexcusable as well). This question is a lawsuit, which means is it somehow Wal-Mart’s fault that its customers acted up. To me the answer is an obvious and emphatic NO! People are responsible for their own actions. If we’re looking for someone to sue, or possibly even prosecute, let’s see if we can identify the individuals that actually behaved like animals.
They advertise certain high-demand items at extreme discounts but warn that stores may have no more than 3 in stock at that price and there are no rain checks available.
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p>Walmart isn’t alone in this tactic, but it is precisely this method of hype that leads crowds to gather for the store opening and encourages them to stampede to be sure to get what they came for.
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p>These stores are well within their right to use such sales tactics, but they should also be responsible for failure to adequately prepare to handle the crowds and the rush.
they have no rights whatsoever. We can say what kind of sales tactics stores can use, balancing risk and regulation in a rational way. There is absolutely nothing that they might want to claim is “their right” that we cannot say “no it isn’t”.
it’s within their rights under current laws, at least.
I often say that, practically speaking, a right means something you are allowed to do under current law. Or, when people are “fighting for their rights”, they are fighting to change current law to allow them to do something that is currently not allowed.
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p>You’re right, current law says stores can do this.
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p>But there’s no constitutional claim to be allowed to do whatever they want, in principle.
And isn’t it illegal? Get 2000 people in the door for a few flat screen tvs so they buy other things. Isn’t that grounds for a class action lawsuit?
It’s in the fine print in the advertisements. I’m sure the corporations’ lawyers have made sure it’s all within the letter of the law.
I’m sure those same Walmart lawyers and a gaggle more are currently working on their defense(s). Also, just for clarification, from a quick google search on law.com, see “damages” below:
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p>bait and switch
n. a dishonest sales practice in which a business advertises a bargain price for an item in order to draw customers into the store and then tells the prospective buyer that the advertised item is of poor quality or no longer available and attempts to switch the customer to a more expensive product. Electronic items such as stereos, televisions, or telephones are favorites, but there are also loan interest rates which turn out to be only for short term or low maximums, and then the switch is to a more expensive loan. In most states this practice is a crime and can also be the basis for a personal lawsuit if damages can be proved. The business using “bait and switch” is an apt target for a class action since there are many customers but each transaction scarcely warrants the costs of a separate suit.
I think that when people get out of control, and end up being arrested or whatever and then complain when they do, they don’t have a complaint coming. It doesn’t have to be the majority of people who act that way, but all it takes is a minority of them to set the tone and get others to act that way who might not act that way ordinarily. They don’t have a complaint coming when they get arrested or visited by the police.
How about a system where the sale price is a function of time, and starts with say 0% off when the store opens on Friday, and each second, gradually becomes more on sale over the next six hours, so that it isn’t fully on sale until noon. But there’s no point in waiting until noon, because at 11:30 it’s only a dollar more than it’ll be in half an hour, and at 10 it’s five dollars more, but 10 dollars cheaper than it was yesterday. It’d be pretty simple to program.
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p>There’d still be a surge to get products that might sell out, but it’d be tempered by the price being the same as it was yesterday.
Wal-mart is a great punching bag for many Americans (but not as many Americans who love shopping there). You can blame Wallyworld but you would also have to blame all the other stores who have Black Friday sales and suffer close to the same frenzy. Let’s face it, if the door didn’t collapse on this guy then the news video from that Wal-mart would have been “Yet another huge crowd entered Wal-mart at 5 something AM in search of cheap prices…”
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p>Let’s try to change our society in constantly blaming the wrong people. Rioters in Kenmore square are the guilty ones, not the Red Sox management, the cops or city officials… stampeding shoppers were the criminals in this case, not Wal-mart of local police… irresponsible borrowers caused this financial crisis not the banks… Underperforming students and their families are guilty not the schools, the teachers and the government… Start taking responsibility and all these problems go away.
I don’t know, isn’t it irresponsible to merely assign guilt and responsibility to people who after all are only doing what their circumstances and influences have caused them to do. Now, don’t get me wrong, those factors include avoiding the blame that must be placed on the actors themselves. You are right that putting all of the blame on other factors and leaving the actors blameless would be a contributing factor to people acting in irresponsible stupid ways. But you also can’t put all of the blame on the actors as you do, as if there were no influences that cause people to behave however they do. There is nothing but influences, and only one of them is the praise/blame that is expected after an action. Focusing on that one at the exclusion of all the other factors is irresponsible, denying your part in the collection of influences that push people however they are pushed. The fact is, we have more influence over other people than we do over ourselves. We really have zero influence over our own selves.
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p>I think we could make a federal law that giant federal chains like WalMart have to implement gradual sale pricing, to save lives.
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p>While I do disagree with you I am very glad you replied this way. Maybe this illustrates a basic difference of ideology between conservative and liberals? I do hear what you are saying and do agree with influence effecting people. Although I have advocated this thought in the past concerning our pop-culture with profanity, violence, sexuality in movies, songs and TV but the left usually says these don’t influence people (kids…).
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p>Can I also ask if this applies to the qualities in people we hate as well. Are Rapists “victims” of their environment? Are domestic abusers faultless and “victims” of their upbringing? Do racists simply follow the influence of their parents, society and/or web-sites? I may disagree with you but I do feel consistent by saying the shoppers at Wal-mart, over-extended borrowers AND all the above derelicts are totally responsible for their actions and should be punished. Remember too that while all the “victims” mentioned above had influence, there were overwhelming numbers of society with the same influence that did not chose to surrender their choice and did the right thing.
Both conservatives and liberals proclaim one half of the equation and minimize or dismiss the other side, instead of seeing that both things are true. We are both “victims” (or victors) of our circumstances, and responsible for our actions. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
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p>Down below, I brought up Jesus’s parable of seeds on rocky soil. I wand to add that not only are we like the seeds, at the mercy of the soil, we immediately become part of the soil, too, and responsible for other seeds around us.
“The fact is, we have more influence over other people than we do over ourselves. We really have zero influence over our own selves.”
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p>We can control the behavior of others better than our own? There were plenty of people, myself included, who DIDN’T show up early Friday morning and trample people because we just had to have the latest thing. I don’t like your proposed law. That sounds like a market issue. What I’ve never understood is why have sales that day. It seems that it is the logical day to begin Christmas shopping even without the extra incentive.
There were plenty of people, myself included, who DIDN’T show up early Friday morning and trample people because we just had to have the latest thing.
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p>The question is, why didn’t you want to do that? It wasn’t because of anything you could control, it was because of the way you were brought up and the things that other people instilled in you. You could have been a cold-blooded trampling killer, and that wouldn’t have been your choice either. It’s all circumstances and influences, and we can’t control those, at least not the ones that are affecting us in the present, when we make our choices. Our choices will cause us to have different circumstances and influences in the future, so it might appear that we were responsible for them, but there were always prior circumstances that formed every choice we made in the past. And our actions also cause other people to have different circumstances and make different choices, that’s why we have more control over other people than we do ourselves.
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p>Yeah, I agree that there’s already enough incentive. Guitar Center gave 20% off on Friday but only 10% off on Saturday, which seems exactly wrong. Maybe they are afraid people will spend all their money on the first day, so they’d better get them to come to Guitar Center while they still have money.
I don’t believe in fate, predestination, etc. Certain decisions we make are tough and could easily go either way. Ultimately we are responsible for our actions, with the possible exception of when false or misleading information was intentionally provided.
The alternative to predestination is self-righteousness and irresponsibility about how our actions affect other people, by saying “they’re on their own, they make their own choices.”
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p>We are like the seeds that land in soil not of their choosing, some landing in rocky soil, some in sandy soil, and some fertile soil. Things like education, role-models, books and movies, family values, etc, all affect our choices.
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p>Yes, it is ultimately us that performs the actions that we have chosen, and us that deserves the praise or blame for them. And knowing that we will be judged on our decisions is itself something that we are taught and that influences us, so I am not saying that we should stop judging people, not at all. Praise and blame, and pride and shame, are essential influences on our decisions. Just also understand that people arrived at their current place due to things that they had no control over, things that other people had control over. Forgiveness and humility come from recognition of predestination, as does a sense of responsibility for the behavior of the rest of the world.
now that I think about it, customers would still grab the item at 6, and then just walk around the store guarding it until noon.
There was a time limit for how long you could be in the store? I’ve heard about that at special sales.
for items that sell out that day, as long as the consumer is in the store on that day.
I don’t think that the scarcity of a Wii system should be excusable for an someone to be trampled at a store’s sale.
And people should be investigated. But there would be no mob mentality if everyone knew they were going to get a raincheck for the same price. Why even camp out overnight then? Just make sure you get to the store that day. The stores are using “limited quantities” as an excuse to create masses fighting to get into the store first. It is irresponsible, and it should simply be illegal.
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p>The solution is simple: a store advertises a low price on a certain item(s). The store must honor the price to everyone who walks into that store while the sale is occurring. Make a “Black Friday Raincheck Law”. (Starting in Massachusetts?)
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Wal-Mart could’ve learned something from one of the Best Buy Stores that had the right idea for crowd control and preventing this needless and tragic death from happening. What Best Buy did prior to opening its doors for business that Black Friday was to make the crowd stand in a straight line, issue tickets, and, in general, impose and enforce a strict “first come, first served” policy. It worked, and there were no brawls, no injuries and no deaths.
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p>Tragically, this “Black Friday” scene at the Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart store that resulted in a mob frenzy scene and, subsequently a needless death was eerily reminiscent of the brouhahas that occurrred over the Cabbage Patch dolls years ago during the early to mid 1980’s, which, while nobody got killed, culminated in brawls, adults snatching things from other people’s hands, even children’s hands alike, and one person ended up with a broken leg.
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p>Anybody remember the 1979 Who concert in Cleveland, when at least one person, or possibly more, was suffocated as a result of this sort of mob mentality. The city also was responsible for this death, because they only opened one of the eleven gates of entry into the arena where the concert was to be held, instead of opening up all the gates.
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p>I believe that people’s greed, viciousness and callousness, coupled by irresponsible management practices, in both the Wal-Mart death, and the death in Cleveland from suffocation while trying to enter the arena for the Who concert, contributed to both of these unfortunate and untimely deaths.
I was thinking about those too…
which is why I brought that up. As horrible as the Cabbage Patch Doll brouhahas were, at least nobody got killed, that I heard/read of.