Black Friday Kills - WalMart employee and other retail related deaths

[crazylegs]

Several questions need to be asked about this,

Why was there no safe queueing system
Why were people allowed right up to the doors
Why were staff not instructed to remove themselves from the doors when they began to bow and buckle
Where were the police

All in all this was a horrific waste of a human life, just so people could save a few pence.

[Jack7957]

From this article...

Augustine, 26, said the melee began right after a Walmart employee told the crowd the store would open early. The employee then said it was a joke.
This angered the crowd, leading to people trying to rush the store, Augustine said.

That's the stupidiest thing to say to a Black Friday crowd in my book.

Plus those slider doors, are made to breakaway when pressure is applied. It's a safety feature.

[JLRodgers]

I wonder if they could get the entire crowd for breaking and entering or something.... as they apparently weren't "let in" but "broke in".... they probably paid with credit cards too... might be easy to track.

[PizzaDrone]

If this can have any positive impact on situations like this then perhaps it'll be a police presence at all major sales. In this case, it was a riot situation and retail employees can not be expected to deal with it.

[Chanlin]

If this can have any positive impact on situations like this then perhaps it'll be a police presence at all major sales. In this case, it was a riot situation and retail employees can not be expected to deal with it.

I would much rather that they just stop having sales like this. I realize that most likely won't happen but yeesh.

[AirHostess]

God. People are just horrible aren't they. I have no hope left for humanity.

[dendawg]

It seems that the police are looking for the people who trampled the worker. Talk about your needle in a haystack.

Edit: Stupid me, forgot the link:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...11-29-12-04-18

[One-Fang]

Maybe Walmart should play the footage of the bursting-in-crowd on all screens in store till Christmas. "Do you know these people? Please contact Management or the Police."

Frigging amazing they were ringing people out. I can only hope and pray that's because the store doesn't have a very good all-tills communication service. Should've been an instant shut down. No tills operational, all doors locked, and Police to interview every single person on scene.

It's a pity that didn't happen - probably because it would "inconvenience" people.

[JodyinRoc]

As far as a suit against Walmart, good luck finding a lawyer to take it. My BIL found this out the hard way.

[AdminAssistant]

IMO, the solution to this would be to not allow customers to wait in line for hours. Technically, that's loitering.

I think the police should have shut the store down, IMMEDIATELY. No one gets in, no one leaves. Find the sorry wastes of flesh responsible and charge them. With something. Involuntary manslaughter? Reckless Endangerment? Acting Like a Douche in Public? Something - there has to be SOMETHING they could be charged with.

[Kiwi]

As far as I know every employer is expected to ensure a SAFE workplace for an employee and customer

I hope the family gets many millions of dollars from suing wal-mart over this

I dont think that a temporary employee should have been allowed anywhere near the doors when it was obvious that the crowd was becoming unstable. From reports I have read the doors buckled under the pressure.

For goodness sake a man died so people could get cheap TV's Im sick to my stomach over that. I pray that all of the violence this weekend brings and end to doorbuster sales, although I know thats most unlikely. My heart goes out to this man and his family.

I hate humanity

[edible_hat]

I'm glad I did a search before posting the link!

I just hope this is the end of this sort of practice, the early bird crap. Sales are one thing, this is stupid. It needs to stop now.

Around here it's post-Christmas sales. After a similar incident 20 years ago, they now open the stores at normal opening hours and the big sales don't start until a couple of days after Christmas (instead of the day after).

"The point is the idiot is making fun of people who are his superiors. 99% of the people in that line make far more money than this the stupid Best Buy employee. Its a shame he does not realize people look down on him as a useless retail worker which is only one step above a BUM. Like I said hes making $9 or $10 or less and hes making fun of people....dude needs a reality check!"

says the 37-year-old virgin who lives with his mother.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Me, I blame the failures of humanity who valued the big-screen TV or the computer or whatever else Wal-Mart put on sale yesterday more than a human life.

Those things aren't so important that we need to be killing each other to get them.

The fact that this was pretty much an isolated incident shows that there are stores out there capable of handling these doorbuster events with at least some sense and they don't let the crowds get out of hand.

I mean, at my store, there were people running to the back as fast as they could, but it was generally orderly and people weren't getting knocked down and stomped on and people were kinda light-hearted about it.

I say identify as many people at that store that were among the initial rush that knocked the doors down and throw the book at them. And hopefully retailers do what they have to do to ensure safety, like handing out tickets for the most attractive items, or forcing people to form single-file lines before going in, so you don't have one big wave of humanity exerting such force on the doors.

[mattm04]

Plus those slider doors, are made to breakaway when pressure is applied. It's a safety feature.

The doors break away in the direction of egress. Every door is probably considered egress. So much force was applied that they broke the door IN. A shopping cart hitting our sliding doors from the inside going out will break them away. This was outside going in.

My thoughts & prayers to the family and CW's.

Considering we have had people try to use keys to pry/unlock our sliding doors at 5:50 AM when we don't open to 6 or ram the door with a cart, enough to set off the alarm, and get that SC a free ride, and a pair of shiny bracelets.

Keep in mind this is a supermarket and people are coming in for a coffee or other regular items, no cheap TV's, etc.

[Gravekeeper]

So the total so far is:

Walmart - 1
Toys R Us - 2
Atlanta Mall Food Court - 1

<sigh>