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Friday, November 28, 2008

No....NO! This is NOT the way it's supposed to be, people!
Posted by Jill | 12:34 PM
Those of you who are Maronistas recognize the title of this post from an old Marc Maron appearance on Conan O'Brien's show, in which he talks about going to the mall during Christmas season dressed as Jesus and walking around, shaking his head, and saying the words from which this post takes its title.

That was a joke. This isn't:
A 34-year-old Wal-Mart worker died Friday morning after "a throng of shoppers . . . physically broke down the doors" and knocked him to the ground as the crowd pushed its way into the store at a Valley Stream mall, Nassau police said.

One police officer told Newsday the prelude to the death was "a mob scene." The man who died was a temporary, part-time Wal-Mart worker, the officer said.

Shoppers who surged into the store were asked to leave by Wal-Mart workers, some of them crying and visibly upset, said one shopper, Kimberly Cribbs of Far Rockaway.

Though rumors circulated among the shoppers that someone had been badly injured, people ignored the Wal-Mart workers' requests that they stop shopping, move to the front of the store and exit, Cribbs said.

"They kept shopping. It's not right. They're savages," Cribbs said.

She said she entered the store after the worker was already being attended to by emergency personnel. As people waited, then pushed into the store, she said, "It was chaos."

Another shopper said people were screaming and shoving in line before the opening.

The worker was knocked down at 5:03 a.m. at the Green Acres Mall store, and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m.


There is something very, very wrong with a country in which people are losing their homes and losing their jobs, and yet they trample a minimum-wage Wal-Mart worker to death in their quest for cheap crap made in overseas sweatshops at one of the worst retail operations in the country. This event is a microcosm of everything that is greedy, petty, selfish, and mean-spirited about this country. And here we were feeling so positive and hopeful after the election.

What kind of people are we, when there are those who, as Fixer so succinctly put it, hide under the bed "if a Muslim farts sideways somewhere in the world" -- and yet don't think twice about the even more real danger of simply dealing with a bunch of greedy Americans stampeding a Wal-Mart? The fact of the matter is that if you are shopping today, you have a far greater chance of being killed in a car accident or stampeded to death by fellow shoppers than you do of being killed by terrorists in the next four years.

Our thoughts go out to this worker's family. Our dollars will too if we find out about a collection.
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4 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Must be the fourth (going on fifth) straight day of stock market gains that is making people feel this upbeat.;)

I wonder which incident was uglier - this one or the one two years ago in which a man who was waiting on line to buy a PS3 was shot and still refused to give up his place.
11/28/08, 2:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
What a horrifying story. If ever I needed another reason to stay out of the stored on this day, this is it. We are happily participating in Buy Nothing Day.
11/28/08, 3:30 PM  
Blogger Bob said...
I experienced a mob scene while working Black Friday at Sterns, stocking sales holiday wrapping when the store opened. My life wasn't in danger, but it was a lesson.
11/28/08, 6:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
This is not the first time someone has been trampled and injured on Black Friday, but it may be the first when someone has died.
My son works at Walmart in the photo lab while he attends college and had to go in at 5 am today. He also reported chaos, including a female customer who punched one of his female co-workers in the arm because they ran out of one of the specials.
Get a grip people.
11/28/08, 10:34 PM  
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