Posted on 11/29/2008 5:27:02 AM PST by ETL
I hope they find every stinkin’ one of them and prosecute. I know some were (hopefully) carried by the crowd and unable to avoid it...but this is absolute insanity.
I have no problem fighting fire with fire.
Never said they weren’t all animals.
I meant that I can relate to the craziness of the situation. There you are banging on the door trying to get the staff to open them because you are being crushed up against the doors, NOT because you can’t wait to get in on the sales. The ‘funny’ part, I thought, was your (correctly) accessing that the staff probably WOULD have thought you were just another crazed bargain hunter demanding to be let in before time.
Outstanding post #67!
Exactly. What makes it sadder for me is that yesterday son and I went to lunch and I told him, “We’re going to drive by Wal-Mart. If it is crazy, we won’t stop. If it is decent, we will.”
(Hubby likes their $8 jeans for work is the ONLY reason I braved it at all!)
The store was no more crowded than a Saturday. We breezed in, found the last four pair in hubby’s size and were still given the sale price. At 1:30 in the afternoon.
And somehow managed to avoid killing anyone in the process. Although son, did not have as much luck in the thoroughly emptied Bakugan aisle. ;-)
If that’s what you believe you are doing, who am I to stand in the way? LOL
This creates the reason that Walmart should only offer their Black Friday sales in peaceful regions of the country.
So what if the NAACP gets mad. This situation was perpetrated by animals. If I was a Walton, I’d see to it that their community pays for allowing this savage behavior to exist in their midst.
and just where was the president-elect Obama during this? Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Just what did he know and when did he know it? This is just another example of a failed future presidency.
I don’t think “stupid” is quite the word. Accurate? Certainly! But “uncaring” and “selfish” and “jerks” should come in there somewhere.
That was exactly the look on their face!! Just sheer disgust and I’m pleading with them, and to be honest, in hindsight it is funny. So here I am looking more and more desperate and there they are, thinking I’m more and more crazy.
I tend to agree that in this situation the proprietor has liability for the death and injuries caused by the mob rush into the store.
There are probably many liable for his death, from the CEO of Walmart down to the spouse of a shopper who slept in bed while their other half went to get in the store line 30 minutes before it opened.
There’s precedent for inciting a riot by crying out ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater. Such behavior may cause a mass panic to exit the building more quickly than it is designed, resulting in stampede and possible injuries to those who happen to fall in the crowd.
Building designers must design egress to allow safe exit in case of fire. Traffic engineers design in compliance with many traffic control devices which have been codified.
I’ve noticed in Best Buy, local policies to form a queue out of the entire interior, flowing the public into sections of the building and routing them out via one large queue with the checkout counter as a chokepoint and security check. In some cases, one might be able to get into the building, but that was the easy part. It took another 30-45 minutes to get out even if you didn’t buy anything.
They might be in compliance with fire codes if everything is sprinkled or had a mass deluge system, although I wouldn’t want to be around 50 Plasma TVs during the deluge system activation.
Supermarket floor plans are also designed in this fashion, allowing for a certain throughput and security checkpoints with escape bypasses for those who decide not to transact.
Some initial reports indicated a door had been taken off of its hinges by the mob. That indicates to me there was a crowd shoving its way against the glass and the crowd shoved when it collectively thought the doors were opening.
One way of dealing with that is to place control the crowd without physical restraints, i.e. place visible lines for control where it is in everybody’s perceived interest to flow within their controls.
There are volumes written and studied in marketing and retail architectural design on this topic. I’m not current on the law in this area, though.
I remember that story about the laptop giveaway fiasco well!
I doubt that would be true.
Thank you! That’s exactly what I was trying to say.
My Wal-mart was out of buttermilk, for some reason. And they’ve raised the price of vinyl tableclothes to $5. Aside from a few people buying multiple electronics items or heaping carts of toys, it looked like a typical Friday before lunch.
Very interesting.
I would have formed a mob and burned the damn store down if I were you!
:)
“Conservatives can play the race card too, I see.”
Of course. Absolutely. And, why not?
If you are in the card game, you play the hand that’s dealt to you.
We have been forced to sit in a game that is not of our choosing, but we have no choice other than to participate. The other side has dealt us the “race card”. They have no guilt about having done so, and have done so _precisely_ because they know that _we_ harbor something within called “white guilt”. They also know that there’s a good chance - having had “the race card” tossed at us, that we will back away, propelled by our own fears, and in that case they will win by default.
We can take up those cards and “play ‘em back” at them with equal fervor, and win. Or, we can refuse to play, and lose.
Do you wish that we lose?
- John
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.