Tragic Friday

I had never before gone shopping on Black Friday.

I just don’t think any money saved is worth standing in line with a bunch of rabid housewives and other sorts who like to fill the voids in their lives with objects labeled “Made in China.” I’ve heard plenty of mildly amusing shopping tales, including my favorite of police being called in to break up a fistfight between two women over a purse at a Coach Outlet store. These, coupled with the fact that I’m a big fan of sleeping in, have usually kept me out of Black Friday fray.

This year, I woke up bright and early at about 11 a.m., ate some leftover Thanksgiving food and calmly hit some stores in the afternoon. Most places looked like the aftermath of a bad apocalyptic zombie movie.

Even though the feeding frenzy was over, I still felt like I got to see the worst in people. The women going through the jeans shelves at the Gap looked like they were scavenging the trash for food, not for a pair of size 6 bootcuts. I saw another vicious argument over who picked up the size medium sweater first. Customers had no qualms about becoming belligerent and rude to sales staff.

I was pretty disgusted at the state of things at 4 p.m., and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what they must have been like at 4 a.m.

That same evening, I read an article about a Wal-Mart employee who was trampled to death by shoppers in an early morning Black Friday stampede. At 4:55 a.m., the 2,000-person crowd that was building up outside the suburban New York store became uncontrollable and shattered through the glass doors while workers tried in vain to hold the crowd back. The worker, a 34-year-old seasonal employee named Jdimytai Damour, fell onto the floor and was trampled by shoppers running over him, according to an article posted Friday on the New York Times Web site.

Other workers tried to reach him, while still others were pushed back by the crowd. He had been fatally injured and was pronounced dead at 6 a.m.

It boggles my mind that people can be so concerned about getting the best deals in their Christmas shopping – most probably for spoiled bratty children or overly indulged narcissistic relatives – that they would completely disregard the fact that they were stepping over and on the injured body of another human being.

Even more disgusting than the fact that this happened is the lack of basic decency the Wal-Mart shoppers had after the incident. One shopper said that even after Wal-Mart employees announced that the store was closing due to the death of an employee, people kept on shopping. She said, “When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been in line since yesterday morning.’”

It’s a pretty pathetic situation when hoarding cheap plastic crap becomes more important than the sanctity of another human’s life. Think about that for a few minutes while you’re in line next year.