Yeah, THAT's the Christmas Spirit!!!
Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death - NYTimes.com
Okay, I was already not a fan of Walmart, but WTF is wrong with people? I'm not sure which bothers me more, the fact that it happened at all, or the fact that (from what I heard on CNN) Walmart has a trampling event nearly every year! They aren't usually fatal, but still. How horrible! And for what? Shopping? A chance to be in the store first? A few dollars off on Christmas gift? Finding that "special" gift, you could have bought last month just as easily (and which the store will probably already be sold out of anyway)? Is ANY of that worth it??? Yeah, right, I'm sure that's worth someone's injury and/or death. I think the punishments in place for this sort of thing are no where near strenuous enough.
And, further, I'm sure that Walmart isn't the only place these sorts of things happen, so, why aren't stores required to do more to protect the safety of their staff and customers? Why don't they just start their sales sooner, or restrict the number of people allowed in at one time. Or if they insist on perpetuating this madness, then shouldn't increased security and maybe barriers of some sort restricting crowd flow be the norm?
There has been talk about whether or not police will be able to find and prosecute all (or even any) of the shoppers who participated in the trampling, and talk about "herd mentality" making people feel more anonymous. Some news articles site a lack of adequate security, and say that this *may* have been preventable. May have been? People freaking "ripped the doors off the hinges" of the store to get in. How does that happen? How is that not absolutely preventable, and absolutely punishable?
What is this country coming to?
Personally, I prefer to stay home on so-called Black Friday, and avoid the stores as much as possible between then and mid-January.
Merry Christmas.