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As shoppers converged on retailers around the country looking for Black Friday deals, authorities reported scattered problems.
In Porter Ranch, a woman pepper sprayed customers at a Wal-Mart in what authorities say was a deliberate attempt to get more "door buster" merchandise. In San Leandro, a Wal-Mart shopper walking to his car was shot and wounded in a suspected robbery early Friday.
Another shooting was reported at a parking lot next to a Wal-Mart in South Carolina, also a suspected robbery attempt. Officials told WMBF-TV they believe the robbery was tied to Black Friday.
At Porter Ranch, 20 customers, including children, were hurt in the 10:10 p.m. incident, officials said. Shoppers complained of minor skin and eye irritation and sore throats.
"This was customer-versus-customer 'shopping rage,'" said Los Angeles Police Lt. Abel Parga.
The woman used the spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart "to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store," said Los Angeles Fire Capt. James Carson.
"She was competitive shopping," he said.
Before going near a retail store on Black Friday, you should make sure your life insurance is paid up. If the news is any indication, you're going to be dealing with a bunch of feral materialists. Every year brings more tales of shoppers fighting or killing each other. It's as if the entire country is driven CRAZY by these great deals, but instead of slashing prices like the owner of Crazy Eddie's mattress emporium, they're taking it out on each other.
But Actually:
It seems like people are more violent on Black Friday because the national media doesn't pay attention to violence at retail stores until it happens on Black Friday. Wesley Strellis walked into a Walmart a little after noon, picked up a metal bat from the sporting goods section, carried it to electronics and methodically destroyed 29 flat screen TVs. There's the case of the 55-year-old man who punched a 72-year-old store greeter in the face for asking to see his receipt, and the guy who walked into a Walmart and pissed on a case of steaks. And who can forget the man who lit three racks of clothes on fire in the men's department when Walmart wouldn't let him return an item. There are crazy people in this world who do crazy things. Often times at Walmart. CNN didn't report on any of those stories because why would they?
There's also the fact that the story has a tendency to change in the retelling. Like all news stories about crazed shoppers, Neatorama's five entry list of Black Friday Bloodshed includes the 2008 shooting at a Toys "R" Us that started with a brawl between two women and left two men dead. You have to click through to their source to find out that the initial brawl was caused by a pre-existing personal dispute, and that the shooting was believed to be gang related.
For some reason, CNN decided to report the gang killing in the same story as the one and only death ever linked to the shopping rush, though even that isolated incident is hard to pin on the shoppers. It happened at a Walmart door buster sale -- a retail stunt specifically designed to create a spectacle of frenzied competition over a fixed number of big deals. Retail chains like Best Buy and even certain Walmart outlets hold these every year without anyone getting hurt. If everything is handled properly, it's a good way to get your store on the local news. That year, the Walmart at Green Acres Mall in New York decided to see what would happen if everything was handled in the worst way possible.
First of all, it wasn't the ideal place to hold a stunt that is designed to foster aggressive competition. In addition to being known as the "car theft capital of Long Island," the mall's other claim to fame was a shooting in which two groups of teenagers opened fire on each other during a screening of Godfather III. Instead of hiring security to help police the free for all they were holding in the dark at their crime hotspot of a shopping location, the shoppers who camped outside the store all night were taunted by a handful of inexperienced Walmart employees who were put on crowd control duties. As the sale was about to begin, the crowd outside began pushing against the sliding glass doors, and employees on the inside began pushing back to keep the doors from bowing inward. The combined force of the crowd shattered one of the doors, and the crowd poured in, crushing a 6' 5" employee trapped under the door.
It was a horrible tragedy, and it could have easily been prevented. But on any other day of the year, it would have been a story about a horribly run store and the terrible power of crowds. But since it was on Black Friday, it has been used as a way to infuse the moral of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with the post-apocalyptic violence of The Road Warrior.
Land Run of 1889 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Run_of_1889
The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the first land run into the Unassigned Lands and included all or part of the 2005 modern day Canadian, Cleveland, ...
Boomers and sooners - Rapid growth - See also...
Originally posted by cetaphobic
Cracked
Before going near a retail store on Black Friday, you should make sure your life insurance is paid up. If the news is any indication, you're going to be dealing with a bunch of feral materialists. Every year brings more tales of shoppers fighting or killing each other. It's as if the entire country is driven CRAZY by these great deals, but instead of slashing prices like the owner of Crazy Eddie's mattress emporium, they're taking it out on each other.
But Actually:
It seems like people are more violent on Black Friday because the national media doesn't pay attention to violence at retail stores until it happens on Black Friday. Wesley Strellis walked into a Walmart a little after noon, picked up a metal bat from the sporting goods section, carried it to electronics and methodically destroyed 29 flat screen TVs. There's the case of the 55-year-old man who punched a 72-year-old store greeter in the face for asking to see his receipt, and the guy who walked into a Walmart and pissed on a case of steaks. And who can forget the man who lit three racks of clothes on fire in the men's department when Walmart wouldn't let him return an item. There are crazy people in this world who do crazy things. Often times at Walmart. CNN didn't report on any of those stories because why would they?
There's also the fact that the story has a tendency to change in the retelling. Like all news stories about crazed shoppers, Neatorama's five entry list of Black Friday Bloodshed includes the 2008 shooting at a Toys "R" Us that started with a brawl between two women and left two men dead. You have to click through to their source to find out that the initial brawl was caused by a pre-existing personal dispute, and that the shooting was believed to be gang related.
For some reason, CNN decided to report the gang killing in the same story as the one and only death ever linked to the shopping rush, though even that isolated incident is hard to pin on the shoppers. It happened at a Walmart door buster sale -- a retail stunt specifically designed to create a spectacle of frenzied competition over a fixed number of big deals. Retail chains like Best Buy and even certain Walmart outlets hold these every year without anyone getting hurt. If everything is handled properly, it's a good way to get your store on the local news. That year, the Walmart at Green Acres Mall in New York decided to see what would happen if everything was handled in the worst way possible.
First of all, it wasn't the ideal place to hold a stunt that is designed to foster aggressive competition. In addition to being known as the "car theft capital of Long Island," the mall's other claim to fame was a shooting in which two groups of teenagers opened fire on each other during a screening of Godfather III. Instead of hiring security to help police the free for all they were holding in the dark at their crime hotspot of a shopping location, the shoppers who camped outside the store all night were taunted by a handful of inexperienced Walmart employees who were put on crowd control duties. As the sale was about to begin, the crowd outside began pushing against the sliding glass doors, and employees on the inside began pushing back to keep the doors from bowing inward. The combined force of the crowd shattered one of the doors, and the crowd poured in, crushing a 6' 5" employee trapped under the door.
It was a horrible tragedy, and it could have easily been prevented. But on any other day of the year, it would have been a story about a horribly run store and the terrible power of crowds. But since it was on Black Friday, it has been used as a way to infuse the moral of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with the post-apocalyptic violence of The Road Warrior.
This day used to be no different from any other day, until the news made people expect to be killed at them. Now they really will be. Self fulfilled prophecy.
Shopping today is almost a bloodsport, and for me, it is indicative of our entirely upside down, consumption driven economy and self-worth driven by TV ads and STUFF