Was it worth it?
Grania on Nov 28 2008 at 9:22 pm | Filed under: Soapbox, Venting, Why
Seriously.
The stores hype the hell out of their day after thanksgiving sales. People become animals in search of their 20% off prey. They show up hours early and push and shove for their place in line, crash the doors when they aren’t unlocked fast enough, and today, a 34 year old temporary worker that didn’t get out of the way when the doors were broken down died when a couple thousand stark raving animals trampled him in search of their sale item. A pregnant woman was also taken to the hospital, but her and her baby are OK.
Welcome to the most civilized nation on the planet, huh?
Is the economy so bad that we stop caring about each other because we can get something for $5 off if we can just get in the doors and grab it first before they’re gone? Or is it that human beings have degraded to such an extent that a human life isn’t important as long as it’s some lowly guy that makes $6 an hour at Walmart?
Those people, the ones that killed that poor man, I sincerely hope they understand what they did today. It’s not in me to wish vengeance on anyone, but dang, it’s hard not to at least hope that as many people as trampled him are charged with manslaughter.
When I was a kid, Christmas was about music, and gatherings, and midnight service at church, and a present or two somewhere along the way. Now that I’m divorced and on my own, I’m much more in that mode than I was when I was married to a man that turned it into a greed fest. You won’t ever see me participating in the day after thanksgiving sales. I did it once with my daughter and it was just stupid. I have most of my Christmas shopping done for the six people that I need to shop for this year, and the few things that I have left to pick up will be done after work.
I realize that the stores hype the sales because they need to make money, and I realize that the customers need to save money too, but when there’s a mob situation like there was this morning it might be a good time for the marketers to step back and evaluate the situation. At the very least there should be enough security to protect the lives of the employees and the shoppers. The mob mentality that these sales generates calls for that. Hopefully lessons were learned from this tragedy. I’ll be watching what they do next year.
