Alice Pawley is an assistant professor of 
SciWo is an assistant professor of geosciences. She blogs about the intersection of science and real life - primarily based on her first-hand experiences. Her older posts can be found 
I know this is an "old" story (last Friday) but I cannot express how appalled I was when I found out that stampeding Walmart shoppers on Long Island actually killed the Walmart employee who was opening the doors for Black Friday. Black Friday indeed. A person was killed so all those shoppers could get slightly cheaper Walmart crap slightly faster. Horrifying. Despicable.
Only slightly worse than all the sweatshop and child labour that went in to making the crap in the first place.
NPR had a really good commentary on the stampede by Poet on Call Andrei Codrescu. You can read it here.
Comments
I'm sitting in a hotel room working with my laptop on streaming NPR and heard Andrei Codrescu speak. It made me so so sad.
Posted by: Pat | December 3, 2008 5:40 PM
Trash tends to do despicable things.
Posted by: Katharine | December 3, 2008 6:31 PM
Trampling an employee to death is more dramatic and immediate than repeatedly buying and hoarding crap that was produced by sweatshop and child labor, but I'm not sure that it's worse. We in the US often don't think much, or at all, about where our inexpensive food, clothing, toys, electronics, and other non-durable goods come from, or how these things were produced.
Codrescu is correct ... we're just instructed to shop, shop, shop. When you have too much stuff, either rent a storage unit, or buy a bigger house. Or perhaps buy a big house, so you can justify shopping for stuff with which to fill it.
Posted by: Barn Owl | December 3, 2008 7:06 PM
College students and others at large gatherings have done similar things (trampling) while standing in line to get tickets, for example. It has nothing to do with WalMart in particular, shopping in particular, or trash, whatever that is. It is a very unfortunate crowd phenomenon that, thankfully, occurs fairly rarely.
It is indeed sad.
Posted by: Silver Fox | December 3, 2008 8:37 PM
Well, I guess not as uncommon as it should be.
Posted by: Silver Fox | December 3, 2008 9:00 PM
silverfox is right, it has nothing to do with walmart per se... but rather our entire culture, which is one of being a sucker born every minute. We let businesses advertise not just a little lower prices, but an obscenely low price on products, and then they only have a few of those available. leading to stampede to be one of three people getting that deal, and the rest dealing with bait and switch...laws should be passed, boycotts of black friday should be pursued (but likely unsuccessful to get folks to do them)
Posted by: rb | December 3, 2008 10:26 PM