By Matt Butler
Associate Editor
The United States is certainly an interesting country. After a day of spending quality time with family and friends and celebrating the things in life one is most thankful for, individuals flock to various retail outlets such as Wal-Mart or Target and fight one another in attempts of snatching bargain deals on unneeded items – all in the name of Black Friday.
Within the last few years, needless injuries and deaths have occurred as a result of chaotic stampedes and overcrowded frenzies of individuals trying to get their hands on discounted items. In 2008, a 34-year-old male Wal-Mart employee in Long Island was trampled to death when approximately 2,000 shoppers broke into the store at 5 a.m. After responders arrived, he was pronounced dead on the scene, according to a Nov. 28 New York Times article from 2008.
But it doesn’t end there.
Amidst the massive stampede of shoppers at the same Wal-Mart during the same hour, a pregnant woman suffered a miscarriage after suffering blunt trauma from being knocked to the ground. Thankfully, her life was spared despite being found unconscious.
This has to stop.
Deaths and injuries such as these occur on a yearly basis and are ridiculous and unnecessary. The lives of individuals should not be threatened for the sake of saving a few dollars on a technological device or other items like televisions, gaming consoles and computers. However, deaths related to Black Friday rushes appear to be a continuing trend within the United States, a statistic that is reflective of the nation’s emphasis on materialistic objects.
It is imperative our society realizes what aspects are really important in life. How many more retail-related injuries and deaths will it take to cause Americans to open their eyes and understand temporal objects are not within the same realm as human lives?
There seems to be no limit on the extent to which shoppers will go to nab that early-bird special or other limited deals at any shopping center.
In 2011, a 33-year-old woman temporarily disoriented fellow shoppers by spraying them with pepper spray in order to grab various deals from Wal-Mart shelves anytime she felt the chances of getting a particular item were threatened. Eventually she was apprehended by police who were called to the scene to handle the situation.
Are the few dollars in savings worth the potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars one would pay in medical bills for the injuries inflicted on themselves or other shoppers? When one is willing to physically harm another in order to get what he or she wants, the individual is no better than an animal.
There are several solutions to help bring about substantial change to this issue.
Firstly, the institution of values and morals begins with the parents – the primary agents of socialization in a child’s life. While every family’s set of morals differ, teaching children materialistic objects are not as valuable as human life should be a predominant value emphasized by parents.
Another alternative many retailers are now offering is the option to remain open during Thanksgiving (also known as Gray Thursday) and not close until the end of the weekend. By distributing sales over a longer period of time instead of concentrating them into a single day, the risk of conflict among shoppers is significantly reduced.
Finally, online shopping has shown to be an increasingly popular decision among American consumers within the last decade. ‘Cyber Monday,’ is the Black Friday of the online retail industry. Consumers can find just as good – if not better – deals and bargains by purchasing items online instead of visiting one’s local shopping center.
While Black Friday has taken on a negative connotation in recent years because of violence, retailers and consumers have developed solutions to the onslaught of shoppers that flood stores during this day of deals. Much work has left to be done to further alleviate this issue, but retailers are taking baby steps to reduce conflict.
It’s Black Friday, not Black-and-Blue Friday.
