I’m sure everyone’s seen this. Were these starving people, desperate for the last potato? Out of bread? Clean water? The last match in the frozen North?
Well, Walmart had some really good deals….
I can’t quite describe how angry this news made me, but to describe it as making me want to be madly religious just for the curses I could call down* begins to approach it.
What the hell is wrong with us? Jesus wept.
*You know, like D&D clerics. Holy Smite.
The Edge of the American West 
41 comments
December 1, 2008 at 4:49 pm
The Modesto Kid
Jon Swift’s commentary is worthwhile as always.
December 1, 2008 at 6:11 pm
N. Merrill
You realize I’m working on a contrarian defense of the shoppers at this very moment, right? No, not really, but if it will make you angry, I’ll do it.
December 1, 2008 at 7:06 pm
wilsonrofishing
I wrote down some thoughts about this subject here. I also provided an historical contrast of the local response to the Mumbai debaclehere, when I examined Northfield, Minnesota’s uh, aggressive reaction to the James-Younger Gang’s raid.
Cheers
December 1, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Jason B
I really want all of those shoppers dead.
No. Strike that. I want all Black Friday shoppers dead.
People suck.
December 1, 2008 at 8:15 pm
ben
Go for it, N.
December 1, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Vance
Jason, I’ll trust you meant you want all ((Black Friday) shoppers) dead.
December 1, 2008 at 10:39 pm
bitchphd
I’ll defend the shoppers. And not just because, as it happens, I *did* go shopping on Friday, so there.
Here’s what I think. You guys know how crowds work. So the setup, as I’ve heard it described, is that the guy who was killed is hired security, and his job is to keep back a *crowd* of people who are trying to push through glass doors, yes?
Okay, look. The people at the front–the ones who actually pushed down the doors and, horribly, the security guard–are being pushed from behind by a crowd that can’t see what’s up ahead. Crowds will do this. And if the crowd is big enough, and trying to push through a small enough opening, and there’s a sense of urgency–like, oh, say, there are a limited number of loss leader items available and it’s first come first served–then it is very likely that the force of the crowd *as* crowd is going to overcome the individual strength of any one person.
You know how hard it is to work your way backwards through a crowd. Now imagine a crowd that’s *urgently* trying to push forward–it would be impossible. And, given that the crowd was apparently strong enough, en masse, to push down a door and trample a man, then (presumably) any individual–or even several individuals–who tried to push back–to keep the doors from being pushed open, or to keep the man from being trampled–is also going to be overwhelmed and pushed forward.
This kind of thing happens every year on Black Friday–if not someone being killed, then people being hurt, certainly. And yeah, if you stand back from it it’s easy to say that it’s awful (and it is), but I think you have to take into account the psychology of crowds as well as the simple physics of having a lot of bodies in one place all trying to go somewhere at the same time. Someone(s) should have stopped–I can’t imagine what it would have been like actually stepping on the poor man!–but you guys know about bystander psychology, and how people won’t step in if no one else does. Presumably everyone was thinking “oh poor guy, but if I stop I’ll get stomped too and I *really* want that Wii for my kid” and thinking that the man wasn’t *being killed* but had merely fallen and was going to get up again soon–that someone else would help him. It’s the same reason that people drive past a broken down car on the freeway, or walk past sleeping homeless people (who, for all we know, might actually be dying).
The real problem isn’t the people in the crowd. It’s the policy of creating such crowds, especially in situations without infrastructure and trained security people to manage the crowds properly. I mean, shit, set up some freaking ropes and create a damn *line*, or hand out rain checks, or have the damn sale run all day or all weekend long. The problem is the corporations who deliberately create an unnecessary sense of urgency and scarcity in order to drum up sales.
December 1, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Michael Turner
You realize I’m working on a contrarian defense of the shoppers at this very moment, right? No, not really, but if it will make you angry, I’ll do it.
I’ve got it: Walmart failed to arm those guards. Probably because of some stupid gun law. So how can it be the fault of the shoppers? I can see what you’re thinking, so stop right now where I can see your hands: Yes, you’re right, if the guards had felt forced to fire some warning shots in the air, the crowd would probably have panicked, trampling a dozen or more to death and injuring hundreds. In that case, though, I’d blame the shoppers. Surely, if the right to keep and bear arms means anything, it’s about being able to decimate an unruly and threatening mob by turning its own herdlike stupidity against itself.
No, wait: it’s the fault of the Communist Chinese, for fostering a mutant breed of capitalism that makes sales prices like Walmart’s so low. Actually, originally, it’s Karl Marx’s fault, since he was the author of the doctine that capitalism is a necessary developmental stage in reaching socialism, itself a necessary stage before communism. No “capitalist roaders” prevailing in China without ol’ Karl, right? Partly the fault of that sneaky Jew, Henry Kissinger, as well: if he hadn’t encouraged Nixon to go to China, we might have nuked China by now, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Of course, if you want to piss everybody off, just say it, I dare you: “we’re all guilty.”
December 2, 2008 at 12:11 am
Vance
One of my formative memories is waiting in line, age 10, for the Freedom Train — there was a crowd-control problem, probably because through the train itself we all had to pass single-file, and at one point my school group was up against a barrier. The crowd behind us surged forward, and there wasn’t much we could do to resist. Fortunately the barrier was light and the space beyond it was open.
December 2, 2008 at 4:08 am
ajay
I blame George Washington. If it weren’t for him those shoppers would still be British and they would know how to queue, dammit.
December 2, 2008 at 5:46 am
Jason B
Jason, I’ll trust you meant you want all ((Black Friday) shoppers) dead.
I appreciate your trust. Yes, that grouping is faithful to my meaning. Eeep. That could turn ugly, couldn’t it?
The real problem isn’t the people in the crowd.
I disagree with this. There’s no one problem here to be identified as “[t]he real problem,” especially if this statement is to render all other problems in the situation false. But to say that the people in the crowd couldn’t do otherwise is crazy. That’s not to say that the store’s policy doesn’t contribute to the situation, but absolving those who acted serves no sensible argument.
December 2, 2008 at 6:21 am
Matt W
So the setup, as I’ve heard it described, is that the guy who was killed is hired security, and his job is to keep back a *crowd* of people who are trying to push through glass doors, yes?
He was actually a temporary maintenance man who was put up front to hold the doors shut because he was big.
It does seem that Wal-Mart was guilty of trying to do crowd control on the cheap. As Jason B says, this doesn’t necessarily absolve anyone else.
December 2, 2008 at 6:45 am
dana
b, I am completely willing to believe that once the doors shattered, the people in the front of the crowd were pushed forward mostly against their own will. That’s how stampedes work. And Walmart surely deserves all the blame it can get.
But it can’t be excused by “I want a Wii for my kid.” (Wii’s a bad example; they’re $249.99 no matter the day or store. But whatevs.) Can you imagine giving that present now? Mum got a good deal, it was 75% off and only cost one death of one minimum wage worker!! Gee! Look at their little faces light up!
But the larger point here is that there was a reason that I said “what the hell is wrong with us?” and not “….them.” We’re not all guilty — plenty of stores had no trampling — but the rot’s gone straight to the core. How fucked up has this society become that we think that camping out for cheap plastic shit that’s been artificially shortaged* is how you celebrate a holiday? That every year we have cheerful media reports about how big Friday was, look at all those people stampeding into the big box stores, will the retailers survive?
The local news did a report on the trampling, and then went straight to showing happy people stampeding into stores in the local area.
*Not a word, I know . But seriously, if one goes shopping around eleven o’clock on Black Friday, things are still on sale. All that one misses at 5am are the ridiculous bargains (on low-quality electronics); each store only gets a few of the items, so people have to run. Fucked. up.
December 2, 2008 at 8:12 am
Cryptic Ned
I blame society. Society is to blame for my crimes. And vice versa.
December 2, 2008 at 8:23 am
mjm
I echo Dana’s point above. How messed up is out society when, here in Minnesota, anyway, people started camping out at 12:30 pm Thursday afternoon to shop at 5:00 am the next morning?
Part of it is the utter frustration of marketers and retailers — they haven’t figured out a way to commercialize Thanksgiving, so they have made certain that they get in as much Christmas selling as possible. Christmas junk now goes in the stores before Halloween.
The non-commercialization of Thanksgiving is what makes it my favorite holiday, but, then again, I’m not a model consumer.
December 2, 2008 at 11:57 am
Psychedelikat
I wrote a lengthy blog about this at my site.
I used to worked in retail and understand completely about the dread employees feel about Black Friday. It is truly awful.
I blame Wal-Mart for not taking security measures. Look at Best Buy. They have stores where they hired fire fighters to count the number of people who come and go and only allow a certain number in at a time. they create maze-like barricades to keep the people from crowding together, making it easier to handle them all.
My husband’s father is semi-retired and works for Wal-Mart as a greeter. When my husband and I became engaged, his dad requested our wedding day off. The management refused to give him a day off. For our WEDDING! He had to trade days with another employee just to get one lousy day off so he could celebrate our joy with us.
Black Friday tragedy? Just one more reason why I never, ever shop there.
December 2, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Beth
I will never shop on Black Friday exactly because of this stupidity. The stupidity of stores that create artificial urgency without instituting proper safety measures. And the stupidity of people who will fall for it.
Amanda Ripley’s book _The Unthinkable_ has a fascinating chapter on crowds and trample deaths, by the way. Once you are caught in a crowd like that, you have very little choice in your movements.
December 2, 2008 at 2:06 pm
bitchphd
especially if this statement is to render all other problems in the situation false. But to say that the people in the crowd couldn’t do otherwise is crazy.
I don’t think it renders other problems false, but I think it focuses the issue properly: not on the shoppers, but on the situation. Not because people* can’t do otherwise, but because we know how crowds work.
And I really don’t think it matters if the crowd is crowding for a Wii or if they’re crowding for bread, in terms of crowd behavior. It matters in terms of how we maybe judge the crowd afterwards (obviously). But I *like* living in a society where we don’t have food shortages. One of the things that goes along with affluent societies is that, assuming we retain the same behaviors and psychologies (that is, that “human nature” is flexible but not completely contingent), that behavior is still going to happen. Marketers know this, and they use it to get us to buy stuff that we know we don’t “need.”
I mean, you can disapprove of people buying stuff they don’t need, I guess. But we all do it, and again, I like having an iphone and not having to line up for bread, so I’m going to be more or less on the “buying stuff we don’t need good” side of things.
So if you can agree that human nature is what it is, more or less, then it seems that the issue isn’t “individuals are bad when they do bad things under circumstances that we know perfectly well are going to (1) turn up the “me first” behaviors and (2) be inherently dangerous (which then, (3) makes the “me first” behavior even *more* over-determined). Nor is it (I think ) “individuals are bad if they do bad things under those circumstances if those circumstances are buying christmas presents, but not if they do those things if the circumstances are food lines”–given that the circumstances, in psychological terms, don’t matter terribly much. (I don’t think.)
Also blah blah economics, blah blah retailing drives the economy and we know what happens if the economy contracts so yeah, people *do* need to buy crap unless we’re going to have an entirely different system.
It’s kind of like Abu Ghraib, if you’ll allow the analogy. Is the primary issue there “why do we as a society allow torture”? Is it “Charles Graner and Lynnie Englund should go to jail”? Or is it “the decision makers who set the situation up should be held responsible”? I’m going with #3.
*Do we mean collectively, or individually, by the way? B/c I believe reports are that some individuals *did* try to help the man. Fellow workers, anyway, who in that situation are understood by everyone as the people “responsible” for others (helping shoppers, helping co-workers; we don’t generally think of shopping as a situation where the individual shopper has much in the way of responsibility to anyone but themselves and, if they’re shopping with family, their kids, who better not be making a noise or disturbing other shoppers!).
December 2, 2008 at 2:08 pm
bitchphd
Okay, I’m having an issue there with the asterisks. Sorry.
December 2, 2008 at 3:17 pm
dana
Obviously you got them on sale on Black Friday, those asterisks.
December 2, 2008 at 3:24 pm
bitchphd
You know, I had to trample Ben Wolfson to get them, but I think it was well worth it, really. Such a deal!
December 2, 2008 at 3:30 pm
dana
Hell, I’d trample him just for funsies.
December 2, 2008 at 3:44 pm
dana
That sounds harsh. I should clarify; I imagine young ben is capable of crying for help in iambic pentameter. And thus I would be entertained.
December 2, 2008 at 4:44 pm
customerservicevoodoo
Was it really the store’s fault? I agree with some of the posters here that there was a crowd mentality and we see this almost every year.
We have to take accountability as humans as well.
In the meantime, if you have a company in a similar situation, now is the time to prepare for the next type of sale and ensure that this does not happen to you and your store.
December 2, 2008 at 5:11 pm
ben
You people are cruel, but I’d like to hear more about that trampling fantasy of yours, dana.
December 2, 2008 at 5:11 pm
bitchphd
I wonder whence the “young Ben” convention. I mean, I’m a lot older than he is, but you aren’t–are you? Is it his immaturity or is joie de vivre?
December 2, 2008 at 5:22 pm
ben
Ogged started calling me “young ben” and it stuck.
December 2, 2008 at 5:27 pm
ben
Actually, this is the first occurrence, I think, and Michael is younger than I am.
December 2, 2008 at 5:28 pm
ben
No, this is.
December 2, 2008 at 5:31 pm
bitchphd
So, is it the immaturity or the joie de vivre?
December 2, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Jason B
So if you can agree that human nature is what it is, more or less . . .
I guess that’s my problem with this. I can’t agree that human nature (whatever that’s supposed to be) is what it is. “Is” is generally just a conversational shortcut to describe a collective judgement on what people have done. The doing–in both the past and the present–determines the “is,” so if the action changes, so does the supposed nature.
Psychology is just black-box guessing. Not to say it’s worthless, but its prescriptive use is limited at best.
December 2, 2008 at 5:46 pm
ben
What joie de vivre?
December 2, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Vance
I thought B might have been alluding to
which has been getting quoted all over lately. (It goes on in very much the same chilling vein to the end.)
December 2, 2008 at 6:36 pm
bitchphd
What joie de vivre?
That’s what I thought.
Psychology is just black-box guessing.
Nonsense. Maybe speculating on the *reasons* people feel and do what they do is guesswork (aka theorizing if you’re willing to use a less loaded term). But saying that crowds behave this way isn’t guesswork; it’s based on observation.
December 2, 2008 at 6:39 pm
bitchphd
Also, no, I make no allusions today. Allusions require subtlety, and I am not feeling subtle.
December 2, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Michael Turner
Or is it “the decision makers who set the situation up should be held responsible”? I’m going with #3.
That’s actually tangentially relevant to the ongoing discussion about the Great Depression. In a liquidity trap, are we all guilty, for prioritizing thrift to a degree that it causes a deflationary spiral? Isn’t it up to all of us to educate ourselves about economics so we can avoid liquidity traps and deflation? And if we don’t, doesn’t that make us all guilty? And isn’t the punishment (economic depression) natural and fitting?
Well, no. The Invisible Hand is a great thing, most of the time. When it’s squeezing the living shit out of us all, though, something ought to be done. And when it isn’t, due thought at the policy level should be given to preventing that spasm. Due thought at the individual level doesn’t always make much difference.
The behavior of people en masse can sometimes be the rational (or uncontrollably instinctive) behavior of individuals, operating invidiously in circumstances that could be prevented or ameliorated by policy makers. Societies with movie theaters eventually evolve standards about the number and size of exits, exit signage, and laws against yelling “Fire!” in those circumstances.
I’d like to think there’s a basic quality of “being more civilized” and that the British have it. Very likely, though, queueing up is socially infectious habit that might have gotten formed under a police force, after a certain number of crowd tramplings.
December 3, 2008 at 4:53 am
Jason B
But saying that crowds behave this way isn’t guesswork; it’s based on observation.
You’re right, but observing one thing and then making a categorical statement about a whole class of things is kind of faulty. Kind of inductiony. Even a little hasty-generalizationy. And it completely ignores the agency of those inside the observation.
December 3, 2008 at 6:50 am
Beth
Many of you are seriously overestimating the possibility of individual agency within a crowd. When a crowd reaches a certain density, individuals are NOT able to control their own movements, no matter how civilized those individuals may be. The crowd dynamics force them to move involuntarily. Some of the danger can be lessened by advanced planning and facility design. There’s an entire field of study on this. Googlebooks has a text by Larry B Perkins called _Crowd Safety and Survival_ that explains how crowd dynamics work, but there are many other places to find this info too.
December 3, 2008 at 7:10 am
Chris
In a liquidity trap, are we all guilty, for prioritizing thrift to a degree that it causes a deflationary spiral? Isn’t it up to all of us to educate ourselves about economics so we can avoid liquidity traps and deflation?
It seems to me that you might as well say it’s up to all of us not to overgraze the commons, or vote for liars, or buy snake oil, or patronize quacks. Sure, if we actually all refrained from those behaviors, some serious social problems would be solved, but that’s not the most useful angle from which to attack any of those problems.
December 3, 2008 at 7:28 am
dana
Many of you are seriously overestimating the possibility of individual agency within a crowd.
I’m really not. I’m not arguing that the first people through the door should be charged with murder. I’m just arguing that this trampling death is a symptom of a much deeper societal rot.
But we all do it, and again, I like having an iphone and not having to line up for bread, so I’m going to be more or less on the “buying stuff we don’t need good” side of things.
B, you’ve drawn here (and at your blog) this weird comparison or exaggeration, as if being mildly anti-consumerist over Black Friday sales tactics and the mobs those tactics create means the alternative is thinking that there should be no consumer goods beyond the basic necessities at all.
I like things. I like buying things. I like sales. I also think that if I can’t afford a plasma TV at full price without risking trampling someone to death in my desire to get one at a door-buster deal, or that if my Thanksgiving holiday consists of waiting out in the cold for a day because I can’t afford my Christmas gifts otherwise, I’m buying into a seriously poisoned worldview.
December 4, 2008 at 7:00 am
Beth
I also think that if I can’t afford a plasma TV at full price without risking trampling someone to death in my desire to get one at a door-buster deal, or that if my Thanksgiving holiday consists of waiting out in the cold for a day because I can’t afford my Christmas gifts otherwise, I’m buying into a seriously poisoned worldview.
I completely agree with you here. Once you’re in the dangerously dense crowd, you can’t do much to control your movements. But we ought to be able to control the formation of such crowds.