Barbarians at the Gates

Wal-Mart Worker Dies After Shoppers Knock Him Down

Wal-Mart worker dies after being bulldozed by bargain-hunting Black Friday shopping stampede

By COLLEEN LONG
The Associated Press
NEW YORK

A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when "out-of-control" shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.
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OK. There are so many things blatantly wrong with this that I hardly know how, nor where, to begin casting forth the much-deserved vituperations. I don’t get angry about much, but this certainly does it. While the trampling incident is shocking and tragic, the most sickening part of this was that customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death.

They kept shopping?!?

What on earth is wrong with those people?! I’m sorry, but have we come to this? Has the desire for a “bargain” dredged up from the distant past a barbaric form of greed that overrides more civilized, respectful sensibilities? The rampaging herd mentality is one thing (commercialism in one of its ugliest manifestations), but for the angry crowd to continue shopping, shopping of all things, in light of the tragedy that they themselves caused defies any logical explanation beyond the fact that humans are, at least in terms of social economics, far less evolved than they pride themselves to be. The barbarians aren’t at the gates; they’re at Wal-Mart or wherever bargains are to be had.

Now, perhaps I’m being harsh. As we all know, people aren’t really responsible for their own actions, so maybe the sales bear the ultimate responsibility for the man‘s death. As you read further in the AP article, you see what sort of deals drove the crowd into it‘s blind fury, items including a Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV for $798, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as "The Incredible Hulk" for $9.

Wow.

DVDs for nine dollars.

How could the crowd be at fault when tempted with such deals?

From time to time one reads a new story of similar tramplings associated with emergency humanitarian food drops in the developing world. While these incidents are also tragic, they’re somewhat more understandable in the sense that they involve a core life issue like, say, starvation. But for such a tragedy to happen in the context of non-critical material goods (even at bargain prices!) indicates a lost way, a reign of greed, a profound social illness.