Wednesday was one of those oddball mid-week holidays that not everyone gets. While I appreciate the reason, I wonder why Veteran's Day needs to remain November 11, and isn't subjected to the American 3-day weekend treatment that other holidays endure. It's the same reason that Election Day should be on a Saturday, to allow as many people as possible to vote. Some traditions are way too engrained in our national habits and need to be changed, while others ...A year after an unruly crowd trampled a worker to death at a Wal-Mart store, the nation’s retailers are preparing for another Black Friday, the blockbuster shopping day after Thanksgiving. Last year, frenzied shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., trampled Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store worker who died soon afterward. To prevent any repeat, Wal-Mart has sharply changed how it intends to manage the crowds. That new plan, developed by experts who have wrangled throngs at events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, will affect how customers approach and enter the stores, shop, check out and exit.
The most significant change at Wal-Mart is that the majority of its discount stores (as opposed to its Supercenters) will open Thanksgiving morning at 6 a.m. and stay open through Friday evening. Last year, those stores closed Thanksgiving evening and reopened early Friday morning. By keeping the stores open for 24 hours, Wal-Mart is hoping for a steady flow of shoppers instead of mammoth crowds swelling outside its stores in the wee hours of Friday.
So, the answer to crowd control is having the stores open on a holiday. Nice. I'm wondering how the hordes of Christmas shoppers are going to work-in a visit to Wal-Mart with their holiday feast.
"Gee, I'd like to stick around for some mince meat pie, but there's a $99 GPS on sale at Wal-Mart, and I want to get there before the white trash scoops them up."
Happy Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, the people in the service industry get crapped on once again. Like it wasn't bad enough that they had to work long hours during the holidays for minimum wage, now they have to be there on Thanksgiving so Bubba can get his cheap laptop. Why? Because shoppers trampled someone to death last year in their rush to get a $25 DVD player.
"We are committed to looking for ways to make our stores even safer for our customers and associates this holiday season,” said David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, adding that the retailer was “confident our customers can look forward to a safe and enjoyable shopping experience at Wal-Mart.”
It's most of your customers who should be committed. It's a sad commentary on the state of our society when a retail spokesman has to talk about making their stores "safer for our customers." The Christmas shopping thing has gotten way out of hand, and instead of discontinuing the ridiculous Black Friday price-drop, they decided to leave the stores open on a holiday. That makes good nonsense.
The best solution would have been to stop making such a big deal out of Black Friday and conduct business as usual. If they want to put their junk on sale, it can be done just as easily on December 4 as it can on November 27 or any other day in the sacred Christmas shopping season.
But God forbid they give up their precious discount day. Rather than punish people for being giant asses, they enable the behavior by ... anyone? ... opening the stores on the holiday! That will fix it.
Sometimes I don't understand you humans.
1 comment:
We have no such thing as Black Friday up here. The big shopping day here is AFTER Christmas when what wasn't purchased before is 'drastically reduced'.
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