Is Scooping Up a Bargain Worth the Loss of Someone's Life?

We write today to remember someone you've probably never heard of, a faceless guy, just one of the staff members at some 4,000 Wal-Mart stores across the country last Friday morning at 5:00AM, standing at the ready to unlock the doors and let the hoards of waiting customers in for their annual Black Friday shopping bash. The early-morning, pre-dawn crowds at Wal-Marts and other stores were chompin' at the bit to get inside to grab one of those name-brand flat-screen HDTV for "just" $798 or a compact vacuum cleaner going for only $28 or the just-released DVD of The Incredible Hulk at a mere 9 bucks! You'd be excited too and want to be sure you were one of the lucky 100 or 200 to go home with one or more of these sought-after crack-of-dawn prizes.

At the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York, some 2,000 people were waiting. Someone from the store told them the store would hope a few minutes ahead and their anticipation grew, but then the unkind spokesperson retreated, saying, no, that was only a joke, and they got really hot-under-their-collars. People at the back of the crowd were already pressing forward, and in an instant the onrush of bodies pushed right through the front doors, breaking them off their frame. Jdimytai Damour, a 250-plus-pound maintenance man, was just inside. Despite his size, he was toppled over. He lay there and people stepped on, over and around him as they headed toward their favorite departments. The mob kept coming. Store employees and even police trying to rush to Damour's aid were jostled as well. Four other people were also pushed down, including a young woman eight months pregnant. She, with her baby, spent the day at a hospital and they'll both be fine. Mr. Damour will not be fine. He was finally picked up and taken to a hospital, where he suffered cardiac arrest and died shortly after 6:00. He was 34 years old.

These accounts of the event come from New York Newsday and the New York Times[1]. One of The Times stories[2] included a picture of a crowd at a Wal-Mart rushing and pushing Friday morning at 5:00, but the people in that picture were in Elk City, Oklahoma. Clearly, New York has no monopoly on aggressive shoppers.

People who were surging out of control to shop for toys, electronics and Christmas items killed a man. What can we say about this?

Early reactions from politicians seem to blame the store. Not enough security, they argue; the store should have been better prepared. The store's managers assert that they did have extra guards and they had erected barricades. By Sunday, local officials were already drafting legislation mandating specific security provisioning. Personal injury lawyers are already filing lawsuits.

Psychologists blame the crowd mentality: individuals lose their individuality in such circumstances and behave in animalistic ways they would never dream of if they had time to think about it. Possibly.

We find that we're at a loss: we really don't know what to say back. We read some David Brooks yesterday. He's the pop-sociologist who wrote Bobos in Paradise; we picked up his following book, On Paradise Drive, about the outgrowth of American cities into suburbs and then on to exurbs. Brooks describes shopping as a way people strive toward some envisioned sense of perfection. They're quite serious in this pursuit, which includes detailed research and planning and analysis of the results with a gravity befitting a scientific experiment, a diplomatic mission or a mountain-climbing expedition. For example, of customers at a discount price club, Brooks says : "They are the savvy marketplace swashbucklers who have achieved such impressive price-tag victories that they will return home in glory to recount tales of the triumphs to tables of rapt dinner guests."[3]

This approach echoes a commentary we actually wrote here now more than two years ago. "Better Living Through Shopping" is the title of that piece, from late August 2006. With the help of a marketing expert, we explored the dual gratification that can come from shopping. There is the obvious pleasure in having the items shopped for: the new waterproof, windproof parka made of AquaCheck laminate with PolarThin insulation and a Sherpa fleece-lined collar, the Bluetooth stereo headset that accommodates both phone service and MP3 music, and so on. But almost as significant is the pleasure in making the acquisition, the actual shopping experience. In these days of tight credit and slim wallets, more of us are going to Wal-Marts, one of the few store chains to see sales growth and continued profitability. We are even more anxious than usual for the bargains we can find there. The early morning Black Friday event would have given a real boost to our spirits. Clearly, though, there's another angle. Peter Goodman of The Times calls this violent episode "a shopping Guernica", in which the crowds came to "engage in early-morning shopping as contact sport". [4]

Our visit with this shopping issue in 2006 was focused on loose credit and free spending that seemed to carry little substance. Today, though, our concern is much deeper. Frivolous buying is minor compared with our distress over what this particular experience became. And as our tone may convey, we don't think it's lack of security planning by the stores that's the problem. We could better understand the panicked surging of the crowd if it had been headed for scarce food and water or to try touching a religious icon on parade at a shrine. But harming people indiscriminately in order to grab a new digital camera? You have to be kidding. I wish I were . . . .

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[1] Both from November 29, 2008

[2] Peter Goodman, "A Shopping Guernica Captures the Moment", from The Week in Review section of the Sunday Times, November 30, 2008. Accessed from http://www.nytimes.com/.

[3] David Brooks, On Paradise Drive. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2004. P. 61.

[4] Goodman, loc. cit. I had to look up Guernica, too. It refers to the town in Spain victimized during the Spanish Civil War where soldiers went through recklessly murdering everyone in sight, especially women and children. It occasioned a famous painting by Picasso, which immortalized the name of the town as a symbol for such vulgar deeds. [We are wrong here about rampaging soldiers. See the Comment below by Rosemarie, who corrects our misunderstanding. It's a much more interesting story than we thought.]