Wal-Mart Worker killed by throng.

[Enigma]

Here in Canada, we have our own version of Black Friday. It is called Boxing day and it is on December 26. While there's usually huge numbers of people rushing to the stores, I do not recall anything close to the Black Friday fiasco.

[Aaron]

Here in Canada, we have our own version of Black Friday. It is called Boxing day and it is on December 26. While there's usually huge numbers of people rushing to the stores, I do not recall anything close to the Black Friday fiasco.

Usually that's because there's an orderly line up outside, either formed naturally or done by the store. Back home they also tend to limit the amount through the door at once to twenty or so.

[Enigma]

Here in Canada, we have our own version of Black Friday. It is called Boxing day and it is on December 26. While there's usually huge numbers of people rushing to the stores, I do not recall anything close to the Black Friday fiasco.

Usually that's because there's an orderly line up outside, either formed naturally or done by the store. Back home they also tend to limit the amount through the door at once to twenty or so.

That and we Canadians are nice people that hate the American ways. Anyways, what you've mentioned should have been done at least at that Walmart but I am thinking that the executives didn't give a damn about the customer's wellbeing and really just want the customer's money. I mean the death of that employee was free publicity for that store, good or bad.

[Aaron]

That and we Canadians are nice people that hate the American ways. Anyways, what you've mentioned should have been done at least at that Walmart but I am thinking that the executives didn't give a damn about the customer's wellbeing and really just want the customer's money. I mean the death of that employee was free publicity for that store, good or bad.

I would just attribute it to inexperiance or negligance rather than outright malice. I know people like to make Wal*Mart out to be an evil, soulless corporation but I doubt that even if they wanted to do such a thing that they would want to risk legal repercussions if the truth came out.

[JCady]

It should be noted that the rush didn't "just happen"; it was actively provoked by people in the crowd who started chanting "push the doors in!" as the store neared opening time.

People continued to enter the store as emergency units arrived and tried to shove police and paramedics out of the way as they were in the doorway trying to save the man's life. They refused to leave the store when ordered out by management, continuing to grab items off of shelves instead. The police ultimately had to call in reinforcements, lock down the store entrance, and forcibly escort violently disgruntled shoppers out.

[Stormbringer]

It should be noted that the rush didn't "just happen"; it was actively provoked by people in the crowd who started chanting "push the doors in!" as the store neared opening time.

People continued to enter the store as emergency units arrived and tried to shove police and paramedics out of the way as they were in the doorway trying to save the man's life. They refused to leave the store when ordered out by management, continuing to grab items off of shelves instead. The police ultimately had to call in reinforcements, lock down the store entrance, and forcibly escort violently disgruntled shoppers out.

Again, the proof of this is where in this thread?

[Ryan Thunder]

The fault is not in members of the mob. The fault is in the people who allowed the mob to form.

The people who formed the mob in the first place, rather, by not standing in ordered line-ups like civilized people.

Lines don't form unless someone organizes them. And unless that someone has some semblance of authority (such as working for the event being held), that person will not be obeyed. Were you dropped on your head too many times as a kid, hatfucker?

Begging your pardon, you stupid cunt, but where I come from, people are intelligent enough to form line ups without somebody forcing them to.

I dunno, maybe we're just generally nicer people than you think.

Of course, the lines start getting a little hairy when there's too many people, but even then, we still try.

[Stormbringer]

Begging your pardon, you stupid cunt, but where I come from, people are intelligent enough to form line ups without somebody forcing them to.

I dunno, maybe we're just generally nicer people than you think.

Of course, the lines start getting a little hairy when there's too many people, but even then, we still try.

You're talking about a group of two thousand people here according to the Huffington Post article. I think it's fair to say that's well beyond the point at which some external order is needed. You can't really expect that many people to self-organize with out a hitch.

[Starglider]

The UK has had crowd disasters despite their willingness to queue. It's always a possibility when a crowd forms.

Of course. The circumstances are just different. For example, we seem to have more stadium disasters per capita, and worse ones, than the US. Or at least did until recently, stadium design improved a lot to try and cut down on them.

[Edi]

It should be noted that the rush didn't "just happen"; it was actively provoked by people in the crowd who started chanting "push the doors in!" as the store neared opening time.

People continued to enter the store as emergency units arrived and tried to shove police and paramedics out of the way as they were in the doorway trying to save the man's life. They refused to leave the store when ordered out by management, continuing to grab items off of shelves instead. The police ultimately had to call in reinforcements, lock down the store entrance, and forcibly escort violently disgruntled shoppers out.

Like Stormbringer said, show the evidence. Links to news stories or whatever. After the ignorance earlier and your intransigence when it was pointed out, nobody is going to take your word on this subject at face value.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Talk about killer black fridays....

oh god, I have become a cold heartless bastard, and humanity lacks humanity...

[Edi]

Bear, if you have nothing to add but vacuous one-liners that contribute nothing useful to the discussion, don't post!

[Hillary]

I can remember one occasion when I went to see a football (soccer) match and the queue for the turnstiles was pretty crushed. I decided I didn't fancy it but couldn't escape the queue. I was literally dragged around the corner by the force of the crowd. I'm 6 feet tall and over 200 pounds but I had no choice but to go with the flow - I was actually lifted off my feet a couple of times.

It was pretty scary. 6 months later, our opponents that night (Liverpool) were at the Hillsborough ground in Sheffield and 94 of them died in a stadium crush. Anyone who is seriously blaming the crowd here needs to take their head out of their ass.

Quite clearly, the culprit here is the Wall-Mart store's management. They created the conditions whereby this incident happened. It is pretty easy to negate the risk of crushing with elementary crowd management and they should be brought to book. I hope the employee's family sues the fuck out of Wall Mart.

[Broomstick]

Simple rope barriers are sufficient to induce even stubborn Americans to form orderly lines, and they aren't that expensive. It won't prevent all such disasters, but it will go a long way to prevent them.

Other methods, such as allowing small groups, have been discussed.

[Hillary]

Simple rope barriers are sufficient to induce even stubborn Americans to form orderly lines, and they aren't that expensive. It won't prevent all such disasters, but it will go a long way to prevent them.

Exactly. It is Wall-Mart's responsibility to manage the risk to the safety of its staff and customers. It quite clearly fell far short of what would reasonably be expected of them.

[The Yosemite Bear]

This is WALMART, they have been prosecuted by OSHA for letting 14 year olds cut brush and trim trees with chainsaws unsupervised (when the lightsaber duel began the teens ended up fired in the hospital.)

[Sarevok]

This is WALMART, they have been prosecuted by OSHA for letting 14 year olds cut brush and trim trees with chainsaws unsupervised (when the lightsaber duel began the teens ended up fired in the hospital.)

Excuse me but are you inferring they staged a lightsaber duel with CHAINSAWS ?

[Ryan Thunder]

Quite clearly, the culprit here is the Wall-Mart store's management. They created the conditions whereby this incident happened.

Or--wait for it--People pushed when they should've waited for the space to move forward. It's not hard for a crowd to avoid this sort of absurdity, provided they maintain some semblance of civility. Yeah, it might take a moment for the "HOLY SHIT WE'RE BREAKING THE DOORS DOWN!" message to make it from one end of the crowd to the other, but I don't really see how it can't in a reasonable time frame. Never mind that it shouldn't ever make it to that point unless a sizeable chunk of the crowd is trying to shove their way forward. But wait, that would make it their fault.

Heck, I don't know how you can say that it's the store's fault. The crowd took the doors off their hinges! How's a queue going to even slow them down when they're being that asstarded?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Quite clearly, the culprit here is the Wall-Mart store's management. They created the conditions whereby this incident happened.

Or--wait for it--People pushed when they should've waited for the space to move forward. It's not hard for a crowd to avoid this sort of absurdity, provided they maintain some semblance of civility. Yeah, it might take a moment for the "HOLY SHIT WE'RE BREAKING THE DOORS DOWN!" message to make it from one end of the crowd to the other, but I don't really see how it can't in a reasonable time frame. Never mind that it shouldn't ever make it to that point unless a sizeable chunk of the crowd is trying to shove their way forward. But wait, that would make it their fault.

More conservative "rah rah personal responsibility" blah blah bullshit. Fact is, you run a business and allow unsafe conditions on your property for customers or employees, you have acted negligently.

Heck, I don't know how you can say that it's the store's fault. The crowd took the doors off their hinges! How's a queue going to even slow them down when they're being that asstarded?

Its much harder for a long, single-file line to result in the crowd bunching of the sort seen here. This should be obvious; people in a large mob have to push with the crowd or be trampled. People in a single-file line can easily escape.

[KrauserKrauser]

The mob should have been stopped before it formed.

The people encouraging mob behaviour should be prosecuted but won't be able to be identified.

My choice for reprecussions would be to basically ignore the mob in question as prosecution will turn into a circus easily and simply making Wal Mart pay restitution to the injured parties and a sane hit to the pocket book. I think that alot of good PR could be made from this by Wal Mart if they handled it right. Agree to spend multiple millions of damages to have mandatory training for the Wal Mart management from store manager down to temp workers instead of simply paying off the dead person's family. Not that the family shouldn't be paid, they should but hitting Wal Mart in the pocket book could be much more useful if they made them spend the money on training programs and mandatory crowd control equipment for every Wal Mart.

[Chardok]

Good.

Victim's kin file suit in Wal-Mart stampede death
AP – Nassau County Police examine the front of the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., Friday, Nov. 28, 2008, … GARDEN CITY, N.Y. – The family of a New York man who was trampled to death the day after Thanksgiving by a stampede of bargain hunting Wal-Mart shoppers has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

The family also filed notice that Nassau County, on Long Island, and its police department will be sued.

The lawsuit against Wal-Mart and the Long Island mall where it is located was filed Wednesday in state Supreme Court in the Bronx on behalf of Elsie Damour Phillipe. Phillipe is the sister of victim Jdimytai Damour (DHMEE'-tree Di-MOHR'), and is the court-appointed administrator of his estate.

Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, was crushed to death when some 2,000 customers stormed into the Valley Stream store.

None of the defendants in the lawsuit immediately responded to requests for comment.

I hope they get a tra-jillion dollars.

[JCady]

Quite clearly, the culprit here is the Wall-Mart store's management. They created the conditions whereby this incident happened.

Or--wait for it--People pushed when they should've waited for the space to move forward. It's not hard for a crowd to avoid this sort of absurdity, provided they maintain some semblance of civility. Yeah, it might take a moment for the "HOLY SHIT WE'RE BREAKING THE DOORS DOWN!" message to make it from one end of the crowd to the other, but I don't really see how it can't in a reasonable time frame. Never mind that it shouldn't ever make it to that point unless a sizeable chunk of the crowd is trying to shove their way forward. But wait, that would make it their fault.

Oh, the crowd knew exactly what it was doing -- they were chanting "Push the doors in!" after all.

[Count Chocula]

The lawsuit may not get much traction:

Hank Mullany, president of Wal-Mart's northeast division, said the company took extraordinary safety precautions.

"We expected a large crowd this morning and added additional internal security, additional third-party security, additional store associates and we worked closely with the Nassau County police," he said in a statement.

"We also erected barricades. Despite all of our precautions, this unfortunate event occurred."

From the second page of the article here. This is a case of 2,000 Valley Stream residents acting like asshooligans and accidentally killing an employee. I hope they identify and arrest the stale farts who actually did the trampling, but they have a lot of confusing images to analyze, like this one:

[Count Chocula]

And a real crowd picture, from the NY Daily News:

[CmdrWilkens]

By way of comparison I work for H&M which has been gaining steam as a retailer in the US over the last few years since we landed in the states back in 2000. With this comes the insanity of grand openings (since we open 20-30 new stores each year) so I'll relate my most recent crazy expereince though its a bit older.

We were opening a new location in Maryland as part of the mall there expanding into a whole new wing of shopping. The landlord decided that they would literally walk a marching band through the main corridor of this new wing with all of the eager grand opening shoppers rushing in an unco-ordinated mo behind them. For our part we had planned the opening just as closely as any other, we had multiple extra security at the front entrance counting to make sure we didn't exceed fire codes, we had rope barriers to sort the initial arrivals, we had associates stationed deeper into the store with grand opening gifts and were generally ready to build a line then let everyone in single file...then the band passed us and a literal wall of people descended on the store. I wa pressed up against a column near the entrance and was havnig my shoes run over by trampling feet and mothers pushing strollers. It was a literal sea of humanity that crushed down on a very small place and time because the mall decided they would engage in no crowd control and just send everyone off running behind the band. It was only a few hundred people but even that caused injuries to myself and the security guards so you can imagine what 2000 people in an uncontroleld mass would be like.