By ARTHUR VIDRO
By Arthur Vidro
The day after Thanksgiving has, during the course of my lifetime, devolved into an event known as Black Friday.
Consumers should approach this event cautiously. It brings potential pitfalls.
First, it brings a type of feeding frenzy that culminates with a mad rush to stores for big savings.
Beware of feeding frenzies and mad rushes. Beware of mobs driven by emotion, not reason.
If you have gotten along all year without the items being promoted on Black Friday, then chances are you do not really need them. The “savings,” as real as they might be in dollars, should be secondary to the question: “Do I need the product at all?”
Confession: I have never done Black Friday shopping. I do not see the need.
Need, that is the key word. Black Friday does not offer savings on true needs – such as milk, cheese, bread, eggs, fruit and vegetables, medicines or wheelchairs. The items pushed tend to be huge appliances and electronic gizmos.
I would like to see Black Friday discounts on professional services. Can you picture a lawyer or CPA lowering their fee on Black Friday to $20 an hour?
Alas, I cannot see it either.
A smart consumer decides what product or service is needed, the time it is needed, and the price she is willing to pay. Outside influences – such as advertising blitzes – should not factor into the equation.
I grew up in Nassau County, part of the Long Island area in New York state. Back in 2008, while I was still living there, an out-of-control frenzied mob of Black Friday shoppers trampled to death a Walmart worker and injured dozens more, all in an eager rush to score deals. The mob smashed through the front door and trampled the worker. Behind the door-smashers were more frenzied shoppers who continued to stampede over the worker – and even over the people who tried to help the victim.
It was humanity at its worst. But that worst is out there, in our society, just waiting to be coaxed to the surface.
What led to the deathly crush of inhumanity? Well, the store is partially to blame for drumming up the savings mind-set into a susceptible public, for deviating from their normal hours of operation and not doing enough to prepare for the worst.
The shoppers were culpable for letting themselves be brainwashed into believing they needed to be among the first customers through the door to score the biggest savings on products that, I contend, they did not truly need.
The crowd – this is the part I cannot understand – began assembling outside at 9 p.m. the previous evening — Thanksgiving Day – in anticipation of a 5 a.m. opening. If you choose to wait outside for eight hours, then gradually your emotions will overtake your reasoning. The people were tired of waiting. The cold weather did not help.
An estimated 2,000 shoppers waited for the doors to open. And this is just one of many Walmart stores in the county.
According to coverage in the New York Daily News, as 5 a.m. neared, the crowd took up a chant to “push the doors in.”
Whether in politics or elsewhere, a chanting crowd is a mindless crowd.
In this case, a mindless and savage crowd.
Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain (foolish decision) inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers. The mob stormed through the outdoor barricades, ripped the main doors off the hinges, and overwhelmed the employees.
The victim was 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour. The crush of savagery injured dozens of other workers plus four customers, including a woman eight months’ pregnant who was there, of course, to do her 5 a.m. shopping.
Despite attempts by other employees to help the trampled victim, the stampede continued unabated.
Medical help arrived when the victim was in grave condition; he soon expired. Throughout, the shoppers kept shopping frenetically.
This Walmart was not as physically expansive as the one in Claremont. Long Island, where each county has millions of people, has long been built up to full capacity, so stores like Walmart tend to make do with smaller spaces as they become available – vacated supermarkets, for instance. The Walmart that hosted the deadly stampede had, I believe, only one entrance.
The first time I entered a Walmart I was an adult. It was a weekend and the store was so densely packed I had to sidle sideways to move along any aisle. It was not a holiday; that was the normal weekend crowd, in a store too physically small to serve its customers. I stayed away for years thereafter.
There is nothing wrong with shopping. But do not be whipped into a frenzy. If you shop the day after Thanksgiving, go to the shops you normally frequent, at the time of day you normally shop, and mindfully buy whatever you wish.
And there ain’t nothing wrong with staying home.
If you have consumerism questions, send them to Arthur Vidro in the care of this newspaper, which publishes his column every weekend.
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