Black and Blue Friday Fatal for Wal-Mart Worker

We all have rules to live by. Some of mine might be called quirks. For instance, I like to vacation during the weeks before or after my destination's busy season. I'd rather work late at night than early in the morning. I cultivate at least six degrees of separation from Wal-Mart, and I never shop on a day named Black Friday. At the risk of being too empathetic, I resent the idea that a friend or family member would have to serve retail customers in the middle of the night. I understand that for doctors, nurses, bakers and the like, those hours are required, but retail? That's a crime. Until yesterday, my expression was figurative. From the New York Daily News:

A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an "out-of-control" mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store's front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

The tragedy of Mr. Damour's death is magnified by the irony that many of those stampeding shoppers were looking for bargain gifts for a day called Christmas.

Another aspect of the Black Friday ritual is the hype that television news programs contribute. James Walcott captured that thought in his take on the blitz line:

For days preceding Black Friday the local and cable news outfits run item after item about "doorbuster sales," stoking the sense of anticipation and making it seem like family fun, reminiscent of that old game show where contestants raced through a store stocking their cart with anything they could pull from the shelves. [ … ]

The reporters later interview shoppers after they've snared their booty and it's all done with this air of frolic …

Further into Walcott's article, he reveals that he shares my empathy for those retail workers:

What you don't see in these Black Friday updates are interviews with the people who work in these mall chains, who have to show up at even more ungodly hours than do the shoppers in order to stock the shelves and prepare for the store openings. Openings that get nearer to the Thanksgiving meal each year, with some stores opening at midnight on Thanksgiving day and others at 4 AM on Black Friday, forcing workers to cut short their own holiday plans and put in exhausting zombie hours.

There's one gift that the stampeding shoppers couldn't find on Black Friday. It's an item that retail chains don't stock. Evidently, some don't even know that it exists. You would hope that its absence would create a demand. That gift is a moral compass.