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Walmart Spends $2M To Save $7K (Or, Why Regulations Do Matter)
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Not every regulation has a bright line. This is a good thing.
Yes the employer has a general duty to its employees to keep them from getting hurt or killed on the job!
That is like, the fucking point of OSHA.
If you disagree that this situation falls under this rule because you think it is not foreseeable enough, that's fine.
If it's something that the employer could foresee and should have taken steps to mitigate, then you're damn right it's the employer's fault.
Goddamn Wal*Mart not turning on their anti-unruly mob suppression machine. God
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but just out of curiosity, how do you all think walmart could have prevented this (other than not opening)?
Well I disagree with it because it's the first one to get the amount of attention generally required to make people watch out for it from now on. Like it's an awareness thing. It's not about to get any better because our society just kinda continues up toward that trend of being disregarding of others around them.
/deep-moment
So I mean, if it happens again (and as much as I hate to think, it actually will), any fine is acceptable.
As an aside, I wish going after all the individuals in the mob wasn't a logistical nightmare. I remember wishing on that so much a couple years ago when this happened and people here mentioning the logistics to me. It's one of those shitty sobering moments of "Oh, life really sucks ass sometimes."
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Mob gets that unruly, don't open the store until order is restored by cops. Get your employees out of there until order is restored by cops. Don't let your employees stand in a Red Rover line while a crowd comes busting through the doors.
Equipping their employees in vests that have those electric bug-killing tennis-rackets strapped to the outside of them.
No wait. <_<
The only way I could see it in that case is having some long-distance method of unlocking the door. Because someone having to go up to do it is unfortunate. Maybe even a security team standing at the door, making a barricade, as the person unlocks it and the door initially opens.
It can be done.
It just shouldn't have to be. But again, society.
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owning members of congress is not cheap, you know
I don't fault OSHA for wanting to take this shit seriously, even if all they can do is a tiny fine.
The idea is to keep it from ever happening again by setting a precedent and holding Walmart to its duties. If you give them a pass this time, next time they'll point it out and say "but you didn't do anything last time how we were supposed to know it was a violation of the rule!!"
That's vague. If a customer goes crazy in the sports aisle and starts clonking employees with a golf club, you'd just say the golf clubs should have been kept under lock and key. It was preventable.
The mob outside the doors went crazy on Black Friday 2008.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Strike three on the dumb analogies, dude.
If that was Wal-Mart's reaction if it happened again, you wouldn't hear a peep from me about OSHA acting weird on it.
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Why do they get a pass on the first employee death? Whoops, first one's free or something?
It's their reaction right now. "You never told us we could be fined for this! We shouldn't be fined cause we've never been fined before!" Yeah well it's kinda hard when this is the first time an employee death of this type happened.
Actually that isn't required, either. You just need someone to claim to have pretended to be a pimp.
The crowd gathered on Black Friday 2008 was frothing crazy, driven wild by the promise of cheap laptops. The crowd gathered on Black Friday 2009 was manageable. Small groups were allowed inside the store one at a time and there was a larger police presence.
The mob could have been managed better in 2008. The store manager could have called for more police officers besides the two there that morning.
That's not how OSHA works. They give a general mandate, "Keep your employees safe." When this mandate is violated, they punish the violating party so that all can understand why it was a violation, then they strive to educate all companies on how to improve their conditions so their workers don't fucking die.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Or was that incorrect?
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Y'know, that reminds me of customer behavior - people do come into Wal-Mart, find some product on sale that's liquid, rip it open, spill some on the floor, and then lay down by it going "OH GOD MY BACK."
Like literally. Happened in my store. Thankfully, cameras survey things and also they're too stupid to get any on their footwear to leave a streak on the floor pretending it actually happened.
PEOPLE OF WAL-MART. <_<
By the way. The Wal-Mart I worked at sold fire-arms in the sporting goods department. One guy on our nightshift crew was licensed to sell things there. Which wasn't often.
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Why would opening the store outweigh worker safety?
In this particular case, he had to open the door with a key to unlock it, and as soon as that happened he was rushed. So it was preventable but I don't think anyone realized what would've happened.
Now we know.
If the doors were like, smashed down without anyone making an attempt to open them properly, this would've been a totally different ball game.
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Yeah, they broke down the doors, but management didn't set up any lines. They just let this huge mob congregate outside the front doors. Then the employees were directed to try to hold the doors closed as the mob pushed against it. That's when the door shattered, the employee was knocked over, and the crowd trampled him to death.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Wow. You sure showed that strawman.
First off, there are ways to prevent a crowd waiting in front of a store for it to open from devolving into a mob. Setting up an employee and police-enforced queue is a simple yet effective tactic, for an example. Second, there's nothing saying that the store manager had to open the doors (unless Bentonville didn't give him or her the authority, which isn't exactly an unlikely scenario.)
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Walmart would still be at fault for letting the mob form in the first place.
Well I'm not saying it's a pass on responsibility, I'm saying it's a pass on being fined in this manner. Didn't Wal-Mart pay out reparations (that doesn't sound like the right word...) to the family of the employee? Like, they were willing to take measures on the issue. Which, they'd have to do in any future event as well.
I've got to admit, I'm feeling a bit ridiculous having to get so particular about things with this. Like I'm starting to feel like a major [silly goose].
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I somehow doubt people would've followed.
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Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh true.
I think we discussed a couple years ago how they should've had crowd management outside making people form a line. That would've done fucking wonders.
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Cops, barriers, give out tickets with numbers?
... Yeah actually. <_<
And if people don't adhere to it, you get law enforcement involved.
See, all this shit is weird for me because I'm not on any side of this issue in a concrete manner. I'm not cheering for Wal-Mart's head on the issue, but they sure as hell could've done things to prevent it.
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Either way, I'm not arguing that they should've done more. I'm saying I can see why they would fight a fine they feel isn't applicable.
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So fuck those guys.
EDIT:
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Except it is applicable. It's been pointed out several times that the OSHA regulation states that employers have a duty to mitigate all foreseeable hazards. It has also been pointed out that by 2008, there had been several trampling incidents on Black Friday, some of which Walmart had been involved in. It has also been shown that crowd management techniques were not deployed by the staff, allowing the formation of the mob. Finally, the store was opened, even though the danger of the mob was clear.
I don't see how anyone could construe that Walmart didn't fail abjectly in their duties.
When the crowd was unruly at the Target I worked at the morning before the PS3 launch, the store manager made it clear that the store would not open if the crowd didn't become orderly, and had a police presence to back his words up
Says you, Nixon.
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