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The Black Friday Thread: Walmart Worker Trampled and Killed By Crowd
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Not all of us can be as cool as you when surrounded by several thousand people crushing you forward.
They should have at least only let a certain number of people in the store at a time. But... from the articles, it sounds like the mob busted down the doors anyway.
The fuck are you talking about? I wouldn't go to Wal-Mart on Black Friday without full riot-gear because I'm not a suicidal retard. I'm writing off an excuse, because I want to see the entire crowd charged, as well as the people at the Wal-Mart corporate offices.
I'd also say that Speaker and VC blaming the crowd for the whole thing is a distinct probability.
I don't see what that has to do with anything but no, I recommend consulting a drug-dealer if you want to buy drugs. Or did you think it was clever? Is that what it was? Good job, just like a big boy! Are you proud of it? Want mommy to put it up on the fridge?
No one stopped because no one cared because there are no penalties. This is Wal-Mart we're talking about, they have cultivated a demographic to behave exactly this way, and that demographic isn't going away just because we slap Wal-Mart on the wrist with some piddly fine, maybe get some manager who had no say in the matter fired.
Jersey barriers to force a queue to the side, closing off one door --potentially with jersey barriers/metal fencing wrapping around again but with an opening and a security guard-- to ensure fire codes are met. The stock plan of this particular wal~mart facilitated that as it had the side entrances rather than a straight shot from the street. Other stuff. There are people whose job it is to prepare venues for massive crowds of people to ensure that everything works safely and well.
Right. See, this is the real problem, since Wal-Mart couldn't really have done anything different. The mob, as a whole, were assholes and busted down the door, trampling the poor guy. I really can't fault Wal-Mart at all. Could they have done more? Do you really want armed guards pointing shotguns at people screaming "back the fuck up!" while people try and force their way in, creating an even worse situation? Do you think a number/ticket system would have stopped the complete and total fuck heads in this store?
Wal-Mart currently has what, around 4000 stores? I'm sure this is not the only store where assholes were able to mob the entrance, but I am certain that it happened at an extreme minority of stores. I know both Wal-Marts up here had calm customers, who were friendly and cooperative. This is the fault of the fucking pricks outside the store, not the ones inside or at the corporate office.
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Panicking when in a crowd.
They're for cooking.
Average person weighs about 150 lbs, get a dozen people pushing and banging and checking at the front door and you're expecting the doors to withstand about a ton of meat.
Do you think that's clever? Is that what that is? Good job, you're such a big clever boy! Are you proud of it? Want mommy to put it up on the fridge?
Well no, we are talking about a dozen people pushing and banging from the middle and other parts of the crowd, up through the front. Obviously if people in the front were just slamming themselves full bore into the door over and over, it would break, but that's not really the scenario that we are talking about, is it?
Edit: Also, can you guys stop being so petty and snippy. Show some restraint or something.
A little from column A and a little from column B, actually.
You're treating it like this is the first time the annual Black Friday Wal-Mart Trample-A-Thon has happened again.
Murder is a retarded suggestion. Some form of manslaughter or such. But something closer to actual murder for the executives who made the decisions that created the situation. None of this $1,000 fine for the store and fire the store manager who had no say in the matter bullshit.
No she didn't.
From the NYTimes article, for those that are saying that there wasn't any kind of presence trying to control these people. You should really be reading the articles if you are going to discuss it, there have been several instances in this thread where statements have been made that are flat out wrong.
No shit? I thought I had read that some lady miscarried. But... that was yesterday, so the report probably wasn't accurate.
Nothing more than you do. Snipping off the entire body of a post so you can skip answering the real question and make a snarky remark is obnoxious.
A police presence is rarely a substitute for physical designs to ensure order. Particularly when dealing with large crowds. Mass gatherings are the most difficult to control, but mass groups all attempting to go inside somewhere are a lot easier. Particularly given that retail stores can be designed to ameliorate the impact of large crowds when they do form. Architectures of control and all that. By all accounts it didn't exist, and that has no excuse.
Also:
I again want to reiterate the crowd dynamic. The people at the back think it's opening time and start inching forward, reasoning that a slightly better elbow or knee position now could mean getting in front of a hundred more people by the time you get up front. They jostle slightly here and there to try and maintain position, inching forward on their feet. The people just in front of them feel the pressure and don't like having smelly people up on their back, or people sliding in front of them, and they push forward a little harder, somewhat reactively. Rinse and repeat. If the crowd is large enough, then by the time you get to the middle, you've got people tripping, losing balance, tumbling forward, except instead of tumbling onto the ground they are tumbling onto the backs of others, adding a cumulative thousands of pounds of pressure to the push. That's about as far as my experience got. But fast forward a little more, if the crowd is big enough, and maybe you've got people pressed into painful positions, panicking, fighting to move in any direction, which just disrupts the order further and allows the rear to compress the pressure even further. Up at the front you've got force that crushes metal, takes doors off hinges, and kills people.
You want to blame the whole crowd? What about the inevitable number of them who were probably pleading for order, trying to hold back the rush? Guilt by association? Wrong place, wrong time? How do you pinpoint not only a murderer, but even a guilty vs. an innocent?
I can tell you one thing, though. Next year that police department will have a whole lot more officers on BF morning.
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What I've read said that there weren't any barricades, and none of the photos that I've seen show any.
The point is that the criteria keeps getting changed.
"First Walmart was at fault for unlocking the doors without staff present."
"Uh.... they broke them down."
"Then, well, ok, Walmart didn't just open the doors, but crowd dynamics explain the door damage. The REAL fault is that they didn't coordinate to have police there!"
"Uh...cops WERE there, at Walmart's request, but the cops left because they were spread too thin across multiple stores in the area. Walmart can't control the police."
"OK, well then, the fact that they did actually try and get police in to calm things down prior to opening doesn't mean anything because they didn't have BARRICADES."
At what point are people going to accept that you can't just blame it all on the corporation? And again, I would say that if we look at an event like this and immediately push all responsiblity to "teh cop0rationz" that's part of the reason things like this happen. No sense of personal accountability.
This is absolutely not true. This would not have happened if there had been someone out there with some say in the matter (like the store manager) telling people to get in an orderly line or the doors were not opening. You get someone directing a crowd so that the mob mentality doesn't take hold. If you get someone's attention, they do listen to instructions. The mob mentality happens when no one knows what they are supposed to do or what is going on.
If you trip and fall into these doors they pop right off the rails. They are designed to do that in case of emergency, specifically if a crowd of people are all trying to get through the doors at once. They go from sliding doors to hinged doors so as to instantly open them to their maximum width. The only thing keeping these doors closed before opening time was that they were latched.
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As I said in my original post, blame is to be found at the company's feet AND the people/culture that permit it. And while yes some people advocating corporate blame, yourself included, have thrown in token phrases on behalf of the crowd's fault sentences like "I agree that people refusing to leave afterword is KIND OF fucked up and could be an indicator of the crowd's conduct, but hell they just risked life or death to get their cheap blu-ray player so why NOT stay and get it? I bet stupid Walmart wouldn't even close!"
So the people are basically excused for wanted to shop after killing someone, but the company is not excused for wanted to sell. Its a double-standard, and the fact that as a group we seem so willing to excuse the actions of the individual by diverting the underlying causes in an essential entirety to a large 3rd party.
How the fuck is a store manager supposed to "get out there" in front of 2,000 people and control it? They had COPS ON BULLHORNS and it wasn't doing a damn thing.
Just as those of you who are holding Walmart solely to blame are thinking that the other side has never been in a crowd before, I'm starting to think if any of you people have ever worked retail management before. The idea of a store manager having the capability to control a mob of 2,000 people outside his store by telling them he won't open if they don't calm down is ludicrious.
EDIT: Got BOTP'd and its not letting me edit that post to adjust, so for mcdermott:
I think trying to continue the debate is fruitless. There's no amount of twisting that can make it so that its Wal-mart's fault that people in this crowd were so fucked up that they refused to leave in the face of police telling them they had to get out as someone had just died due to their actions. It seems plainly obvious that police were contact prior to opening, that local workers did what they could. This is not just a cut-and-dry case of corporate greed, its a case of corporate greed mixing with other factors to cause a tragic situation that could have been avoided.
As I said in my original post, blame is to be found at the company's feet AND the people/culture that permit it. And while yes some people advocating corporate blame, yourself included, have thrown in token phrases on behalf of the crowd's fault sentences like "I agree that people refusing to leave afterward is KIND OF fucked up and could be an indicator of the crowd's conduct, but hell they just risked life or death to get their cheap blu-ray player so why NOT stay and get it? I bet stupid Walmart wouldn't even close!"
So the people are basically excused for wanted to shop after killing someone, but the company is not excused for wanted to sell. Its a double-standard, and the fact that as a group we seem so willing to excuse the actions of the individual by diverting the underlying causes in an essential entirety to a large 3rd party is, to me, indicative of the larger societal issue at hand. A consumer culture with no accountability for the actual consumer. Yes, Walmart is to blame for having doorbuster sales. We're to blame for WANTING them. The company isn't the guy tying the woman to the train tracks here. Or if they are, we're holding down her hands and feet.
Speaking of blatant falsifications: The cops weren't there the whole time, trying to control the mob as it surged through the door. They were there for a while long before the doors opened and then they left.
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Start throwing citations for trespassing and see how quick people start listening. The people were not listening because they were not presented with instruction from a position of authority. The crowd was not dispearsed bacause wal-mart wanted them to stay. This limits the police's options. The police should have told the manager to stuff it, and ran those people off for unruly behavior. If the Manager had a problem with that, then cite him/her for inciting a riot.
In this case the manager tied the cop's hands, and the cops let them.
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If you were following the conversation you would see I acknowledged that earlier. The statement was that a store manager, "someone with a presence" should have gone out and calmed things down by telling the mob they weren't opening till people acted like human beings. The counterpoint is that cops were there with bullhorns "pleading for order" in the words of the NYT with little to no result.
Nowhere in the post you are trying to flamebait did I say the cops were there the entire event, I said that the claim that the mob could have been talked back to normal by a manager was idiotic as police with bullhorns were obviously not successful.
If you're going to try and call me a liar, at least make sure I wasn't the person who brought up the very information you are trying to snark with.
Good deal, for some reason I still can't edit that post so the version up at the top is better anyway.
Oh, and:
Fixed that for you I think.
And as a final thought, I haven't seen anyone address how first it was Walmart's fault because they didn't call the police and when it became obvious they in fact had but that the police weren't equipped to handle it blame somehow resided completely with the corporation.
You can't go around talking about people spreading false information in a thread and expect not to get called out on doing the same. Don't get your fucking panties in a knot over it - regardless of where it came from and who said it first, you're implying that police with bullhorns couldn't control the mob and I'm saying police with bullhorns weren't there the whole time to do it and that police with bullhorns did control the mob, while they were there.
Riddle me this - did the mob surge through the doors when the police were there or long after they were gone? Hmm?
You can't accuse people of twisting the facts and turn right around and conveniently do the same for your side of the argument and act all pissy when somebody notices. You're full of crap.
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