What happened to us?
Here in the U.S., today’s Black Friday. The traditional day-after-Thanksgiving spend-fest where people line up outside of stores for hours to get their hands on whatever the hot item is this holiday season.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and pay more attention to the news than when I was a kid, but it seems like every year there’s a report of someone getting trampled or getting into a fight over this year’s must-have item. This year is no different.
In New York, a worker at a Wal-Mart was trampled to death after the crowd of 2000 people outside pushed their way in through the locked doors. When I first heard the story, I thought it was probably some elderly greeter at the door that couldn’t get out of the way. It wasn’t…
It was a 34-year-old temporary employee. 34! That’s my age. Insanity.
The first thing that came to mind is what in the hell is wrong with the people who gathered outside the store that couldn’t act like normal human beings and wait until the doors were open? What was so important that they had to bust through the doors and crush this poor guy trying to pick up some cash over the holidays? Perhaps the most telling part is this quote from the article linked to above:
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’” she said. “They kept shopping.”
Seriously? Your shopping is more important than this man’s life? You should all be ashamed of yourself. I know it will never happen, but I’d like to see all of these people rounded up and arrested. The fact that people stepped over the guy as he’s on the ground dying infuriates me to no end.
Get over yourselves, people. While you were rushing to get the gifts your family “has-to-have”, this guy was on the floor dying. His family is going to spend the holidays completely devastated while your kids will plant their fat asses in front of the big screen TV you had to have for $400 off list-price. I hope what happened today haunts all of you selfish assholes for a very, very long time.
