Or: Why Retail Chains Should Hire Armed Security.

No, y’know what? I’m sticking with my first thought after reading this: some people just need to be shot.

Headline out of New York: “Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.”

I work in retail. I’m used to customers interrupting me, being rude to me, raising their voices to me, essentially, every thing under the sun that people due to people who they see as being in servitude towards them. Generally, this is an attitude that retail establishments foster, with the ridiculously stupid creed that “the customer is always right”, even when “the customer is a flaming douche-bag in need of a fucking clue.” So let it go without saying that I think what happened here was horrible, and a total indictment of this Black Friday shit:

The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.”

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was knocked to the floor during the mad rush. She was hospitalized for observation, police said. Early witness accounts that the woman suffered a miscarriage were unfounded, police said.

“They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. “People were still coming through.”

Only a few stopped.

“They’re savages,” said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. “It’s sad. It’s terrible.”

Y’know, I bet if a Wal-Mart employee had stepped to the front of the store and brandished a large assault rifle and said, “Hey, people, you’re going to file into the store one at a time, and if any single one of you moves any faster than a motherfucking turtle, all our associates are armed and will fucking blow big fucking holes in you”, none of this would’ve happened.

I tell you what — if I was working today (I’m not, because I think ahead and requested off back in July), and I saw one of my coworkers trampled, I’d be grabbing something long and big and heavy and I’d make sure that customers coming into the store would be going home with black eyes, broken noses, and crushed tracheas.

Abolish Black Friday. Get rid of these ridiculous stupid sales. And for fuck’s sake, and this, I direct to every retail brand in America, if you want early-ass hours and sales that drive people literally out of their mind with homicidal intent, give your employees truncheons, and hire armed off-duty police
to, y’know, provide security (and to shoot people).

And, let’s be honest here: most retailers offer their Black Friday discounts online. So what’s the point of waiting in line for a 5am opening? If I ever go Black Fridaying, I don’t care what the carry laws are, I’ll be ready.