by Robin Fiedler
Search for Black Friday Shopping Fights on YouTube and you’ll find a few videos of scuffles and a fist fight between consumers in the past few years. The worst case was in 2008 when a seasonal employee at Wal*mart was trampled to death at 5 am after an impatient crowd broke down the doors. 
Also in 2008, a fatal shooting took place in Toys ‘R’ Us. The Linfield Review reports, “In Palm Desert, Calif., two men shot and killed each other in a Toys ‘R’ Us around 11:30 a.m. According to the Los Angeles Times, the incident stemmed from a personal dispute, as the men involved are thought to have been members of rival gangs. The shooting was apparently not shopping related, but . . .it took place among the frenzy of customers and their children shopping in a kids’ toy store. . .” How did two, not one, but two men manage to carry guns into a Toys ‘R’ Us?
Statistically speaking, the likelihood being killed while shopping on Black Friday is negligible. However, the worst part about the 34-year-old Wal*mart worker’s death was that shoppers didn’t care. Their mission to shop was not derailed. An editorial in The Linfield Review states, “To add insult to injury, emergency workers trying to assist the trampled man were jostled by shoppers still stampeding into the store.”
The antagonistic, almost pathological, atmosphere of Black Friday is even being studied in the halls of academia. “Since arriving at the University of Delaware three years ago, [Professor Shannon] Lennon has taken on the topic of Black Friday shopping behavior herself. She is developing a model to explain aggressive consumer behavior on that day, which sometimes results in injury or even death to shoppers or workers as consumers rush to take advantage of sales on limited quantities of in-demand merchandise.”
Lennon adds, “The eventual goal of our research on this topic is to enable retailers to devise strategies to defuse overly-aggressive consumer behavior.” She hasn’t completed her research yet, so expect tragedies to continue since retail employees are not trained to handle violent costumers. For the present, it’s every shopper for him- or herself.
All right, enough about sensational, rare cases of violence. A very real indirect danger comes from toys purchased during the holiday season. Stephen Reinberg from the US Department of Health and Human Services reports, “In 2007, more than 80,000 children under 5 years old were taken to hospital emergency rooms for toy-related injuries, and 18 died, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.” Consider the numbers: 80,000 children injured, 18 dead versus two adults dead. Forget violent skirmishes; gift buyers should be more diligent in considering the safety of the toys they buy for children. The two most dangerous features are parts that can be swallowed and toxic hazards.
Finally, consumers are more likely to be a victim of a different kind of violence on Black Friday, theft. In November and December, “every year ITRC gets more calls about lost and stolen wallets than any other time of the year.” And the wallet is just a small factor of the larger danger of identity theft. Shoppers can easily avoid the danger of physical violence by staying home, but identity theft is an equal opportunity threat to online and offline shoppers. The Identity Theft Resource Center estimates, “about 10 million people fall victim to this crime every year. No one is immune - from birth to beyond death.” 10 million people! The number is staggering.
Footnotes
Chajes, Beth. “Fashion Professor Finds Past Research Takes on New Life” University of Delaware.17 Oct. 2009. http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2009/apr/lennon041709.html
“Holiday Consumer Alert: ‘Identity Thieves Don’t Take a Holiday.’” Identity Theft Resource Center. 3 May 2007. http://www.idtheftcenter.org/artman2/publish/m_press/Holiday_Consumer_Alert_Identity_Thieves_Don_t_Take_a_Holiday.shtml
McKenna, Amber, and Dominic Baez. “Spend time Together, Not Money.” The Linfield Review. 5 Dec. 2008. Linfield College. http://www.linfield.edu/linfield-review/?p=1063
Reinberg, Stephen. “Beware of Toxic Toys This Holiday Season.” US Department of Health and Human Services. 28 Nov. 2008. http://www.healthfinder.gov/News/newsstory.aspx?docid=621763
COUPON TIME
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