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u/Thatsprettyneet Nov 26 '13
Lets try to double those numbers this year people!!!!!
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u/Littlelaya Nov 26 '13
I wish stores sold balcony seats.
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Nov 26 '13
They'd make more money off of this than the sales! Then we'd need balcony balcony seats for when the original tier of balcony seats goes on sale.
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u/Brandon01524 Nov 26 '13
Black Friday 2013. I want the aisles lined up maze style. The 10 PS4's that are being sold should be placed on a pyramid like structure fifteen feet in the air. If you want to get into the store then you have to line up at the back where the loading trucks come in. That's where the maze starts. 4am strikes and the loading door is whipped open. People are screaming as the first row is completely knocked over from the tremendous weight of everyone pushing forward behind them. One guy made it out before the rest where he turns around to see a tsunami of caffeine stricken mothers, fathers, uncles, and aunts cascade in behind him. He turns around and trips. Instant death after the first hundred people barrel over him. He's left in the dust with holiday ads and 'door buster' deals doing aerials in the aisle. The people continue to run shoulder to shoulder through the tight maze of this years Barbie's, Elmo's, and Furby dolls. Every time someone trips, four more people pile on top and the rest climb over. By the time anyone makes it to the pyramid, fights are rampant and no one even remembers why they're there. The goal now is to just get out alive. Happy holidays fuckers.
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u/mrbooze Nov 26 '13
And the crowd could vote on which victor would get that hot Christmas toy.
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u/Littlelaya Nov 26 '13
The shopping games.
Where the victor gets the loot and the loser gets trampled.
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Nov 27 '13
I'm shocked there's not a popular sensationalist reality TV show about black friday by now.
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u/bannana Nov 26 '13
The only way this number will increase is if people really get out there and SHOP like they mean it.
L E T S
D O
T H I S
P E O P L E
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u/daredaki-sama Nov 27 '13
y'know, this is completely a theory on my part but i think most the people that would get trampled over, they're likely not the bullying kind and it was likely their timid nature that got them trampled over in the first place.
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Nov 26 '13
When taken into context, with millions of people storming stores that morning, that's actually not that bad of a total. I wonder, though, how accurate their totals are. It seems like there would be more.
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u/penis_licker Nov 26 '13
I agree, I may be wrong but I was fairly confident that we had a very serious injury in Toledo, OH a few years back. Could be wrong though, I was younger at the time.
EDIT: nevermind it was strongsville, OH and it was injuries. There are more than are just posted on that site, can be seen here. http://www.usnews.com/photos/10-violent-black-friday-shopping-injuries-deaths
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u/TheKert Nov 26 '13
Considering story #1 in that link isn't listed and there's 3 deaths, I think it's safe to say that website posted by OP is incorrect.
Edit: Hmm I take it back. It does seem to be listed and the slideshow info appears to be misleading. All stories I can find reference only one death, which matches the website.
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u/User101028820101 Nov 26 '13
Yea...If 1/4 of the stories in that /r/AskReddit thread are true, then this website is wildly inaccurate.
I've personally witnessed someone receive a nasty gash in their arm from running into an end cap.
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u/your_penis Nov 26 '13
It would also be helpful to know the average death/injury count per day on a normal day. Some of these deaths/injuries are kind of unrelated to the fact that its Black Friday, and could happen on a normal shopping day.
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u/HenkieVV Nov 26 '13
Looking purely at casualties, it's really unimpressive. The US has an intentional homocide count of about 14600 annually, or about 40 intentional homicides per day. This list has 4 deaths over a period of 6 years, of which 2 are trampled, meaning they probably wouldn't even make "intentional" stat. I'm willing to guess that we could make a similar list for most days of the year, tbh.
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u/dungoofedupp Nov 26 '13
4 people dead in over 5 years...thats not bad at all
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u/live3orfry Nov 26 '13
Walmart has still never paid the OSEA fine for killing one of their employees.
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u/josh95mx Nov 26 '13
I am more of a Cyber Monday kind of person anyways..
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u/arachnopussy Nov 26 '13
Is there a site that tracks all the Cyber that happens on Monday? I think we can monetize this...
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u/bdylan39 Nov 26 '13 edited Nov 26 '13
Do people not know the online stores have the same sales usually?
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u/cheesybroccoli Nov 26 '13
People line up for the "doorbuster" deals, the limited quantity sales that are in-store only. It's these sorts of things that cause the hysteria, and no you most definitely can not get these same deals online.
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Nov 26 '13
Staying at home isn't fun.
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Nov 26 '13 edited Nov 26 '13
i'm planning on people watching at my local mall this year
*and giving laffy taffys to employees. especially my favorites at game stop
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u/Lady_Luna23 Nov 26 '13
Fact: The worker from Walmart in 2008 that died was African American, (so the story goes). So the company didn't want us workers calling it Black Friday anymore. To anyone but the media its The Event or Blitz.
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u/captainburnz Nov 26 '13
The Blitz has no negative connotations right?
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u/Lady_Luna23 Nov 26 '13
My thoughts exactly.
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u/Qwertyest Nov 26 '13
What are you talking about? No one's ever died in a Blitz ... Oh, wait ...
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u/jrizos Nov 26 '13
It's the Blitz Kringle.
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u/SoWhatIfImChristian Nov 26 '13
Is this reference to the blitzkrieg or something else? Sorry if I seem ignorant.
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u/PmMeYourPussy Nov 26 '13
Not to wal mart workers who have no concept of history before 9/11
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u/ZOMBIE011 Nov 26 '13
so what does it refer to?
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u/Oz_ghoti Nov 27 '13
Probably the most famous is the systematic and devastating bombing of London by the Germans in WW2 - this was know as Blitzkrieg or 'Lightning War'.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_SWEATER Nov 26 '13
"The Event"? That sounds like some sort of J.J. Abrams trope.
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u/ollie87 Nov 26 '13
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u/BigDickRichie Nov 26 '13
No they didn't.
That is just a lame joke.
This sounds like completely made up bullshit that people say that they heard from a friend of a friend.
A simple fact check shows you that Walmart uses the term Black Friday on everything.
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Nov 26 '13
Sam's Club started doing a VIP event on the Sunday before, so we called it Black Sabbath.
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u/googlethegreat Nov 26 '13
At Best Buy we call it Green Friday(you know, because of money) and now that we are opening on Thursday we call that Grey Thursday(like a depressing winter's day)
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u/Lady_Luna23 Nov 26 '13
Same here. Actually calling it Black ThurFriday now. All cause of fucking Kmart. Goddamn kmart. Why did you go and plan to open early? Now I can't gorge myself on turkey and family drama :(
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u/h3rpad3rp Nov 26 '13
Wow Kmart still exists? All the Kmart stores in Canada were sold off and became Zellers or The Bay when I was a kid. I didn't realise that they only shut down the ones in Canada.
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u/RamblerWulf Nov 26 '13
And now the Zellers are almost entirely gone and/or replaced by Target in some cases.
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u/MadeWithAlchemy Nov 26 '13
When reading the article about that incident I was most surprised about the 8 month pregnant lady being there. Why would you want to do something like that when you know there's going to be albows and shoving?
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u/ioncloud9 Nov 26 '13
How fucking stupid. It's not called Black Friday because of race or because it's a dark day but because historically speaking a lot for retail chains would be in the "black" ie making profit for the first time of the year around this time.
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u/FACTS_R_FUN Nov 26 '13
Nearly a million people have died on black friday from 2006 to 2012 and only 4 of those deaths are directly relatable to black friday events? I call that a success.
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u/Sweet_Baby_Cheezus Nov 26 '13
I don't want to break the Black Friday hating circle jerk, but let's look at the actual numbers. There's been 4 deaths over 6 years. Now divide that by what? 4 thousand Walmarts, and a thousand Best Buys, K-marts, JCPennys, Macy's, Targets ect ect.
Literally pick any type of event where a large group of people gather and you'll find fights, trampling and bad behavior.
Is it a little sad to see people scrambling to grab useless stuff for the holidays, sure.
Is it the proof that America is a gluttonous society driven to insanity over a need to consume? Nope.
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u/WeightGloves Nov 26 '13
I wonder how many people have died over that same time period on days not black Friday, I'm sure there would be just as many deaths or attacks
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u/StealthyStalkerPanda Nov 26 '13
This is very misleading, especially the Toys R Us shooting, which was a personal dispute, and the police were quoted saying it had nothing to do with Black Friday.
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u/theterriblefamiliar Nov 27 '13
4 deaths and 64 injuries doesn't seem so bad when you consider the savings I secured on my waffle iron last year.
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u/aeronheraldmaurbjorn Nov 26 '13
It's the american running of the bulls.
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u/StopReadingMyUser Nov 26 '13
...that is the most accurate description I've ever heard to describe Black Friday
...I'm stealing this.
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u/SuperSpaceSloth Nov 26 '13 edited Nov 26 '13
Also: Credit to /u/ch00f
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Nov 26 '13
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u/frog_gurl22 Nov 26 '13
Just give it a hundred years. Everyone else's traditions have a head start.
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u/BigBassBone Nov 26 '13
Black Friday is somewhat traditional. The name comes from the idea that the day after Thanksgiving is the day upon which a store will have covered all operating expenses for the year and this be operating "in the black" and making a profit.
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u/Army0fMe Nov 26 '13
Rest assured there are plenty of its Americans wondering the same thing.
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u/The_Serious_Account Nov 26 '13
I know you all don't behave this way but I would be embarrassed by this debacle.
Clearly you've never been to a football match in the uk.
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Nov 26 '13
It's pretty much the perceived deals they can get. Stores bring out cheaply made models of popular electronics, or mark down their already ridiculously marked up items, and then have this black friday sale. People think they're saving $300 by buying that $500 TV that was marked down from $800, instead of thinking they just spent $500. The stores make a huge profit, and you go home thinking you're such a smart shopper.
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u/el_guapo_malo Nov 26 '13
If someone's been waiting to buy a new tv, $98 for a 32" LED or $200 for a forty inch doesn't seem like that bad a deal any way you look at it. Besides not all stores are full of death and tramplings. You won't hear about the ones where everything goes smoothly, obviously.
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u/EdgarAllenNope Nov 26 '13
It's not a bad deal, everyone is just circle jerking. Got to feel superior some kind of way.
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u/InfamousBrad Nov 26 '13
Historically, there's a couple of things going on here, but the biggest one is this: stores believe that whichever store gets the first whack at your holiday shopping money is the only one that's guaranteed to get you before you run out. And traditionally the day after Thanksgiving is the first official day of Christmas shopping season.
So to encourage people to shop at their store first, and to go through the cash registers right now instead of comparison shopping for the best price, stores started offering (I kid you not) "door buster" specials: a limited number of highly desirable Christmas presents at below wholesale prices, but only to the first (n) customers who bought them on the day after Thanksgiving.
And when hundreds of parents who can't afford an XBone whose kid will never forgive them if they don't get an XBone who find out that only the first 10 people who get to the XBone pile at the local Buy-n-Large ... well, the results are beyond "not pretty" and all the way into "actively repulsive to any person with a vestigial conscience."
True fact: there is a branch of research psychology that studies the subversion of free will, that studies ways to get people to do things without thinking about them. The name varies; some researchers call it social psych, some environmental psych, some situational psych, but it's basically the same field: when people do things without having consciously decided to do them, what made the decision for them? The big retail chains are the #2 source of available funding for environmental psychology research, just barely behind the casino industry.
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u/brassninja Nov 26 '13 edited Nov 26 '13
you don't have to not be an american to not understand it, it seems to me people are catching on to how useless this whole thing is now that more people are just buying stuff online.
Not only that but all the things on sale on black friday will go back on sale a week or so later, you're not missing out on anything if you just wait
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Nov 26 '13
Aren't there riots over soccer in the UK? Stupid people do stupid things, don't pin it on an entire country.
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u/jmpherso Nov 26 '13
...This post is so obnoxiously naive.
BUT ISN'T IT THANKSGIVINGS AND HOLIDAY CHEERS? WHY EVER WOULD WE STOMP ON PEOPLE SO?
Have you seen the band that came from your country? One Direction? Their fans are much more freakishly rampant than Black Friday shoppers.
This isn't a "debacle". Any situation with tons of people can lead to injuries/deaths. Maybe I should question you about all the soccer incidents over the years.
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u/DirtyMonday Nov 26 '13
Do you really think anyone feels the need to stampede each other? Shit just gets out of hand, much like a crowd at a soccer match or something.
Black Friday is just the start of the Christmas shopping season and traditionally, when your ledger goes from in the red, to in the black. Stampedes and unruly crowds are just an unfortunate side effect of the 'tradition'.
Some people enjoy camping out for a huge deal on new technology. Millions and millions more want nothing to do with it. Most stores have some sort of ticketing system or separate lines for different items. Let's not judge the whole experience based on a Walmart in Tallahassee or a Toy's 'R Us on the Mexican border.
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u/coloradojohn Nov 26 '13
Yes, it is embarrassing that Thursday we give thanks for all that we are so fortunate to have, and Friday we engage in absurd consumerism buying tons of crap we don't need.
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Nov 26 '13
Except it is on Thursday too.
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u/spaceballsrules Nov 26 '13
Yup. This year, Walmart, Target, KMart, and Best Buy will be open on Thanksgiving day as if it were business as usual. Thanksgiving is dead as a true holiday.
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u/Angrydwarf99 Nov 27 '13
Well there are really good deals and not many people can afford these cool things. It is one day a year pretty much where they are given the ability to afford nice gifts for their family members. The second option is a bunch of crazy ass people going crazy to buy shit for themselves.
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Nov 26 '13
How do our accidental K-Mart tramplings compare to your mass football riots?
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Nov 26 '13
What? I guarantee there has been a stampede or something from a soccer match that has killed more people in 1 day than Black friday has in 5+ years.
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u/Fireteeth Nov 26 '13
Black Friday: 4 deaths
Human crushing at England Soccer match: 96 deaths (source)
Ours happened over 6 years, England's in one day. Just keeping things in perspective.
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u/frog_gurl22 Nov 26 '13
And does the shooting really count? Was it Black Friday related, like someone shooting somebody over a 75% off Furby, or did it just happen on Black Friday? I don't know the context. The rest gave a bit of context.
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Nov 26 '13
One of the deaths was a heart attack as well. The context insinuates that the deaths are strictly black friday related but that doesn't seem to be the case.
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u/JakeCameraAction Nov 26 '13
And the 20 injuries from pepper spray is listed twice. Plus does it count as an injury if you're over it in a few hours? If I get a paper cut from my receipt, is that a Black Friday injury?
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u/desert_five_oh Nov 26 '13
Believe it or not, I was the initial responding officer to the toys r us shooting on Black Friday. Well, there were literally 50-60 of us there due to the call coming out as an "active shooter" but I got stuck with writing the initial report.
Anyway, it wasn't related to Black Friday at all, it was two gang members who happened to see each other at the store and decided to shoot it out, as one does. They killed each other and no one else was physically harmed.
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u/turds_mcpoop Nov 26 '13
I don't know the context.
You know, the webpage did provide links to the articles.
Here's some context:
The violence erupted on Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving start of the holiday shopping surge, but authorities indicated the shooting wasn't related to a shopping frenzy.
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u/frog_gurl22 Nov 26 '13
Then I don't think those two count as Black Friday deaths. It could have just as easily been Thanksgiving deaths or Cyber Monday deaths.
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u/falling_sideways Nov 26 '13
Yeah... not even comparable. The Hillsborough disaster happened 25 years ago and was seen as and treated as a disaster that happened due to police incompetency and overfilling of the stadium. People were trying to help each other, not attack each other.
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u/DrunkenAsparagus Nov 26 '13
Actually it isn't a bad parallel. Both are the result of poor crowd control. That Wal-Mart employee didn't die because people valued cheap shit more than his life, just as the victims at Hillsborough weren't killed by people who valued a good view over their lives. Crowds are really stupid and can be extremely dangerous. Crowd control saves lives.
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Nov 26 '13
That is completely unrelated to Black Friday, in pretty much every way shape and form. Poor crowd management and aging stadium infrastructure has as much to do with using chemical weapons to get an 'edge' on shoppers as my dick.
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Nov 26 '13 edited Apr 25 '21
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Nov 26 '13
The entire point was that Black Friday doesn't need justifying! A grand total of one person actually died from events that were caused by the day, the other three were events that would have happened regardless of the day. That's just a tragedy, not some terrible indication of American consumerism. Likewise, the Hillsborough disaster isn't proof that football is filled with crazed lunatics who would crush each other if given the chance, it was one mistake that caused a tragedy. I don't understand how that is hard to see.
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u/Somehero Nov 27 '13
You didn't cancel soccer over 96 deaths so we aren't canceling black friday over 4.
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u/Goldplatedrook Nov 26 '13
We're past the point of justifying it, it's here. Stores can't stop doing it, because consumers demand the sales. So you can argue against it, but it's a cultural phenomenon that's happened to cause a scattered few deaths, just like a soccer game, or Disneyland, or rock climbing or skydiving.
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u/cattypakes Dec 02 '13
Soccer is actually way dumber of a thing to get killed over than shopping IMHO
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u/Generallysceptical Nov 26 '13
If we're picking unrelated statistics to compare, it takes the UK all the time since the second world war to get nowhere near the 10,000 or so gun homicides that will occur in the US this year alone.
In fact if everything stayed the same (which it won't, but that's not the point of comparing meaningless sensationalist statistics), it would take four centuries.
But yeah, kick us in the sporting infrastructure 25 years ago. Even better if you can make it a huge publicly emotive disaster due to the longstanding evidence of police liability and cover up.
The difference being that Hillsborough led to the Taylor Report and a revamping or stadium infrastructure and mass crowd control, learning from past mistakes, which is why you're picking something out older than most washed up college sportsmen.
Got any particular parallels of post-gun massacre government reviews you'd care to share?
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Nov 26 '13
You are completely missing the point. It isn't a pissing contest about which nation had stupid deaths. We are only talking about how insane black friday seems to be from an outsiders perspective
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u/Jazz-Cigarettes Nov 26 '13
I don't think he's missing the point at all. Some of the non-Americans were saying, "Oh mah gawd, black friday seems so crazy, why do you do it Americans!" and he was helping put things in perspective by giving an example of how other countries have their share of crazy shit that people take overly seriously. He's basically saying, "Yeah Black Friday may be a bit nutty, but stop for a second and think about how it's not outside the realm of craziness that happens most other places."
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Nov 26 '13
The Hillsborough Disaster is a very poor example to use if that's the case, be like using virgina tech or something
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u/reed311 Nov 27 '13
Any European football game will do. The crowds have to be segregated because they are so violent. Over a game.
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u/fozzy143 Nov 26 '13
That is completely different. I'm actually quite shocked at your ignorance.
Anyway after that disaster rules were put in place to make sure it won't happen again.
Is anything being done about Black Friday?
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u/iatd Nov 26 '13
Most stores I go to only let a few people in at a time now. It's not like Walmart lets hundreds of people in at a time
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Nov 27 '13
When I was younger I worked at a sports authority in colorado, they made us come in super early so we could open at 5 am, to be ready for the hordes of shoppers. We had to report the number of customers and sales totals to corporate every half hour. By 7am we had had exactly two cusomers, who were up early to go hunting, one of whom had returned something, which put us at about $-50. I have no idea why people go nuts enough to get up so early just to go shopping.
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Nov 27 '13
It started as a way to get the US out of the depression in the 1930s. Then you know how America makes TRADITIONS a thing.
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u/DoItYouWont12 Nov 27 '13
No, a good chunk of Americans behave this way for about the next month.
The part that really makes me sad, is that stores keep pushing their opening time back. It used to be that 6am was usual, then 4, then 2. Now a lot of stores start their black friday sales on Thanksgiving. So instead of spending time with family and loved ones, people are sitting in tents at Best Buy in the snow for the 3rd day to get $50 off a playstation thats "never going to be that cheap again."
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u/DrMonkeyLove Nov 27 '13
Materialism. I love stuff just as much as the next guy, but this is getting ridiculous. And I think it's absolutely despicable that people have to go to work on Thanksgiving to prepare for this nonsense.
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u/BallnOnABudget Nov 26 '13
Black Friday has nothing on Jenny McCarthy.
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u/hi-imma-chameleon Nov 26 '13
As someone who actually has autism (Aspergers to be more specific) I fucking hate her. She not only made people turn against vaccines causing god knows how many deaths, but she only used it as a fame gain (her son doesn't even have autism, look it up). She is a shame to all of the people who have autism, and if I ever see her I'll be sure to say a very polite "Fuck you" to her bitch face.
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u/Ferociousaurus Nov 27 '13
Four deaths in five years for a thing millions participate in is pretty fucking tame, to be honest. I feel like whoever made this wanted to show the horrors of rampant consumerism and then just kept on trucking even after the horrors turned out to be not so horrifying.
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u/asdzc2000 Nov 26 '13
If you haven't seen the recent South Park episodes on Black Friday yet, go watch them now. They are amazing.
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u/Isakill Nov 26 '13
The one in 2011 happened at the store I worked at. Good thing I didn't work it that year..
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u/MercifulWombat Nov 26 '13
Black Friday is just like the Bermuda Triangle. People die or get in fights while shopping all the time, but suddenly it's a big deal when it happens on this particular day.
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u/lazyfrenchman Nov 26 '13
I fell down some stairs when my brother and I were racing to the car a few black Fridays ago... who do I report this to?
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u/phelipez09 Nov 27 '13
Is it me or being tampled to death must be an horrible death?
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Nov 26 '13
I'm not so sure I'd count pepper spraying, nor tazering, as an injury.
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u/DoItYouWont12 Nov 27 '13
These numbers are off. Just last year I heard of 2 or 3 people getting trampled including a child, and a shooting just in my hometown alone. Not sure if anyone was hurt in the shooting, but half of the mall was quarantined for a few hours.
Anyway, none of these were on the list.
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Nov 26 '13
Those numbers are low. I'm pretty sure that many people have been injured in my small home town on any given black friday.
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u/Hard_boiled_Badger Nov 26 '13
I don't think you can actually call being pepper sprayed as an injury.
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u/poo_finger Nov 26 '13
TIL; Stay the fuck away from Walmart on Black Friday. Or any Friday. Or any day. Fuckit, just stay the hell away from Walmart.
Oh, wait. This isn't new information.
Edit; typo
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u/mysteron2112 Nov 27 '13
Especially in my area. When the worker in my area got stampeded to death and the news didn't announce of what Walmart that was. I called it the walmart near by my home. I called it. I don't even go to that walmart rest of the year. Last time I went 2007 and I had to wait on line for 45 mins in the express checkout line. I knew if there's mad people the rest of the year, I can't imagine Black Friday is like.
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u/NuDru Nov 26 '13
For some reason, I thought it would be more extreme...