Wal-Mart Taking Steps To Insure Safety This Black Friday
Posted: Wednesday, November 11, 2009
by Asher Ricard
I have to admit, I was one of those insane people last year that tried the Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart.
It will never, never, never happen again.
Besides a $10 Cabbage Patch Doll and Hannah Montana guitar, it was so not worth the fight.
Black Friday is the busiest day of shopping kicking off the Christmas season. Stores offer deals and open early to entice shoppers to start early with Christmas shopping.
By the time I arrived when the sale was suppose to start last year, people were already wheeling out tvs. It is a fight for merchandise that shoppers need to come equipped with helmets and pads to take part in.
Last year, however, culminated with crazed shoppers at a Walmart in Valley Stream, N.Y., trampled Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store employee who died soon afterward.
Wal-Mart has announced plans to change its crowd management policies to avoid a repeat this year. Each plan change is individualized to each store as opposed to one national plan.
The Houston Chronicle reports, "The most significant change at Wal-Mart is that the majority of its discount stores (as opposed to its Supercenters) will open Thanksgiving morning at 6 a.m. and stay open through Friday evening. Last year, those stores closed on Thanksgiving evening and reopened early Friday morning. By keeping the stores open for 24 hours, Wal-Mart is hoping for a steady flow of shoppers instead of mammoth crowds swelling outside."
In another new twist this year, shoppers at Wal-Mart will not have to sprint toward a pile of flat-screen televisions. Instead, customers will be able to enter the store at any time and line up at merchandise displays for the must-have items on their lists. When the products go on sale Friday at 5 a.m., employees will supervise the lines, giving shoppers the merchandise in the order in which they joined the line - until the goods are out of stock. Granted that may be after the third person, but at least it will be a controlled environment.
The stores also have plans to station employees outside to keep the lines moving and to avoid the bottleneck at the entrances.
I hope this works for those who are brave enough to make it. I, for one, will be waiting until the crowd dies down and I guess in turn paying way too much to bring Christmas happiness.
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