From 2006 until present, seven people have lost their lives during the Black Friday shopping rush. Seven lives were lost over cheap electronics. Seven lives wasted for petty reasons. This is according to a website, called blackfridaydeathcount.com. The very fact that there needs to be a website with this title signals that there is something wrong with this yearly tradition.
This year, just one person died, not from the rush of people, but in a car accident. A group of teenagers were in a car driving home from Black Friday shopping, the car packed with things they didn’t need, when the driver of the car fell asleep. Nineteen-year-old Patrick Henry Boyd was killed, and his four friends were injured.
While this accident was not due to the riot mentality of hordes of product-thirsty people,like the trampling death of a Walmart employee in 2008, it represents just another reason why this ridiculous tradition couldn’t be a worse idea.
An estimated 100 million people shopped during the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. Of those, the ones who are shopping the early morning deals are more likely to be sleep deprived, unsafe drivers.
Last year, a father was charged with manslaughter, following the death of his two daughters in a car accident following Black Friday shopping. The father admitted that he had only gotten three hours of sleep that night.
Then there comes a point when people seem to lose their humanity over objects.
65-year-old Walter Vance, who suffered from a preexisting heart condition, collapsed and died at a Target in 2011. While there were a few good Samaritans, many shoppers simply stepped over Vance as he suffered on the ground.
What could possibly be that important?
These anecdotes are just deaths. In 2013 alone there were reports of stabbings, shootings, even brawls. What is it about low prices that cause people to lose their humanity?
An 11-year-old girl was trampled by shoppers at a Walmart in Ohio. Although it was not confirmed, it is thought that an elderly patient was transported to the hospital for a similar reason.
What could be going through these shoppers’ minds when they pushed down and walked over a little girl? An old woman?
Could it have just been, “Boy, I have to get one of those televisions”?
What’s worse is the people who have to work Black Friday. Some companies paid their employees overtime if their shifts began on Thanksgiving. But most companies will not pay overtime to those employees who work on Black Friday.
Exhausted employees have driven off the road after working these grueling, stressful shifts. They have been hurt in the rush for objects, killed even. People who got up and went to work because they needed the money. The Walmart employee who was trampled in 2008 probably never expected to not come home that day.
Over what? Just some cheap things.