Black Friday, the traditional kickoff day for the Holiday sales season is only 10 days away. Let’s look at the lessons learned from last year’s Black Friday’s tragic event after a disorderly crowd trampled to death Jdimytai Damour, a WalMart temporary worker.
Let’s work on the premise that retailers have a duty to provide a safe shopping environment for their shoppers or “invited guests”. Meaning they must take reasonable and foreseeable steps to protect there shoppers. This not only includes the interior of the store, but also the surrounding parking lot. In the case of a shopping mall, there may be some shared responsibility by both the retailer and the shopping mall owner.
In the case of WalMart they sought the expert advice from the people responsible for securing the crowds at major sporting events. One of the contributing causes that lead to last years disastrous event at the Valley Stream, NY (Green Acres) Mall was many of the shoppers were in their cars, waiting for the store to open for the 5 a.m. Black Friday sales event. When the time came to open the store’s doors the customers who were waiting in their cars exited and rushed the door, mixing with the crowd waiting in line.
This year WalMart will open their stores at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving day and remain open through Friday evening thus eliminating the early morning rush. Another measure taken by WalMart is customers will be allowed to line up in the various departments where the “sale” merchandise is located. In the past this has not always worked well. One major retailer, who has done this in the past, experienced an incident where when the time came to start the sale the employees responsible for handing the merchandise to the customers panicked when the “countdown” started the crowd rushed the pallets. The employees started throwing the boxes up in the air into the crowd, striking a customer in the head causing a reported brain injury. As the customer fell to the floor, she was stepped on causing further injury.
Retailers must take the necessary steps to safeguard their shoppers during Black Friday and other door buster shopping events. Some of my recommendations include:
- Erecting stanchions or post barricades to control the influx of customers. Use steel barricades; although they are more expensive, are also much sturdier. This equipment can be rented.
This content continues onto the next page...