Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's been quite a few years since we
Speaker 1: dusted off our classic episode on the insanity that is
Speaker 1: Black Friday, so we thought we put it out there
Speaker 1: for you again. I'm glad we made this episode when
Speaker 1: we did, because Black Friday's nearly gone away since then,
Speaker 1: so we kind of inadvertently came up with a document
Speaker 1: on a fading cultural phenomenon, and I assume historians of
Speaker 1: the future will rely heavily on this. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy this episode.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhoustuffworks dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
Speaker 1: with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's
Speaker 1: over there, and that makes this stuff you should have.
Speaker 2: That's you just checked to make sure Jerry was there.
Speaker 1: She's very quiet.
Speaker 2: You literally turned her head and body right, Yep, she's there.
Speaker 1: I did the bigfoot thing like I had to turn
Speaker 1: my whole the whole side of my body. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: look over my shoulder. That's how you know that was
Speaker 1: real footage.
Speaker 2: Well, typically when you know Jerry's here, because you can
Speaker 2: just smell like miso soup or something emanating from our
Speaker 2: right side, yeah, or my right.
Speaker 1: Side, your right side, but it's not emanating from you,
Speaker 1: it's coming from Jerry. Yeah. She stinks like miso, which
Speaker 1: is actually a very pleasant smell, salty and new mommy.
Speaker 1: That's right, So Chuck, Yes, have you ever been to
Speaker 1: a Black Friday sale?
Speaker 2: No? No, And I want to say, h no.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, I mean that's not for me. That's
Speaker 1: a decent qualifier though, because it's not like an average sale,
Speaker 1: and like, if you don't go to a Black Friday sale,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good reason. Why is because you're scared.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and I think this is one of those
Speaker 2: a very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going
Speaker 2: or it's the last thing on earth you would rather do.
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot of people are like, maybe
Speaker 2: I'll go check out a Doorbuster at three am.
Speaker 1: I think there are people who do have that kind
Speaker 1: of that idea, but maybe not at three am. Sure,
Speaker 1: there's it's almost like a multifaceted creature like it is
Speaker 1: for some people, like just in the middle of a
Speaker 1: normal shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they'll go
Speaker 1: to a store and it's fine, and there's some sales
Speaker 1: or whatever. But then you know hours earlier, these hardcore
Speaker 1: people you know who had bathed in the blood or
Speaker 1: their fellow shoppers well sadly, yeah, yeah, we'll see had
Speaker 1: already come through and gotten all the best deals.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But and then there's those of us like us who
Speaker 1: are just like going out.
Speaker 2: It is literally, and I'm not overstating this because people
Speaker 2: always say literally when they mean figured it figuratively. But
Speaker 2: it is literally one of the last things I would
Speaker 2: ever ever do in my life. Yeah. I can't think
Speaker 2: of many. I'd rather go to the DMV than go
Speaker 2: to a doorbuster.
Speaker 1: The DMV, yeah, in between North Korea and South Korea.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, that's the DMZ.
Speaker 1: Right. I always get this too confused.
Speaker 2: Now, I'd rather go take the last ticket from at
Speaker 2: the DMV and have to wait all day than go
Speaker 2: to a doorbuster sale.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I don't blame you, all right.
Speaker 2: So that's what we'll get to more hate spewing about
Speaker 2: this layer but.
Speaker 1: Right, and I should state my opinion. I feel like,
Speaker 1: if this is your thing, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Well true, true, I'm not like cast dispergence on people
Speaker 2: who disparaging remarks is dispurgence a word.
Speaker 1: Nope, it is no though you're like your own like
Speaker 1: an American dictionary, the New Chuck Dictionary.
Speaker 2: We should make that up.
Speaker 1: I like it. Yeah, you get had like five or
Speaker 1: six words already chuckisms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed. I'm not saying like poopooing people who do it.
Speaker 2: If you're into it, great, as long as you conduct
Speaker 2: yourself in a reasonable manner and you don't turn into
Speaker 2: a monster like others do.
Speaker 1: Right, But there is like there are obvious criticisms of
Speaker 1: the day too, which we'll get into. But I think first, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we should explain what the as you would say, h
Speaker 1: we're talking about to the people who listen to this
Speaker 1: podcasts and don't live in the United States, because Black
Speaker 1: Friday is pretty much a uniquely American experience.
Speaker 2: It is I think most people probably know, but just
Speaker 2: very quickly. It is the day after Thanksgiving now in
Speaker 2: the United States is known as Black Friday, and we'll
Speaker 2: get into the pretty interesting history of it. But it's
Speaker 2: the biggest shopping day of the year, and there are
Speaker 2: all these crazy specials that they run, and we'll get
Speaker 2: into that as well, but quite simply, it is the
Speaker 2: busiest shopping day of the year, day after Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's origin, well, the origin of the term
Speaker 1: black Friday goes back kind of a waste apparently, to
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, but the idea of going shopping,
Speaker 1: starting your Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving actually
Speaker 1: goes back to the late nineteenth century early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: thanks to department stores like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as a part of those parades.
Speaker 2: No accident, it's a Macy's parade.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, you know. Yeah, it's still a good parade.
Speaker 2: Though. Have you ever been.
Speaker 1: I haven't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never been to the parade, but a couple
Speaker 2: of times, Emily, and I've gone to the day before
Speaker 2: when they blow up the.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which is really neat, very cool. You mean,
Speaker 1: I have a friend who's actually holding one of the
Speaker 1: floats the balloons.
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's fun to do. Although we did
Speaker 2: it like eight or nine years ago and it was
Speaker 2: it was really neat and sort of crowded, and then
Speaker 2: we did it a couple of years ago and it
Speaker 2: is nuts now, is it. It's yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 2: gone overboard.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Speaker 2: The word got out.
Speaker 1: I think I saw yeah, I saw something last year
Speaker 1: in the news.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's not a place to go if you
Speaker 2: don't like strollers. Let's just say that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, strollers with alternating tires. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: but the idea of going starting your Christmas shopping the
Speaker 1: day after Thanksgiving came from those parades, and they came
Speaker 1: from those parades because all of those parades, pretty much
Speaker 1: to a parade featured Santa Claus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and usually at the end kind of like bringing
Speaker 2: up the rear, and that means we're kicking it off.
Speaker 1: That's the official start of the holiday season. Santa Claus
Speaker 1: has made his first public appearance. So from the association
Speaker 1: of those two came going holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: That was in the late nineteenth century, in the fifties
Speaker 1: they think, or early sixties, well the fifties, calling the
Speaker 1: day after Thanksgiving Black Friday came about, but it didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have anything to do with shopping by then. It
Speaker 1: was from factory owners who apparently coined the term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's also the other competing theory that it
Speaker 2: was the day that stores would go into the black
Speaker 2: meaning start to show profit. But that's not quite right
Speaker 2: as it No, so that's fallacy.
Speaker 1: That's actually a well, it's a made up fallacy to
Speaker 1: gloss over the original meaning of black Friday. And it
Speaker 1: came out of Philadelphia in the sixties and the cops
Speaker 1: and the bus drivers and the city workers who worked
Speaker 1: downtown came up with calling that day black Friday because
Speaker 1: apparently tons of out of towners would leave their homes
Speaker 1: on Thanksgiving, Yeah, converge on Philadelphia to watch the Army
Speaker 1: Navy game. Sure, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but they
Speaker 1: had a day to kill, so they all started doing
Speaker 1: their Christmas shopping because there was sales in downtown Philly
Speaker 1: every year, and the place would be nuts. And this
Speaker 1: was where black Friday came from. Apparently the police department
Speaker 1: wanted to basically keep people away, so they'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: you don't want to go to downtown Philly, it's black Friday.
Speaker 1: And that was the original reason or origin of the term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see you saw in here. An article from
Speaker 2: the AP in nineteen seventy five, a sales manager at
Speaker 2: Gimbals was quoted of saying, that's why bus drivers and
Speaker 2: cab drivers call today black Friday. Yeah, they think in
Speaker 2: terms of the headaches that it gives them. So I
Speaker 2: learned something new when I read this. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: had no idea.
Speaker 1: It spread out of Philly, And then years later the
Speaker 1: retail lobbies and retailers themselves said, we got to come
Speaker 1: up with a better origin story this because we want
Speaker 1: this to be a day that people want to get
Speaker 1: out of their house and go shopping. You know.
Speaker 2: But we should point out even though it is not
Speaker 2: the day that companies go into the black as it were,
Speaker 2: which by the way, comes from when they did accounting
Speaker 2: by hand. You'd write in red ink or black ink,
Speaker 2: depending up that you were ahead with money or behind.
Speaker 1: Red ink meant you were in the hole. Yeah, black
Speaker 1: meant everything's.
Speaker 2: Good, exactly, even though it does not mean that. The
Speaker 2: holiday shopping season is when stores make up between twenty
Speaker 2: and forty percent of their retail profits. So it's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, even Emily's small business, like the I don't
Speaker 2: know about majority, but a large percentage of her yearly
Speaker 2: sales or you know, a couple of months, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's not just her. Apparently. In twenty thirteen, the
Speaker 1: National Retail Federation is predicting that Americans just in November
Speaker 1: and December. Chuck, are you ready for this? Yeah, Americans
Speaker 1: are going to spend six hundred and two billion dollars
Speaker 1: in November and December. That'skray, that's a lot of cash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two months.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't spend like I used to on Christmas.
Speaker 2: Emily and I sometimes will spend on gifts on each
Speaker 2: other or do that like a couple things where you like,
Speaker 2: go in and just do something nice for your house.
Speaker 2: And then like the adults on my side of the family,
Speaker 2: we don't exchange gifts anymore.
Speaker 1: Just dirty looks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you exchanged dirty looks now, Like my brother my
Speaker 2: sister will chip in usually and get my mom something
Speaker 2: kind of nice or give her offer her a service,
Speaker 2: like last year we replaced her fireplace with like a
Speaker 2: gas fireplace nice or build her a garden fence or
Speaker 2: tile her kitchen like something like that.
Speaker 1: Wow, your mom's got it. Yeah, she's an easy street
Speaker 1: is what you call that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Emily's family they all still exchange gifts, So
Speaker 2: I still have my Christmas gift swapping. Joan satisfied.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, you get your Christmas present on Yeah, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday,
Speaker 1: that day being called Black Friday, it's been around for
Speaker 1: a while and it's a really valuable day. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it kicks off that two month period where six hundred
Speaker 1: and two billion dollars is going to be spent on stuff.
Speaker 2: But it was created like Valentine's Day, it was literally created,
Speaker 2: and then the myth kind of became reality. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: because they said everyone's going to shop the day, it's
Speaker 2: the busiest day, and it became that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't until two thousand and four. Yeah, usually
Speaker 1: the Saturday before Christmas was actually the busiest shopping day
Speaker 1: of the year thanks to me. But the Retail Federation
Speaker 1: and all the retailers were like, well, we can't just
Speaker 1: we can't tout that is the busiest shopping day of
Speaker 1: the year. We want to like get people spending over
Speaker 1: the course of a couple of months, not the Saturday
Speaker 1: before Christmas. So they basically said Black Friday's the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it, like you said, it just kind of be
Speaker 1: came true just from people saying it over time.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised that they haven't come up with a catchy
Speaker 2: name for like Procrastinator's Day or something to like pump
Speaker 2: up that last Saturday again or something.
Speaker 1: Or to keep you from it. So they call it
Speaker 1: like Shame of the Nation Day something like that, to
Speaker 1: make you like go go do Black Friday Friday Saturday. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and there's this website called Black Friday Archive dot com.
Speaker 1: It's actually like kind of cool if you like nostalgic
Speaker 1: ads or whatever, nostalgia going back to two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: I should say, but it's just like scans of Black
Speaker 1: Friday print ads from those years, which are kind of neat.
Speaker 1: If you're totally bored out of your mind, go check
Speaker 1: out Black Friday Archive dot com. So Black Friday became
Speaker 1: a smashing success, like two thousand and four, two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. It's a relatively recent thing that it became
Speaker 1: what it is today here in the States, which is
Speaker 1: an out of controlled juggernaut shopping and consumeristic frenzy. Right.
Speaker 1: But so it was so successful overnight that the retailer said, well,
Speaker 1: let's figure out ways to extend this whole week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they came up a cyber Monday in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's pretty recent and it is the online shopping
Speaker 2: version of Black Friday, the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: And that was another thing they just made up, another
Speaker 1: self fulfilling myth that they said, that's the the workers
Speaker 1: go back to their computer after Thanksgiving on Monday and
Speaker 1: they do all their online shopping. Well that wasn't really true,
Speaker 1: but now it is because the retailer said it was
Speaker 1: and the media reported it.
Speaker 2: And not to be outdone in American Express invented Small
Speaker 2: Business Saturday, which is when you go out and support
Speaker 2: small businesses with your money.
Speaker 1: Especially ones that take American Express exactly.
Speaker 2: So there's it's interesting literally creating days to tell people basically,
Speaker 2: if you're not shopping to day, you're missing out on
Speaker 2: really good deals.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And the more days the better as far
Speaker 1: as retailers are concerned. But there's only so many days
Speaker 1: after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently, like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we pushed in the other direction rather from
Speaker 1: Friday on what's behind Friday? Oh yeah, Thanksgiving? We can't
Speaker 1: touch that for shame. Well, starting in twenty twelve, they
Speaker 1: started touching it. Walmart actually opened at eight pm on
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving in twenty twelve, and there was there was a
Speaker 1: general strike called that we'll talk about later. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: of that, because these stores are not supposed to be
Speaker 1: open on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is its own day. It's a
Speaker 1: day of being with family and celebrating and giving thanks
Speaker 1: Up until twenty twelve, it was sacrisanct.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This year, Macy's and J. C. Penny for the
Speaker 2: first time are opening on Thanksgiving, and Sears and Toys
Speaker 2: r Us as well on Thanksgiving evening, and Kmart is
Speaker 2: opening at six am on Thanksgiving, basically extending Black Friday
Speaker 2: through the weekend.
Speaker 1: Forty one hours.
Speaker 2: That's not a day.
Speaker 1: That's how long Kmart's going to be open. Black Friday
Speaker 1: at Camart lasts forty one hours. Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: And at shopping malls you're going to have some smaller
Speaker 2: stores doing the same thing. And estimated twenty to twenty
Speaker 2: five percent will be open at eight pm on Thanksgiving
Speaker 2: Day and two thirds will open at midnight. So essentially
Speaker 2: what's happening is Thanksgiving Evening is being ruined by retail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah, I think the retail would say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen that people, right, We've seen that
Speaker 1: people start lining up Thanksgiving afternoon Thanksgiving evening to wait
Speaker 1: for us to open like that, you know, the next morning,
Speaker 1: So why don't we just open? So, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of it goes both ways, but I
Speaker 1: pretty much see where you're coming from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, this year it's a little trickier too, because
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving comes on November twenty eighth, which is the latest
Speaker 2: suspend in eleven years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is that right? Yeah, two thousand and two. Yep.
Speaker 2: So weirdly, because they still sort of have to enforce
Speaker 2: Black Friday, they're actually shortening their own shopping season a
Speaker 2: little bit this year, right, which is probably why some
Speaker 2: I am are opening on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: That's exactly why it's six days shorter than usual this year.
Speaker 1: So just by the very existence by making up Black Friday.
Speaker 2: They've screwed themselves this year a little bit.
Speaker 1: They have by a week, yeah, because there's in other
Speaker 1: countries like Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, countries that observe
Speaker 1: the Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody
Speaker 1: gives everybody else presents and things like that, and they
Speaker 1: spend money. But those countries don't have a Black Friday,
Speaker 1: a day that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season.
Speaker 1: Those countries spend more over the course of the holiday
Speaker 1: season because they have a longer period of time to shop.
Speaker 1: So without Black Friday in America, the retailers would possibly
Speaker 1: make more money. So they've definitely painted themselves into a
Speaker 1: corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this
Speaker 1: year it's really kind of pointing out, like, we may
Speaker 1: be shooting ourselves in the foot here, so what can
Speaker 1: we do well. Their solution has been, well, we'll just
Speaker 1: take over Thanksgiving too, but that's not necessarily sustainable, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who are saying Black Friday
Speaker 1: is going to go the way of the dinosaur.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read an interesting article in the New Yorker
Speaker 2: this morning, finance article. I think it was New Yorker,
Speaker 2: it might have been New York Times, but this financial
Speaker 2: analy was basically analyzing how the sales go and sort
Speaker 2: of saying that it's really not financially the smartest approach
Speaker 2: to take for the over shoppers or the retail for
Speaker 2: the retailers to offer these huge, deep discounts and sort
Speaker 2: of blow it out in one day. A better, smarter
Speaker 2: financial approach would be to elongate the Sea's shopping season
Speaker 2: at a and not even discount things, maybe even raise prices.
Speaker 2: And his contention is that they're shooting themselves in the.
Speaker 1: Foot, right, But I think he's right.
Speaker 2: He probably is.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, if you were one of
Speaker 1: those people like me Frankly who went to the mall
Speaker 1: the day after Halloween, yeah, and saw that the lights
Speaker 1: were up, the garland was out, Santa's workshop was ready
Speaker 1: to go, like Halloween November one, Wow, the place was
Speaker 1: totally decked out for Christmas with Christmas carols piping through.
Speaker 2: Yeah. See that's that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But see without but that was the great thing about
Speaker 1: Black Friday. It's like, you, you know, you had a month
Speaker 1: of just kind of chilling out everything getting ready between
Speaker 1: between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Then you had Thanksgiving, and then
Speaker 1: the holiday season started. Without Black Friday, It's kind of
Speaker 1: like this this dam that's holding back the holiday season
Speaker 1: from spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out
Speaker 1: that it's an impedance to them making money, it probably
Speaker 1: won't start the official season any longer. It'll probably be
Speaker 1: further back from now on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think we're in I don't know about well,
Speaker 2: technically slightly in the minority. In twenty thirteen, fifty three
Speaker 2: percent of the population of American adults said they will
Speaker 2: shop on Black Friday.
Speaker 1: So fifty three percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that puts us in the minority by a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And in twenty eleven, one hundred and fifty two Americans.
Speaker 1: Fifty two million. Oh yeah, just one hundred, but they
Speaker 1: spent five hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred and fifty two. Really rich Americans. One
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty two million shopped on that day for
Speaker 2: an average of three hours at a time, which is
Speaker 2: not too long, but that's I mean, three hours is
Speaker 2: like it's longer weever.
Speaker 1: But I saw a woman who did sixteen though, like
Speaker 1: a sixteen hour stretch of shopping.
Speaker 2: She better have gotten it all done at least, I hope,
Speaker 2: so you know, yeah, like if she shopped for sixteen
Speaker 2: hours and only got like three gifts, yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: time we'll spend.
Speaker 1: There's also evidence that the Internet is basically knocking on
Speaker 1: Black Friday's door. Thanksgiving Day is the fastest growing online
Speaker 1: shopping day. Yeah, and I think like seventy percent of
Speaker 1: the people who said that they're going to shop on
Speaker 1: Black Friday, said they'll do some or most of it online.
Speaker 1: So the Internet's still there for retailers to make money.
Speaker 1: But the idea of Black Friday in store sales going
Speaker 1: extinct is probably not going to happen because it's its
Speaker 1: own thing. Like there's this one consumer psychologists or consumer
Speaker 1: analysts i think pointed out that it's a tradition number
Speaker 1: one nowadays and number two, there's a certain element of
Speaker 1: like sport to it. It's more than just getting a
Speaker 1: good deal. It's like, you know, throwing a fist at
Speaker 1: somebody while you're getting a good Dealer's something to it
Speaker 1: that transcends the whole thing.
Speaker 2: So we mentioned Doorbusters. It's a central part of the
Speaker 2: cog that is Black Friday, and it goes back in print,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, to the You're nineteen seventeen and
Speaker 2: anecdotally to eighteen ninety five, where in a retailer will
Speaker 2: basically say, you know what, we have one item or
Speaker 2: usually it's a few now, but some really deep, deep
Speaker 2: and really super great deals on just a few select items.
Speaker 1: So like, for example, a good laptop for one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty dollars. Yes, then like deals like that iPods
Speaker 1: for half off or a TV for yeah, like two hundred,
Speaker 1: like really really, like you said, very good discounts.
Speaker 2: But here's the deal. It's a scam people, it's a
Speaker 2: bait and switch. It's a bait and switch. They've only
Speaker 2: got a very limited amount of these select items, which
Speaker 2: is why the violence happens, which we'll get to in
Speaker 2: a minute. And then after that they're hoping you get
Speaker 2: in there. You don't get that laptop, but you're like,
Speaker 2: screw it. I'm at Walmart at five am. I might
Speaker 2: as well buy some stuff regular priced or slightly discounted items.
Speaker 2: And you know, that's how they get you in the store.
Speaker 2: That's how they get you.
Speaker 1: It is, and it is. It's true that these items
Speaker 1: do exist, and they are for that deal. They're there
Speaker 1: there for that price, I should say, but there's only
Speaker 1: like ten and in the fine print it's like one
Speaker 1: per person, and that deals is for in stock only,
Speaker 1: like you can't get a rain check or anything like that. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: But the concept that these deals do exist for those
Speaker 1: items that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically
Speaker 1: gets their hands on that item first gets that deal yeah,
Speaker 1: leads to doors actually being busted.
Speaker 2: It's called recipe for disaster. Yeah. All right, So before
Speaker 2: we get to the dark days and the bad stuff
Speaker 2: that can happen, truly, let's do a little message break.
Speaker 1: Okay, fish, fish.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go back a little bit to two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight and probably the well, I was going
Speaker 2: to say the darkest incident, but I think the Toys
Speaker 2: r US may be darker.
Speaker 1: I think this one's darker because d yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, all right. Two thousand and eight and
Speaker 2: Valley Stream, Long Island. It was at a Walmart and
Speaker 2: it was five pm on Thanksgiving, so basically people there
Speaker 2: the day before. It wasn't one of those days where
Speaker 2: it was open on Thanksgiving, so they're they're to wait
Speaker 2: till five am. So at least twelve hours ahead of time,
Speaker 2: there were about one thousand pe already set up there.
Speaker 2: Some people are camping out in tents, they're waiting, they
Speaker 2: got their coffee, they're probably slugging some jim Beam to
Speaker 2: warm the belly. And so the police came out and said,
Speaker 2: you know what, let's set up a buffer zone a barricade,
Speaker 2: which worked till about two am. When that was breached
Speaker 2: and the cops basically said, we're out of here. This
Speaker 2: isn't part of our job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the crowd had turned angry a little bit after that,
Speaker 1: so one of the store employees had some family members
Speaker 1: come and like they took them out of the line
Speaker 1: and took them in the store. Not a good idea, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But even if even if everyone in the crowd would
Speaker 1: have been cool with it, I don't think everybody in
Speaker 1: the crowd realized that they were family members of an employee. Sure,
Speaker 1: so the crowd actually turned like ugly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they broke through the barricade and were squeezed against
Speaker 2: You know how the stores have the entrance and then
Speaker 2: that little glassed and vestibule area before, and then usually
Speaker 2: a second entrance right to get into the store itself.
Speaker 1: So there was about by this time, there was about
Speaker 1: two thousand people waiting for the store to open. It
Speaker 1: was four am, the store's going to open at five,
Speaker 1: and a couple hundred were in between this little buffer
Speaker 1: zone and those front exterior doors and being pressed up,
Speaker 1: literally crushed to death. And there's this fascinating article in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker by a guy named John Seabrook called
Speaker 1: crush point, and it's about not just this incident, but
Speaker 1: just crushings in general. Where yea a crowd on that
Speaker 1: crush somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we covered that like years ago.
Speaker 1: It seems like it, Yeah, totally, But anyway, you check
Speaker 1: out that article.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people literally yelling, pushed the doors in chanting this,
Speaker 2: and just before five o'clock, it's it's a pretty bad scene.
Speaker 2: And workers in that vestibule area realized that there was
Speaker 2: a pregnant lady named Leanna Lockley being crushed against the doors,
Speaker 2: and so they were like, we got to get this
Speaker 2: lady in here, open the doors enough to squeeze her through.
Speaker 2: She got in, and then the crowd surged forward and
Speaker 2: it just kind of went downhill from there, and they
Speaker 2: still did the ten, nine to eight countdown.
Speaker 1: Isn't that mind boggling?
Speaker 2: It's mind boggling that they didn't. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: that the cops left.
Speaker 1: Yeah they said, they said apparently in the court deposition
Speaker 1: that the cops when they left said, controlling this crowd's
Speaker 1: not in our job description. Good luck. Walmart Hood hired
Speaker 1: a security force of two for the event. One person
Speaker 1: hadn't shown up, the other one was inside the store
Speaker 1: not helping. So they got a bunch of their stock guys,
Speaker 1: their their biggest dudes that they could find, ye, and said,
Speaker 1: come stand as vestibule and help anybody who like falls
Speaker 1: down or.
Speaker 2: That's what I would have been liking, dude, that's not
Speaker 2: in my job description exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, they they didn't say that. And when the doors
Speaker 1: finally opened after the festive countdown, while these people were
Speaker 1: being crushed against the front, unbelievable, the doors started to
Speaker 1: open and right when they opened, they actually gave way
Speaker 1: and were literally busted by this wave of humanity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at that point, the employees, their little roverline
Speaker 2: was completely ineffective.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: People are getting knocked down, some of the workers are
Speaker 2: getting blown out of the way. Some are jumping on
Speaker 2: vending machines. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, a couple of them like climbed up the
Speaker 1: coke machine to like get out of the way first
Speaker 1: safe harbor. One guy who was in the in the
Speaker 1: way of the crowd when the doors gave way. This
Speaker 1: article by John Sebrook puts it that he was blown back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So again, there's a vestibule. There's the outer doors, there's
Speaker 1: a vestibule. And then there's inner doors, and then there's
Speaker 1: the store. This guy got blown from the outer doors
Speaker 1: all the way through the vestibule, through the inner doors
Speaker 1: into the store by this wave of people. Two thousand people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just coming in all at once, all trying to get
Speaker 1: their hands on that doorbuster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like an iPod or something. Yeah, So that's not
Speaker 2: the end of the story. Sadly, people are getting crushed.
Speaker 2: This pregnant woman trips over some old woman. She's on
Speaker 2: the ground at this point, pregnant. Yeah. Leanna Lockley in
Speaker 2: danger of being, you know, trampled to death. And then
Speaker 2: she somehow managed to get to her knees and saw
Speaker 2: an employee. Do you know how to pronounce his first name?
Speaker 2: Jim Ta de Moore, Jim T de Moore. He was
Speaker 2: assigned to help people in case anyone fell fell down
Speaker 2: next to her. The doors fell on top of him,
Speaker 2: and two thousand people trampled over those doors and killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was trampled to death. He died of asphyxiation
Speaker 1: being crushed under the door. And he was a stop guy.
Speaker 2: At six am, six oh three am. He was pronounced
Speaker 2: dead one hour after the festive countdown to let people
Speaker 2: get into shop.
Speaker 1: And that was at the hospital an hour later. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he most likely died on the scene, and pretty awful.
Speaker 1: What's crazy, Chuck? If that story is not bad enough,
Speaker 1: tramplings are actually really common. Yeah, and like, somebody might
Speaker 1: not die, you might not be asphyxiated, and he might
Speaker 1: not have died had he not gotten caught under the door.
Speaker 1: But the people getting knocked down. If you want to
Speaker 1: see this, just go on to YouTube and type in
Speaker 1: black Friday, not even Black Friday tramplings. Just type in
Speaker 1: black Friday and you will see tons of compilations of
Speaker 1: store security footage of people coming in right when the
Speaker 1: store opens on a Black Friday sale, just climbing over
Speaker 1: one another, knocking each other down. Some people help other
Speaker 1: people up or drag them out of the way or whatever,
Speaker 1: but just as frequently people just climb over the ones
Speaker 1: who are down for a sale. It's insane. I seriously
Speaker 1: encourage everybody to go check out some video of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't believe that after this incident that there
Speaker 2: wasn't a law pass outlawing outright Black Friday sales.
Speaker 1: You know that is not happening.
Speaker 2: Well, but it's ridiculous because there's it's economists and analysts
Speaker 2: have proven that you can have like even it's not
Speaker 2: like they'd lose money. They would probably make more money
Speaker 2: if they didn't have these blockbuster sales. So it's not
Speaker 2: like they could say, well, like, you can't, you're keeping
Speaker 2: me from doing my business. I don't know. I just
Speaker 2: can't believe they can't outlaw something like this.
Speaker 1: So that was a pretty horrendous example of a crowd
Speaker 1: crush into trampling. Yeah, but other things do happen. You
Speaker 1: mentioned the Toys r Us in Palm Desert, California a
Speaker 1: couple of years back.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that was in two thousand and eight. These
Speaker 2: two women got in a fistfight and then their husbands
Speaker 2: got into it. And basically, first of all, these two
Speaker 2: men were carrying guns into a Toys r Us a
Speaker 2: Christmas shop, which a little weird, and they started a
Speaker 2: shootout with each other basically, yeah, and not a very
Speaker 2: skilled one apparently. I read about it like one guy
Speaker 2: forgot to cock his gun. The other guy like his
Speaker 2: didn't work either, So they start chasing each other through
Speaker 2: the store, through the store, shooting at each other. Yeah,
Speaker 2: luckily no one else died, but those two gentlemen shot
Speaker 2: each other and died, and it Toys r Us because
Speaker 2: of their wife's got in a fistfight.
Speaker 1: On Black Friday at a Toys Arrus during Christmas shopping.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised anyone else if they're running through the store shooting.
Speaker 1: I think everybody cleared out of their way. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't follow them around and be like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Where's the Doorbusters.
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart
Speaker 2: pepper sprayed some people in the video games. Initially, the
Speaker 2: cops sought, well, this lady was some Black Friday jerk.
Speaker 1: Which would make her a pretty awful person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But apparently the real story is, and she actually
Speaker 2: got out of it, was that her children were attacked, punched, kicked,
Speaker 2: thrown to the ground by shoppers trying to get an
Speaker 2: Xbox from these children, and so she defended her kids
Speaker 2: by pepper spraying these jerks.
Speaker 1: Right, And this thing still hasn't been settled. The most
Speaker 1: recent thing I saw was that a year on. So
Speaker 1: last year, the cops still hadn't filed charges, so I
Speaker 1: guess they believed her story.
Speaker 2: But she shopped anyway. After that happened, Yeah, and bought
Speaker 2: her items.
Speaker 1: So she pepper sprays a bunch of people, affects twenty people,
Speaker 1: causes a bit of a trampling pandemonium. And then two
Speaker 1: horrible things happen after that. One, like you said, the
Speaker 1: lady took her at kids and her items and went
Speaker 1: to the store and checked out. Yeah, bought her stuff. Second,
Speaker 1: the people outside the immediate circle where she pepper spray,
Speaker 1: but still in that little area, stuck around, still tried
Speaker 1: to get their hands.
Speaker 2: On the sale item and they're like checking out and
Speaker 2: their eyes and those are watering. Yeah, there's like just
Speaker 2: just ring it up. Let me get home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then of course took there's the workers as well.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, no one wants to work on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: And this year, like we said, a lot of retailers
Speaker 2: are opening on Thanksgiving and there's really not anything they
Speaker 2: can do about it if they want to keep their job, right,
Speaker 2: which is really sad. And Walmart employees planned a strike
Speaker 2: I think last year in twenty twelve, Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: didn't work. Only twenty six of the forty two hundred
Speaker 2: stores reported striking employees. So for fear of losing their jobs.
Speaker 2: Probably they had to come to work anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, Kmart in particular was criticized this year for opening
Speaker 1: at six am on Thanksgiving. Yeah, and Kmart said, these
Speaker 1: people don't have to work, like we're not forcing them
Speaker 1: to work, and their critics are saying, well, actually, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily true because you're using part time seasonal employees
Speaker 1: and there's no federal mandate that those people have to
Speaker 1: have holidays or time off. So therefore they're in a
Speaker 1: position where they either work or you can fire them legally,
Speaker 1: so they kind of do have to work. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of ugliness on Black Friday. But chuck, if
Speaker 1: you are just the average normal person, like my brother
Speaker 1: in law loves to go a Black Friday shopping and
Speaker 1: he'll go at midnight, Yeah, go to the Doorbuster sales.
Speaker 1: But he's like, he's not crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, the majority of them don't end in violence because
Speaker 2: this happens all over the country. He's are isolated incidents,
Speaker 2: so it's not like at every Doorbuster sale you're going
Speaker 2: to get trampled.
Speaker 1: But there is a risk, there is, and the people
Speaker 1: you want to look out for, apparently, is a study
Speaker 1: of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales, and it was
Speaker 1: a legitimate study. Sure. It said that you want to
Speaker 1: look out for the people who have done a lot
Speaker 1: of planning because they exhibit the most anti social behavior
Speaker 1: like shoving, pushing, yelling.
Speaker 2: They've got their plan in place exactly and nothing's going
Speaker 2: to alter.
Speaker 1: That, and they feel like they've really put the time
Speaker 1: in and they're not about to lose that doorbuster.
Speaker 2: Some jerk who's never done it before and just showed up.
Speaker 1: Who just lucked into line or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know that, Like remember the famous Who concert in
Speaker 2: the seventies where the people were trampled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's in that New Yorker article too.
Speaker 2: They got rid of general emission seating after that. Like,
Speaker 2: why can't they do something about this? You know, I
Speaker 2: think the law stepped in and said, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: you can't just open the doors to a concert venue
Speaker 2: and say first one in gets front row. They still
Speaker 2: have general admission, not for big arena shows.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah no, yeah, Well you know that there was
Speaker 1: like just one door open and like four others locked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and people were getting crushed up against the locked doors,
Speaker 1: and the people inside who are working at that concert
Speaker 1: like just never opened the doors even though people were dying.
Speaker 2: So remember what we cover that in Man. It is
Speaker 2: so like vivid in my mind from way early on
Speaker 2: because we studied the science of crowd surges.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was either, because this article
Speaker 1: is not that old.
Speaker 2: It's just like, no, it definitely wasn't about this. I
Speaker 2: had to do with something else. But yeah, dirty bad stuff.
Speaker 2: Or you can take another approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a different approach, you could say.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen nineties, an artist named Ted Dave gave
Speaker 2: birth to what's now called Buy Nothing Day, wherein people
Speaker 2: are encouraged to not buy anything for twenty four hours
Speaker 2: and to fight the power and consumerism by not showing
Speaker 2: up at all.
Speaker 1: And not just fight the power. The guy who created
Speaker 1: ted ted Dave, he's a Vancouver guy who came up
Speaker 1: with it in the nineties. It was also not just
Speaker 1: to stick it to the man, which I can only
Speaker 1: imagine if nobody bought anything in America on Black Friday,
Speaker 1: what kind of crippling effect that would have on the economy.
Speaker 1: But he was also saying personally, that's a good day
Speaker 1: to not buy anything and be take stock sure of
Speaker 1: how much you do maybe waste or spend or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just think about your consumer your consumerism for one day,
Speaker 1: dirty hippie, and during that time, like, don't buy anything, man,
Speaker 1: don't gass up your car the night before, don't get
Speaker 1: a bunch of milk the night before, like, just be normal.
Speaker 1: And on one day of the year, don't buy anything.
Speaker 1: And that's buy Nothing Day. And it's kind of become
Speaker 1: this big thing ever since ab Busters. The people who
Speaker 1: gave us Occupy Wall Street kind of found out about
Speaker 1: it and adopted it and just took the whole thing worldwide.
Speaker 2: It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: It is. So if you go to a Black Friday
Speaker 1: sale and you see a bunch of people dressed as zombies,
Speaker 1: they're making fun of you. They're making fun of zombie consumers.
Speaker 1: Same with the people who are dressed as sheep.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there's zenta clause. Maybe I'll do that.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll dress up as a sheep.
Speaker 1: Yeah and just walk around and buy in people's faces.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then if I'm there, I might you know,
Speaker 2: pick up a laptop. Right.
Speaker 1: There's also credit card cut up stations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, where you can get rid of your credit
Speaker 2: card and just shoot his consumerism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then there's the my favorite, the what is
Speaker 1: it the wordly gig conga line?
Speaker 2: Oh, I haven't heard of that? Is that to disrupt shoppers?
Speaker 1: Uh? The whole the whole point is it just kind
Speaker 1: of serve as a mirror I think to people like,
Speaker 1: look at yourselves.
Speaker 2: You're ridiculous. You think I look stupid. You're the one
Speaker 2: that looks stupid.
Speaker 1: Right, we're not even buying anything. But yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: it's kind of a twofold thing. It's one like just
Speaker 1: kind of reflecting personally slash sticking it to the man
Speaker 1: as an individual consumer, like realizing your power in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things. It's all kind of hinges on
Speaker 1: you spending your money and if you don't, then you're
Speaker 1: taking the power back or pointing out to other people
Speaker 1: just how ridiculous they're being at consumers. As consumers, people
Speaker 1: probably be like, would you get that cheap costume? Right? Exactly?
Speaker 2: What all was that on? So I've got one last
Speaker 2: thing I noticed the other day. I'd never heard of
Speaker 2: this before. In China. You think we like the shop.
Speaker 2: Chinese loved the shop and they have something that they
Speaker 2: have created called Singles Day, Okay, and it is on
Speaker 2: November eleventh, so eleven eleven. The four ones stand for
Speaker 2: single people, and they're basically like, hey, cause in China,
Speaker 2: I think you're encouraged to marry. So this is like, hey,
Speaker 2: be single, go out and treat yourself to something online
Speaker 2: and buy something because it's Singles Day and you should
Speaker 2: celebrate being single. Really, and it's a huge deal. They
Speaker 2: spent well, this e commerce platform in China called ali
Speaker 2: Baba is the one who really got behind it recently,
Speaker 2: and they spent five point seven billion dollars on Singles
Speaker 2: Day this year, which dwarfs Cyber Monday by three times
Speaker 2: almost Wow. And it's the biggest online shopping day in
Speaker 2: the world. And in the first six minutes this year,
Speaker 2: just a couple of weeks ago, they spent one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty million dollars in the first six minutes wow
Speaker 2: online in China, geez, just to celebrate being single, and
Speaker 2: they're encouraged the shop for themselves, which I don't think.
Speaker 2: We pointed out a lot of people on Black Friday
Speaker 2: when when asked, say that they do some of the
Speaker 2: shopping for themselves. Yeah, all gifts. It's like I want
Speaker 2: that laptop.
Speaker 1: I think forty forty seven percent or forty one percent
Speaker 1: of people who said they're going to stop on Black
Speaker 1: Friday so they'll do most of the shopping for themselves.
Speaker 2: I usually do that whenever I go out, like genuinely
Speaker 2: Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something for myself.
Speaker 1: But these people are saying they're mostly shopping for themselves.
Speaker 2: I don't mostly, but I'll just I'll just treat myself
Speaker 2: to something modest.
Speaker 1: And I want to say, Chuck, we're not. We don't
Speaker 1: begrudge anybody going to Black Friday sales. If that's your thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: enjoy it, that's fine.
Speaker 2: Just act like a human being.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't take anyone's life. No, don't trample over somebody
Speaker 1: who's fallen down. And most importantly, I have a very
Speaker 1: nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with, whether they're friends,
Speaker 1: family of old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some time to
Speaker 1: really enjoy this Thanksgiving day and relax and just be I.
Speaker 2: Agree, my friend. Yeah, it's Thanksgiving. Be with your family,
Speaker 2: turn off your smartphone, maybe even wow, really get crazy
Speaker 2: and just be in the moment. Yeah, how about that.
Speaker 1: And we give you permission to shout down anybody who
Speaker 1: says that trip to fan is what makes you sleepy.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Do you go ahead and send them straight?
Speaker 2: Yep? So Happy Happy Turkey Day Americans in other parts
Speaker 2: of the world.
Speaker 1: Whatever you're doing, I.
Speaker 2: Hope you're well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice, Chuck and Chuck. We should say that as usual.
Speaker 1: If everyone wants to send us happy Thanksgiving wishes, you
Speaker 1: can send us an email directly to Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
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