Forthcoming Black Friday raises ghosts

In just two weeks, a long-anticipated day will finally be here. It is one of the most important days of the year — one many Americans prepare for with great urgency and excitement. It is the day that shows us what it means to be a proud citizen of this country, the day we remember what matters most: Black Friday.

Black Friday is a day when Americans embrace the commercial chaos of Christmas time after stuffing themselves full of turkey, pie and a plethora of other wildly unhealthy foods. It is the culmination of a holiday of gluttony.

I look forward to Black Friday every year. My best friend and I always wake up at 3 a.m. and park ourselves in the mile-long line outside of Wal-Mart, shivering and yawning in the cold night air, waiting for the blessed hour of 5 a.m. to arrive so that we can shove and fight our way to the unbelievably low-priced merchandise.

Last year, I sprinted across the store and snagged the last KitchenAid mixer on sale for $100 less than usual. I injured my ankle in the process, but it did not matter. I was ecstatic.

Those who look upon the commercial greed that surrounds Black Friday with disdain simply do not understand the joy of passing out at 10 a.m. surrounded by plastic bags, knowing that not only have you succeeded in completing your Christmas shopping for the year, but that you have done it at a considerably lower cost than anyone who goes to the store on a regular day. Critics view Black Friday devotees as completely delirious. And, to be honest, they have a point.

Last year, Wal-Mart experienced a horrifying tragedy when crazed shoppers in Valley Stream, NY trampled to death an employee — a 34-year-old man named Jdimytai Damour. The news struck the nation: It was a ghastly example of just how vicious and thoughtless human beings can be when placed in unnatural circumstances fueled by greed and selfishness.

Damour’s death was a wake-up call for the various big-chain businesses that take advantage of Black Friday with line-forming sales, and they are taking action to prevent any similar tragedies in the future.

This year, Wal-Mart is implementing new crowd control procedures designed by experts who manage the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

Each individual store will have its own customized plan to facilitate the way customers wait, enter, shop and exit. Instead of letting in the first shoppers in the early morning, most Wal-Marts will open Thursday morning and stay open straight through Friday evening. This will prevent mile-long lines from forming on the sidewalk outside, which make shoppers restless and uncomfortable.

For specific hot-ticket items, customers will be able to enter the store at any time and line up at those particular merchandise displays.

The products will still go on sale on Friday at 5 a.m., but workers supervising the lines will hand out the goods to the customers in the order in which they joined the line until they run out of stock.

Will the changes really do any good? It would be wonderful to think so, but let’s be honest: People are scary. Just as I have sprinted across aisles full of goods to buy some material item I could easily go without, countless others have been infected with Black Friday delirium.

While the new system will control the dangerous mad dash attack through the store caused by the former flooding-of-the-gates technique, it threatens to create an entirely new form of chaos. The stakes of the competition have just been raised.

Now, instead of lining up outside of the store the night before, the most manic shoppers will be walking into Wal-Mart to camp out at 6 a.m. on Thursday. It is likely that anyone delirious enough to think they stand a chance of buying a $300 big-screen TV if they enter the store on Friday is going to be severely disappointed — and angry.

Basically, if anyone wants in on Wal-Mart’s unbeatable prices, they better be willing to sacrifice their Thanksgiving, which is just not fair.

Other major big-box stores, such as Best Buy and Toys-R-Us, who have not yet experienced any major problems, are going about business as usual, but tensions are high this year. The country is slowly making its way out of a recession, but people are still going to do whatever it takes to save some money.

Black Friday is a time-honored retail tradition. But its existence may soon need to come to an end. No matter how great it may be for our struggling economy, if the madness continues to escalate, more people are going to get hurt.

No $5 toaster oven is worth endangering a fellow human being. Yes, I will be roaming the strip malls in the early Friday morning darkness scouring the town for deals — and I encourage you all to do the same. Let’s just hope the new security measures successfully tame the madness that threatens to rise among the masses.

Amy Baack is a senior majoring in cinema-television production.