Thanksgiving has come and gone. In the past, the day after Thanksgiving meant being home with the family, eating leftovers and just relaxing in general. Well no more. Nowadays the day after Thanksgiving is the single largest shopping day in the Universe.

Each year, businesses taunt shoppers with "early bird" sales that begin around 6 a.m. These sales include dramatically lower prices on a few items which were highly overpriced to begin with. The pinnacle of this maddness? Wal-Mart, the final frontier for many shoppers. Last year, several members of the staff managed to attend one of these sales for observatory purposes. What they saw was a madhouse - a solid mass of tangled rednecks. The aisles were brimming over with flesh as the monster tore through the entire store leaving nothing but sorrow and destruction in its wake. Our researchers knew that this year would be no different as people would start camping the store at around 3 a.m. to begin polishing their brass knuckles to knock other shoppers into oblivion.

This year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. hit a single-day company sales record during the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving shopping sprees, taking in more than $1.52 billion nationally. Last year, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, reported sales of $1.43 billion for the Friday after Thanksgiving.

There were scattered outbreaks of holiday-shopping craziness. When the doors of a Wal-Mart store in Marietta, GA opened at 6 a.m., hundreds of people jammed inside, some losing their shoes, others running at full speed with their carts to stake a claim to discounted items. "It was an adrenaline rush," said Imbia Barry, who lost her scarf in the crowd. Barry, who arrived at 3:30 a.m., bought two HP Pavilion desktop computers with 17-inch monitors for $498 apiece, one for her grandmother and one for her daughter. She said they normally cost about $800. She also picked up a DVD player for her daughter for $29.96.

ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her. "She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!'" Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals. "All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday. Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seeming oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance. "She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything. She still can't believe it all happened." Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.

The sad part is we didn't make any of this up. The last three paragraphs came straight from the Associated Press, not edited at all.


staff out...

Previous News  |  The Ekaj Archives  |  Back to Main  |  Next News

Questions? Comments? Sugestions?  E-mail the staff.