Walmart attempts to contain Black Friday chaos and fails
All efforts on the company’s part to contain the chaos in their stores across the US were in vain, and customers suggest that the measures taken only made things worse.
The retail giant tried out several strategies and resources to reduce the mess generated by the annual holiday sales, from offering color-coded maps in its app to re-arranging aisles, but chaos reigned all the same.
In order to welcome as many customers as possible in an organized way, Walmart ended up creating what shoppers are calling a “maze,” and their good intentions were to no avail, with people complaining about the measures.
Black Friday enthusiasts took to social media to express their discontent about the way the management proceeded, with some of them feeling tricked by the store. Read more on our Twitter account @amomama_usa
"This Walmart is making people walk through the toy aisle to get to the checkout line. Y'all not slick. I don't want these toys!” user @SarahBree23 tweeted, outraged by the store’s attempt to place their products.
Apart from the crowd and the chaos, things even turned violent, with fistfights reported, and even an episode of gun violence taking place in Alabama.
“Wow Walmart really blocked most aisles creating a maze and exacerbating the capitalist craziness,” wrote user @ieojo.
“It was a total joke. We were in and out of @Target in under 15 mins but at @Walmart it took then 30 minutes to realize nobody made it to the checkouts because we were all stuck in the maze and nobody could move. They finally opened spots for us to make it to the registers.”
-Matt Paschke, Twitter, November 22, 2018.
Apart from the crowd and the chaos, things even turned violent, with fistfights reported, and even an episode of gun violence taking place in Alabama, with a 21-year-old man shooting a killing a 12-year-old girl on November 21.
Retailers like Walmart make the most out of the annual bargains, as the pictures of people filling their stores all over the country to find the best deals show, but their workers are still underpaid.
As Florida Today reminds us, we are living in a time of a massive income and wealth inequality, with tens of millions of Americans working for ridiculously low wages while their employers get richer by the minute.
Workers have been fighting for fair pay, and thanks to major grassroots campaigns, employees from big companies such as Disney and Amazon have managed to secure a wage of a least $15 an hour.
The Walton family, which owns Walmart, happens to be the richest family in the US, owning more wealth than 40% of the entire American population.
Still, Walmart workers are paid so poorly that they need assistance from the government to survive.
This is why Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and California Representative Ro Khanna have recently introduced the Stop Walmart Act with the hope of forbidding corporations to buy back their stock unless their workers get $15 an hour, have 7 days of paid sick leave and their CEO doesn’t make over 150 times as much as the common employee.