There’s No ‘I’ In Black Friday3

by Brett Warner

“In the United States, Christmas has become the rape of an idea.”
– Richard Bach

“This job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking customers.”
– Randall Graves

My enemy is a short, middle-aged African American woman wearing a purple felt winter coat and black leather gloves. We’re standing in the Politics section of Borders Books in the Southland Mall of Taylor, Michigan with one of my co-workers and a tall, white sweater-wearing man looking on from the sidelines. I’m holding a small hardcover book — not shelved in Politics, as the woman had claimed, but in Sociology. Caught mid-task in the midst of Holiday mall shopping pandemonium, she’d asked for help finding a book in this section. Escorting her here, a quick look on the Book Search computer revealed the title’s true location.

“Wait here, I’ll be right back,” I told her briskly but politely, as I rushed three or four shelves over to retrieve her book. When I returned, it was Foreman versus Ali, Round 8 — this woman was pissed.

“Why’d you leave me just standing here?” she demanded, pointing at another nearby Borders bookseller who was scouring the shelf for a long-lost title, “Why aren’t you looking for my book like she is?”

Trying to gingerly explain to her that the title in question was not in Politics but in Sociology was a moot exercise. She was here to fight and wouldn’t back down until drawing blood.

For millions of other fucking asshole Americans like this lady, the day after Thanksgiving is the apex of their self-centered, consumerist-fueled shopping addiction. Dubbed “Black Friday” and feared by goosebump-bearing, underpaid retail peons everywhere, it’s the undeclared national holiday in which we finish being thankful and start being maniacs. Visions of $100 laptops and Tickle Me Elmos dance in half-sleeping heads, as they gather at ungodly hours and stand in inhumanely long lines just to be the first one to spoil their kids, grandkids, and other snot-nosed relatives with whatever new thing they’re convinced they can’t live without. Love may have a price tag, but courtesy is a priceless commodity for the millions of poor souls on the losing side of a lanyard nametag. Like a terrified G.I. buried in the trenches, they stand behind their cash registers and service desks praying only for reprieve – that this cursed day would just hurry up and be over.

For 34 year-old Jdimytai “Jimmy” Damour, that end came tragically early. The Queens, New York resident spent Thanksgiving 2008 at his half-sister’s house before leaving straight for the midnight shift at his job, stocking at the Green Acres Mall Wal-Mart in Valley Stream. Around 3:30AM, the county police had to be called in to control the unruly crowd waiting outside. At 4:55 — five minutes before Wal-Mart’s early bird Black Friday opening hours began — a crowd of more than 2,000 people broke through the glass double doors, pushing back against the defenseless, barricade-forming employees inside. Damour was there at the front lines, and as the stampede of insatiable shoppers swarmed through the now-open doors, the minimum-wage earner was thrown back and trampled to death. Paramedics tried to revive the temporary holiday employee, but he was declared dead at the local hospital an hour later.

Black Friday’s origins are outlined vaguely on its official website:

The term “Black Friday” was coined in the 1960s to mark the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season. “Black” refers to stores moving from the “red” to the “black,” back when accounting records were kept by hand, and red ink indicated a loss, and black a profit. Ever since the start of the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the Friday after Thanksgiving has been known as the unofficial start to a bustling holiday shopping season… In the 1960’s, police in Philadelphia griped about the congested streets, clogged with motorists and pedestrians, calling it “Black Friday.” In a non-retail sense, it also describes a financial crisis of 1869: a stock market catastrophe set off by gold spectators who tried and failed to corner the gold market, causing the market to collapse and stocks to plummet.

Hearing his story, I couldn’t begin to imagine what behind those glass double-doors was worth Jdimytai Damour’s life. A little Googling reveals that Wal-Mart’s 2008 Black Friday markdowns included a pair of Samsung plasma HD TV’s for $798, a $128 Magnavox Blu-Ray player, and $136 Nintendo DS consoles. Two years later, Amazon lists the DS at $129.99. I’m sure that Jimmy’s family is consoled by the knowledge that he died so that those pigs outside wouldn’t have to wait for their precious Nintendos. (After closing the store for a few hours to remove the broken glass and dead/injured bodies of their employees, Wal-Mart reopened later that afternoon.)

The quickest, easiest way to ruin the holiday season is to work in retail. Underpaid and under-appreciated, there’s no $5 toasters or big-screen TVs for these men and women– only the promise of 8-12 hours of chaos, name-calling, pushing, shoving, and serious cases of the good ol’ American gimmie gimmies. Sure, you can get the same deal online that morning, but there’s something about starting up the car at three AM, driving to the mall, and stomping a man on the head that just conjures up all those warm, festive holiday spirits in our hearts. We hate most of our family, so to let off steam, goddamn it if we won’t brutally injure any Wal-Mart employee or eight-months pregnant woman who gets in the way of us buying them a computer.

Although mall retail days are thankfully long behind me, I still remember that confrontation with the angry woman in Politics every November 23-29.

“Is it because of the color my skin?” she demanded, and with that, the fight was over. K.O. “Do people still say that?” I wonder to myself. On Black Friday they sure do. It’s one of the bitter ironies that our big box, customer service-crazy retail system instills nothing but polite smiles, thank yous, and have a good days in the heads of its countless minimum wage drones, heads that could be just as easily cracked open by an eager winter boot at 4:55 in the morning.

I had no answer for her question. She’d won this one. Shaking my head and sighing heavily, I turned and walked away, in search of the next hapless jerk willing and able to make this the least wonderful time of the year.