As reported on BBC news today, adoption of yet another American invention leads to one arrest and one fight at retailers.
Reports indicate 4 deaths and 67 serious injuries in the US attributable to "Black Friday" melee.

Accident by design?

For BBC news reports about 'Black Friday' respectively in the USA and UK see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25151956 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25154497

Can anyone comment as to how 'Black Friday' in the UK compares with the long-established practice of post-Christmas 'sales' in the UK? Also, do stores/shops in the USA have post-Christmas 'sales' like we do in the UK? If so, are they as frenetic and hazardous as 'Black Fridays'?

On an occupational note it seems likely that people working in retail, whether in the USA, UK or anywhere else, detest discount sale periods and having to deal with mass influxes of desperate shoppers. In addition, I guess that a proportion of retail workers are expected to work extra overtime just before sale periods in order to ensure that numerous items are re-labelled with their discount prices. :-(

Having worked in a shop over Christmas during my student days, can say with authority that most staff hate the sales with a passion! The place I worked at had a 12 hour spectacular (no naming but am sure you can guess the company). Shop closed at 8pm the day before and the staff had to spend the next 2 hours putting sales stickers on all the stock included in the sale (we had a list and had to ensure at least 90% of the stock on the shelves was labelled). By the time that had been done, it was closer to 11pm and were told to be at the store for 6am as the doors opened at 8am the next day.

I worked in the toy department which was next to home and there were literally folk throwing kids out of the way to reach what they wanted. We were told to ensure the displays were "tidy" but it was a loosing battle as shoppers hauled stuff onto the floor to reach a particular item. The tills were the worst - one lady had her card declined and security were called as she tried to punch a work colleague who couldn't process the sale (even if she wanted to, the system prevented her). Ugly side of retail...

As soon as the store closed (there were still folk trying to get served at 8.30pm - even though there had been several announcements saying the store was closed) we had to remove ALL the sales tickets. Any item found to contain a ticket, those in that section were shouted at big time as the store had to honour that price the next day. We even saw a person who had pocketed the sales tickets trying to add them to full price stock several days later [spotted on cctv before they went to the till point to be served!].

Weirdly, the January sales were quiet much quieter - home department was like a ghost town.

The Black Friday has something to do with profits announced by the American Companies i.e. whether they were in the red or black so this was a way for companies to shift stock quickly to meet the targets laid down by head office etc and thus be in the black by the time the figures are due to be calculated.

There's also now cyber Monday which is the online equivalent. Last night RBS computer system went into meltdown and wouldn't process any transactions so there will be a few irate customers who lost out on that "bargain" - at least their rage wasn't directed at a member of staff in a store (though would be interesting to see if there was a spike in domestic violence last night as a result - taking it out on the family sort of thing....).