Seven years after Walmart employee Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death by the stampede of shoppers in the blitz line busting through the doors, Walmart has decided that Doorbusters were simply too literal. Bill Blare, reporting in No more doorbusters at Walmart at Junior College, writes: Wal-Mart said that stock will include more than a […]

Braving hypothermia huddling in line on a long cold night them fighting to avoid being trampled in the mad rush to wrap your arms around a really cheap flat screen television are declasse. Forget Cyber Monday, Walmart is not waiting to snare those on the other side of the digital divide to boost Black Friday. […]

Ho! Ho! Ho! The holiday shopping season starts Friday, 4 September, at Walmart, nearly three months before Black Friday and a whopping 112 days before Christmas. Krystina Gustafson, in Wal-Mart’s Holiday Layaway Program Begins Two Weeks Earlier for NBC News, breathlessly tell us” Wal-Mart shoppers will be able get a head start on their holiday […]

From Mother Jones: In case you haven’t noticed, Black Friday isn’t just on Friday anymore. The retail industry’s high-density mass of starry lights, Santa dioramas, and door-buster shopping deals really ought to be renamed the Black Hole—it just keeps sucking up everything around it. That holiday known as Thanksgiving? Pretty much gone. Especially if you […]

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

Ho, ho, ho. Guess what Walmart did only days after Black Friday? It jacked up the prices on nearly 2,000 toys. I guess that the Grinch decided that the sales figures were just too low and that he had been do something quick or risk losing his stock options. From Bloomberg: Wal-Mart managers in the […]

In the category of the-problem-is-not-just-Walmart,-Walmart-is-simply-the-greatest-offender-by-virtue-of-its-size I offer this video of a trampling — thankfully with no reported serious injuries — at a Target store in North Buffalo, New York. From Sociological Images: There is an analysis to be made here, and it involves something about American materialism and the orgy of consumption that is called […]

After Thanksgiving dinner at my brother’s house, the women in my family gathered around the table to sort through the Black Friday ads and guess what. They decided that there was nothing in the ads that was worth getting up in the middle of the night to fight for. You get the idea. Via The […]

So how are things down in the salt mines today?

I got this note (reprinted by permission) after my last couple of posts about Walmart’s traditional Black Friday scam: WalMart got that huge increase in earnings by the stores cutting payroll deeply. Our store has not replaced any of the numerous people who have quit in the last few months. And now we’re going into […]

The key phrase, printed in tiny disclaimer type at the bottom of the ad is: All items in this advertisement are available in limited quantities. Sorry, no rain checks. It is reasonably safe to assume that if you’re not in the first rush through the door, you’re not getting any. We all know what that […]

Growing up in the Hess household, the Christmas-morning rule was one, and only one present could be opened before breakfast (after I opened everything while the house slept one year). My worst year was in my early teens when I picked a box of briefs. Walmart says there will be more of that this year. […]

Last month it was the books, taking food out of Sarah Palin’s children’s mouths and crushing my hopes to ever become obscenely rich and obnoxious as the author of best-selling thrillers that Hollywood directors would fight over to option. But now they’re slamming each other over the feckin’ Easy Bake Oven? In what is emerging […]

Here’s a writer’s rule of thumb. When you read an assurance that “the following story is fictional and does not dipict any actual person or event,” you can bet the mortgage that, while license is taken, that the writer(s) are working from a news story. Happy Black Friday Walmart. Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.