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November 17, 2009

Be courteous to your fellow shoppers while bargain hunting

Black Friday.

That’s the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season; the day after Thanksgiving, when stores across the country have super deals for consumers.

Last year, though, Black Friday took on a whole new meaning when an employee at a Wal-Mart in Long Island, N.Y., was trampled to death when shoppers waiting for the store to open broke down a door and streamed in. There even were reports of some violence in Enid, although nothing as serious as what happened in New York.

Wal-Mart has taken steps to ensure something like the tragedy in Long Island doesn’t happen again. For one, all Wal-Mart stores will be open 24 hours, which never was a problem here since the Supercenter already is a 24-hour operation.

The company also will establish some new crowd-control measures to prevent another tragedy.

We’re glad to see Wal-Mart stepping up on this issue, but we would hope shoppers, too, take a look at themselves. Especially in these tough economic times, we can understand people wanting to save money, but should common sense, decency and fair play take a back seat? We don’t think so.

These stampede-type sales have gotten out of hand. Retailers deserve some of the blame because they often put only a small number of some products out, thus feeding the frenzy, but shoppers share the responsibility.

Let’s all just keep our cool, enjoy the bargains and — most of all— be safe.

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