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Wal-Mart (WMT) won't close Thanksgiving weekend -- not at all. The world's largest retailer is going to keep its stores open 24 hours in an attempt to manage demand for entry during the busiest shopping days of the year. The company has announced it will also implement other crowd-control measures. The festivities start at 5 AM on November 27, 2009. Of course, this doesn't involve any change fro the Wal-Mart Supercenters which already remain open 24 hours a day, but it does address the 800 stores that aren't.
The 24-hour access alone won't do much to alleviate the pressure from thrill-seekers and the bargain-crazed who will want to push through immediately. To help with this problem, Wal-Mart is allowing people to gather in different parts of the store when waiting for the deals to kick off. According to Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar, "If you've got a 200,000-square-foot store, people will be dispersed throughout the store instead of lined up outside the store." Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
As the old infomercial guys love to say ... "But wait, there's more!"
Wal-Mart has been advised to keep its hottest items far from each other, to prevent already large crowds around each from spiraling out of control by congealing around all the best deals, which happen to be right next to each other. Spreading the good stuff out means thinning the crowd a bit.
These crowd-control measures are required because of a Black Friday death last year. A temporary employee was trampled to death on November 28, 2008 when overzealous shoppers busted the doors down and trapping the worker, who died of asphyxiation. As part of the settlement, Wal-Mart had to improve how it handles hordes in its 92 New York stores, set up a $400,000 victims compensation fund and donate $1.5 million to social services programs and nonprofit organizations.
But, the retailer didn't have to admit any guilt.
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