My staff is busy. This is Christmas. The Crowded Day 1954 starring Thora Hird & John Gregson & Joan Rice & Freda Jackson & Patricia Marmont & Josephine Griffin & Sonia Holm & Patricia Plunkett & Rachel Roberts & Vera DAy & Sid James & Prunella Scales et al, director John Guillermin, bloke with dummy
We countdown the fifteen most extreme cases of retail rage. When prices fall, chaos soars. Crime Stories: Shopping to Extremes
Orlando Brawl: The day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday ... Wal-Mart: these people have been in line for more than seven hours; they’re hoping to land one of a limited quantity of HP Pavilion laptop computers ... When one man tried to cut the line, all hell breaks loose. ibid.
iBook Melee: In Henrico, Virginia, the local school board had a surplus of Macintosh iBooks ... Public interest soon grew out of control ... More than 5,500 begin massing at the raceway at 1.30 a.m. ... Four people were sent to the hospital and seventeen others suffered serious injuries. ibid.
Range Rover Rampage: The crew took home a giant car-load of floor-model electronics and made off into the night. But what they didn’t realise was that these particular floor-models didn’t have any electronics in them – they were for display purposes only. ibid.
Refrigerator Rundown: Australia ... A chain of stores named Myer’s, and recently an in-store refrigerator promotion teetered on the brink of chaos. ibid.
Hair Raising Stampede: Wal-Mart outside Grand Rapids, Michigan: In the pre-dawn hours a massive crowd of bargain hunters restlessly waits ... Her fellow shoppers step right over her. ibid.
Best Buy Beatdown: Best Buy electronics retail a crowd has been forming .. Some alpha-male fist-fight. ibid.
Slap, Choke, Sale! Louisiana Toys-R-Us: A couple of self-appointed hall monitors try to impose order. ibid.
Laptop Frenzy: Seattle, Washington Wal-Mart: a local big-box store offered plasma screen TVs and laptop computers at huge discounts ... Security guards call in the cops. ibid.
Boost Crew: Miami area clothing store: the power of a crowd to overwhelm store security. ibid.
PS3 Mayhem: these costumed Nintendo fans in New York City waited for days for the Wii gaming console. And these devotees of the XBox360 game Halo 3 spent hundreds of hours in line ... Fresno, California: the launch of the PS3 gaming system causes a dangerous mob scene and would-be gamers mass in the thousands. ibid.
Musical Chairs: Wal-Mart Milwaukee, Wisconsin: a devilish game of musical chairs ... It’s survival of the fittest. ibid.
Sacramento Stampede. ibid.
Running of the Brides: a one-day sale of deeply discounted wedding dresses. ibid.
Cabbage Patch Crazy: The most popular toy of all time was born in a cabbage patch. ibid.
Tank Top Caper: Sears in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania ... This vigorously tattooed lady doesn’t wait for sale prices to trigger her inner shopper. ibid.
Win or lose, we go shopping after the election. Imelda Marcos
I spend all day thinking of shopping. I love the thrill of finding that wonderful, perfect thing, the feeling of your heart racing because it’s so right. Mindy Grossman
I find shopping too stressful. I get hot and flustered and irritated and feel sick after I’ve bought something. Alison Goldfrapp
Go to a tea shop anywhere along the Ganga, sir, and look at the men working in that tea-shop – men, I say, but better call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, crushed humans in crushed uniforms, sluggish, unshaven, in their thirties and forties or fifties but still ‘boys’. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger p51
For the last sixty years British retailers have led the world and changed the way we live from family-run empires to supermarket giants, and from fashion boutiques, fashion moguls. Robert Peston Goes Shopping I, BBC 2015
Retail is something we’re good at: it employs one in nine of us. ibid.
Since the 1890s manufacturers had set the prices at which their goods could be sold. ibid.
M&S was the first large British retailer to introduce its own brand. ibid.
This consumerism was spurred by television. ibid.
Alan Sainsbury set about developing a British version of the supermarket. ibid.
The retail revolution of the ’90s and early 2000s ... These were the boom years when big beasts stalked the high street looking to make a killing. Robert Peston Goes Shopping II
We racked up big debts to pay for all that lovely stuff ... Our love affair with shopping became a dangerous addiction. ibid.
Tesco would become a colossus, expanding relentlessly at home and abroad. ibid.
In 1978 more than three-quarters of a million people were employed in textiles and clothing – that had slumped thirty years later to less than ninety thousand. ibid.
Much of retail is show. ibid.
The rise of online shopping ... would change the face of our high streets ... The internet would change everything. Robert Peston Goes Shopping III
Amazon ... can discount heavily. ibid.
Woollies wasn’t the only casualty ... Many went bust ... Jessops, Habitat, Blockbuster, Clinton Cards, HMV, MFI and Comet – all of them collapsed into administration. ibid.
‘There’s just charity shops in the high streets and coffee shops.’ ibid. consumer
Pawnbrokers have been booming ... Today there are more than two thousand. ibid.
Hire-purchase is enjoying something of a revival. ibid.
The shopkeeping classes are also being slowly but surely crushed out of existence by the huge companies that are able by the greater magnitude of their operations to buy and sell more cheaply than the small traders. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Over 12% of shops’ annual sales are made in the festive period. Oxford Street Revealed s1e10
Shoplifters on Oxford Street – they’re trickier than ever. Oxford Street Revealed s2e4
I went to the paper shop – it had blown away. Tommy Cooper
What is it about the British and the corner shop? The corner shop has always been there for us, a British institution. Timeshift: Booze, Beans & Bhajis: The Story of the Corner Shop, BBC 2016
But a shopping revolution was on the horizon … now engaged in a David & Goliath battle with the supermarket. ibid.
Waiting in the wings were a new generation of proprietors. ibid.
‘One of the only options was the work for yourself.’ ibid.
Asian shops are particular targets for attacks. ibid.
Fags, Mags & Bags is about the minutiae of the corner shop. ibid.
How Walmart is Destroying America (and the World). Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, book Bill Quinn, 2005
I’ve seen a lot of small communities crucified and forced out … It appears that that is their intent. ibid. Don Hunter
Walmart drives down retail wages $3 billion every year. ibid. caption
Walmart public costs: $86 to California taxpayers; $25 million more to County taxpayers: health care, income tax credits, housing subsidies, food stamps. ibid.
Walmart workers on public assistance: Alabama: 3,864 children of Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicare; Arizona: 2,700 workers on Medicaid … Walmart costs taxpayers $1,557,000,000 to support its employees. ibid.
Walmart is very opposed to unions. ibid. Jon Lehman, store manager 19 years
$7,000 anti-union camera package per store; $30,000 undercover spy van per store; $100,000 24-hour anti-union hotline; $7,000,000 rapid response team with corporate jet. ibid. caption
Walmart is fighting legal battles with scores of former employees in 31 states, hourly workers who say the company has cheated them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay. ibid. news report
Walmart is paying $11 million to settle federal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores. ibid. news report
We truly are living the American dream. ibid. television advert
City of Cameron gives Walmart $2.1 million to set up shop. ibid. caption
Currently in the US there are 26,699,678 square feet of empty Walmarts. ibid.