Walmart has transformed into Club Walmart by instituting a wristband policy. Customers began forming lines when the sun went down, Walmart’s management team had to find a way to keep traffic moving within the store to ward off theft and over capacity. The 24-hour store changed store policy for Black Friday, and decided to only allow a certain number of people into the store at a time after midnight. Meanwhile the people waiting in line for popular big ticket items like flat screen TV’s and laptops were given wristbands corresponding with their intended purchase and will have to return to the store after 5 p.m. to retrieve their items.
“This method was created to lower the possibility of pandemonium breaking out over the things people want the most and to alleviate the line wait. This way, those items will not actually be on the sales floor and consumers will have nothing to fight over and no reason to stick around,” said shift manager R. Wellington.
No stranger to Black Friday drama, it was only two years ago that Jdimytai Damour, a worker at a Walmart in Valley Stream, N.Y., was trampled to death by shoppers who broke through the store’s glass doors minutes before the store’s scheduled opening at 5:00 a.m. -marqueta smith
