Wal-Mart Uses Wristbands to Deter Holiday Shopper Melees

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-28/wal-mart-uses-wristbands-to-deter-holiday-shopper-melees.html

***SNIP

Crowd Management

The Occupational Safety & Health Administration cited the company for “inadequate crowd management,” and in May, 2009, said the worker died of asphyxiation after he was knocked to the ground and trampled by a crowd of about 2,000 shoppers who surged into the store for a “Blitz Friday” sale.

OSHA found that the store’s employees “were exposed to being crushed by the crowd due to the store’s failure to implement reasonable and effective crowd management principles.” Employees didn’t receive “the necessary training and tools to safely manage the large crowd of shoppers,” the administration found.

Wal-Mart was fined $7,000, the maximum penalty allowed under the law, OSHA said at the time. Wal-Mart denied any wrongdoing and has appealed the citation to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, an independent federal agency. The commission hasn’t issued a decision on the case.

Wal-Mart Wristbands

In recent years, Wal-Mart worked with crowd management experts and devised plans to address how shoppers flow through and out of its stores, Randy Hargrove, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. Last year, the chain began offering a One-Hour Guarantee that allows shoppers who are inside a store within one hour of a sales event to buy a given item and take it home that day or before Christmas, he said.

[underpants]

1. Oops sorry about that...here's $7,000

I see that they are staggering sales so everything isn't at 0 dark 30.

I also read that Best Buy did dry runs last week and everyone was weary of people having a few at dinner yesterday then going shopping but I don't see any news on that.