Consumerism is ugly

It’s time people stop turning into crazed consumers on Black Friday. Is all that insanity worth a few bucks off on an item you and/or your loved ones don’t even need?

This story really fires me up. Kmart refused to price-match Sears even though they are the same company, but what’s worse is that the guy still ordered a Christmas Tree from them! If you’re not willing to voice your opinion by boycotting a company when they aren’t helpful they are going to continue to screw over their customers, just like Best Buy did to this guy who, quite frankly, is an idiot. Why would he continue and shop at Best Buy on Black Friday after they already screwed him over the year before? My brother was out on Black Friday and called me from Best Buy about a great deal on a TV which was very tempting but I passed because I don’t do business with that POS store.

You need to vote with your pocket book if there’s any chance that things will change. Are we as a nation really that desperate for junk that we’re willing to let companies walk all over us? Based on these stories we are, so I guess we deserve to be mistreated. If we continue to give our business to organizations who don’t give a crap about customer service then we don’t have any right to complain about the lack of it. If good customer service was truly important to the public people would refuse to shop at places who can’t offer it adequately.

And this story is just sad. Shoplifting is wrong, but a person doesn’t deserve to be killed for attempting it. Obviously if you work for a company you want to do what you can to prevent theft but in the end it’s the company (the same company who ultimately does not care about you since you’re just a vehicle to their profitability) who is losing out if someone gets away with stealing merchandise. It’s not worth your job, or jail time, to protect the company from losing money on a couple of DVD players. How much could those possibly be worth anyway? More than a human life? I think not.

This time of the year just depresses me with the rampant consumerism.