Review
A Globe and Mail Notable Book
“In a masterful blend of facts and metaphors, Laird tells a story of bargain retailing that is interesting in its own right. . . . evocative . . . Laird lays bare the cost of those bargains in compelling detail.”
— Globe and Mail
“Gordon Laird is a reporter of rare skill and extraordinary thoughtfulness, and he has fixed his keen eye on one of the most crucial questions of this young, tumultuous century: the true cost of things.”
— Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope
“Gritty and entertaining . . .”
— Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands
“An alarm call, but not alarmist.”
— Kirkus Reviews
"In grab-you-by-the-lapels stories, Laird tells you the real cost of your got-it-for-nothing storegasm."
— Greg Palast, investigative journalist and author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
“Thorough, informed and relevant . . . Neither shrill nor self-absolving, Laird quietly questions where we’ve been and where we’re headed.”
— Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“[Laird] plots a direct line from our bargain-hungry hands to disasters such as Alberta’s tar sands, human-rights abuses in China and our hollowed-out economy.”
— Canadian Geographic
“In a masterful blend of facts and metaphors, Laird tells a story of bargain retailing that is interesting in its own right. . . . evocative . . . Laird lays bare the cost of those bargains in compelling detail.”
— Globe and Mail
“Gordon Laird is a reporter of rare skill and extraordinary thoughtfulness, and he has fixed his keen eye on one of the most crucial questions of this young, tumultuous century: the true cost of things.”
— Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope
“Gritty and entertaining . . .”
— Andrew Nikiforuk, author of Tar Sands
“An alarm call, but not alarmist.”
— Kirkus Reviews
"In grab-you-by-the-lapels stories, Laird tells you the real cost of your got-it-for-nothing storegasm."
— Greg Palast, investigative journalist and author of the New York Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
“Thorough, informed and relevant . . . Neither shrill nor self-absolving, Laird quietly questions where we’ve been and where we’re headed.”
— Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“[Laird] plots a direct line from our bargain-hungry hands to disasters such as Alberta’s tar sands, human-rights abuses in China and our hollowed-out economy.”
— Canadian Geographic
Product Description
A brilliant investigation into the true cost of our bargain economy — and the end of consumerism as we know it
Ours is the age of discount: we want more, cheaper, better. But the result is low wages, urban blight, environmental damage, labour abuses, a cookie-cutter model of progress, and now an international economic crisis. With an eye for documentary storytelling and investigative detail, Gordon Laird traces the bargain from its humble dollar-store origins to its place as global juggernaut. From Alberta’s tar sands to China’s factories, from Las Vegas to the Arctic Circle, a single question emerges: how will we survive the bargain?
Ours is the age of discount: we want more, cheaper, better. But the result is low wages, urban blight, environmental damage, labour abuses, a cookie-cutter model of progress, and now an international economic crisis. With an eye for documentary storytelling and investigative detail, Gordon Laird traces the bargain from its humble dollar-store origins to its place as global juggernaut. From Alberta’s tar sands to China’s factories, from Las Vegas to the Arctic Circle, a single question emerges: how will we survive the bargain?
About the Author
Gordon Laird is the bestselling author of Power and Slumming It at the Rodeo, and the winner of several National Magazine Awards. His writing and commentary have been featured on CNN, National Public Radio, and CBC Radio and Television, and in Mother Jones, Maclean's, and more. He lives in Calgary.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION: BLACK FRIDAY, 2008
They emerged from the darkness and gathered like pilgrims, lining up beneath floodlights in the parking lot. Well before midnight, the first shoppers had already settled into chairs and under blankets for the long, cold vigil that was being staged outside nearly every major discount outlet across America.
But only one mall would be remembered in the years to come. By 1:00 a.m., hundreds had gathered in front of the Wal-Mart at Long Island's Green Acres Mall. All were there with a singular purpose. They had come for $9 dvds and $5 Hannah Montana dolls that Wal-Mart had advertised in local flyers; others wanted the $25 microwaves and, most of all, 42-inch LCD televisions that had been marked down to $598. Everyone had a game plan for the store's 5:00 a.m. opening, because when big-box stores open on the first Friday after American Thanksgiving, shopping becomes a competitive sport. Above the crowd of shoppers, in five-foot-high letters, was the promise emblazoned on nearly every Wal-Mart in the world: Satisfaction Guaranteed. As in previous years, most retailers opened for only a brief period during the early morning and offered only limited supplies of aggressively discounted products, so shoppers had come to expect lineups.
This morning was different. As Nakea Augustine recounted, when she arrived at Green Acres Mall at 2:00 a.m., the line was already two thousand people long. Having studied Wal-Mart's flyer, she was keen on the Hot Wheels Barbie Jeep advertised at more than 50 percent off. As she and a friend discussed shopping strategy, there was a violent surge from behind. "It got scary out of nowhere," says Augustine. "The crowd in the back just pushed." Someone grabbed her pocketbook off her shoulder, ripping her coat open. Others were punched and pushed to the ground; scuffles broke out.
Above the growing melee, someone had posted a handwritten sign: Blitz Line Starts Here. As the rowdy crowd counted down to five o'clock, the fights and pushing continued. Some shoppers, already injured, left the scene. There were broken arms, bruises, and head injuries. Inside, the eight security guards assigned to the front door began to worry.
On that morning of November 28, 2008, bargain-hungry crowds were staring down guards and doormen across America. Gunshots were fired at a Toys "R" Us store in Palm Desert, California, and two people were killed. Reports of fighting, damaged property, and vandalism filtered through the news. "They're more aggressive," one seasoned Wal-Mart shopper told the New York Times. "I've never seen anybody fight like this. This is crazy."
Facing a potentially bottomless recession, record numbers of shoppers turned out at ungodly early hours to save a few dollars on Christmas toys for their kids, stock up on necessities, or score a luxury television or stereo before things got worse. In the end, an estimated 172 million people – just over half of North America's total population – would go shopping that Black Friday weekend.
From Long Island, Queens, and Brooklyn, the locals who converged on the Green Acres Mall had plenty of their own worries. The regional economy had been shedding jobs and struggling with slow growth for the better part of a decade. Clusters of big-box stores, supercentres, and strip malls had grown while traditional manufacturing withered and housing values dropped. Consequently, Long Island boasted some of New York State's top foreclosure rates in 2007, notably affecting visible-minority residents. Only a few weeks before Black Friday 2008, Long Island had proclaimed itself to be officially in recession.
If people had any chance of maintaining their standard of living and enjoying the consumer riches they had become accustomed to during the holiday season, they would need bargains – and lots of them. Retailers did not disappoint. With offers of up to 70 percent off – virtually giving products away in a calculated effort to bring in traffic – Black Friday 2008 marked the very pinnacle of discounting, one of the greatest consumer payoffs of all time.
"Five, four, three, two, one!" Beneath the blue and white Wal-Mart sign at Green Acres, the entrance doors opened a crack. The crowd surged forward with a force that knocked one of the doors off its hinges. One security guard used it as a shield against the torrent of people that streamed into the store. The door crumpled, its glass smashed, and people and workers began to fall inside Wal-Mart's foyer as more than two thousand manic shoppers rushed in. There were screams and panic as people poured over several fallen shoppers, security guards, and broken glass.
Eyewitnesses in the crowd would later recall that security guard Jdimytai Damour, thirty-four, was one of the first ones trampled to the floor. The temp worker had been recruited for door duty on Black Friday, along with several other workers who were employed by a service contractor that Wal-Mart had outsourced. Damour had already been working at the store for about a week in maintenance; like most others on duty that morning, he had no training in security or crowd control. He was built like a linebacker – six-foot-five, 270 pounds – but when the doors opened, he was quickly overrun after attempting to push people back. He had been protecting a young woman, Leana Lockley, who had also fallen. "I was screaming that I was pregnant, I am sure he heard that. . . . He was trying to block the people from pushing me down to the ground and trampling me," the nursing student recounted. "Mr. Damour was to the right of me, he was on his knees. I could look at him eye to eye, and he was trying to push them back, and the crowd pushed him down, and he fell on top of me."
Lockley was pulled to safety by her husband. Damour did not get up as more shoppers streamed over him. Other witnesses reported that he was gasping for air as people stampeded forward. Incoming crowds stepped on and knocked against police as they attempted to perform CPR on an unresponsive Damour. By the time paramedics arrived on the scene, most of the first wave of shoppers had passed through the entrance and filled the store. Inside, shoppers guarded the televisions; others swarmed the toy section. Damour died on the concrete floor between two vending machines, just inside Wal-Mart's entrance and only a few feet from where the greeters usually stand. While a small crowd had gathered around the horrible scene, many continued to shop. The store itself did not close until well after the paramedics had given up their attempts to revive Damour and police had begun to investigate the circumstances of his death. Nassau Police later described it as "utter chaos" and estimated that Damour had been "literally stepped on by dozens, if not a hundred, people." Damour's co-workers stood and said a prayer for him.
A full two hours after the opening rush, and an hour after Damour had been declared dead, shoppers were told that there had been a fatality and that the store was closing. Many refused to leave. One witness told the New York Daily News that shoppers acted like "savages." "When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been in line since Friday morning!'" said Kimberly Cribbs. "They kept shopping."
Four shoppers were also injured; Wal-Mart would later pay nearly $2 million in damages. "They took the doors off the hinges," said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, still in shock. "He was trampled and killed in front of me. . . . I didn't know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back."
For better and for worse, ours is the age of the bargaineers – the engineers of bargains – whose factories extend from rice paddies to suburban basements everywhere. Each year we are drawn to their doors by the millions. And if it's not Wal-Mart that reels us in, then it's its big-box brethren – Costco, Home Depot, Best Buy, ikea, Tesco – or smaller fish like the local dollar store. There are never single, isolated bargains. Most of us stalk value on a serial basis, sometimes in full contravention of common sense. Row upon row, aisle upon aisle, this realm of affordability, selection, and discount is a dominant force in today's world.
From family-owned discount stores to the world's largest company, it's all there: your next iPod, laptop, snack food, and the stuffed animal you take to a sick relative in hospital. This is you, even before you know it. And all of it is priced to sell. Nearly everything from clothing to electronics has miraculously decreased in price since the early 1990s. And if you're not getting it cheaper, then you've probably gained on quantity or quality, the outcome of a global economy that's been on rollback for the past two decades.
When we buy at our local dollar store or big-box mall, we embrace revolution: the most advanced logistics, marketing, and manufacturing net work ever invented. At one time our most expensive commodities – oil, diamonds, metals – were the core business of the planet's largest and most powerful corporations. Now snack food, paper goods, and pet supplies are the world's best-selling products and have been the unlikely building blocks of globalization since the 1990s. By 2008 Wal-Mart's $405 billion in annual revenue surpassed the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, underlining the degree to which affordable consumerism has come to dominate global trade.
It's all part of a global shopping marathon that helped turn the world's developed nations into consumer economies. By the time Wal-Mart became the world's largest company in 2002, consumer spending comprised roughly 70 percent of all employment and economic activity within developed nations. Economists call this the service economy, and it is anchored largely by economic activity in finance, technology, and retail and wh...
They emerged from the darkness and gathered like pilgrims, lining up beneath floodlights in the parking lot. Well before midnight, the first shoppers had already settled into chairs and under blankets for the long, cold vigil that was being staged outside nearly every major discount outlet across America.
But only one mall would be remembered in the years to come. By 1:00 a.m., hundreds had gathered in front of the Wal-Mart at Long Island's Green Acres Mall. All were there with a singular purpose. They had come for $9 dvds and $5 Hannah Montana dolls that Wal-Mart had advertised in local flyers; others wanted the $25 microwaves and, most of all, 42-inch LCD televisions that had been marked down to $598. Everyone had a game plan for the store's 5:00 a.m. opening, because when big-box stores open on the first Friday after American Thanksgiving, shopping becomes a competitive sport. Above the crowd of shoppers, in five-foot-high letters, was the promise emblazoned on nearly every Wal-Mart in the world: Satisfaction Guaranteed. As in previous years, most retailers opened for only a brief period during the early morning and offered only limited supplies of aggressively discounted products, so shoppers had come to expect lineups.
This morning was different. As Nakea Augustine recounted, when she arrived at Green Acres Mall at 2:00 a.m., the line was already two thousand people long. Having studied Wal-Mart's flyer, she was keen on the Hot Wheels Barbie Jeep advertised at more than 50 percent off. As she and a friend discussed shopping strategy, there was a violent surge from behind. "It got scary out of nowhere," says Augustine. "The crowd in the back just pushed." Someone grabbed her pocketbook off her shoulder, ripping her coat open. Others were punched and pushed to the ground; scuffles broke out.
Above the growing melee, someone had posted a handwritten sign: Blitz Line Starts Here. As the rowdy crowd counted down to five o'clock, the fights and pushing continued. Some shoppers, already injured, left the scene. There were broken arms, bruises, and head injuries. Inside, the eight security guards assigned to the front door began to worry.
On that morning of November 28, 2008, bargain-hungry crowds were staring down guards and doormen across America. Gunshots were fired at a Toys "R" Us store in Palm Desert, California, and two people were killed. Reports of fighting, damaged property, and vandalism filtered through the news. "They're more aggressive," one seasoned Wal-Mart shopper told the New York Times. "I've never seen anybody fight like this. This is crazy."
Facing a potentially bottomless recession, record numbers of shoppers turned out at ungodly early hours to save a few dollars on Christmas toys for their kids, stock up on necessities, or score a luxury television or stereo before things got worse. In the end, an estimated 172 million people – just over half of North America's total population – would go shopping that Black Friday weekend.
From Long Island, Queens, and Brooklyn, the locals who converged on the Green Acres Mall had plenty of their own worries. The regional economy had been shedding jobs and struggling with slow growth for the better part of a decade. Clusters of big-box stores, supercentres, and strip malls had grown while traditional manufacturing withered and housing values dropped. Consequently, Long Island boasted some of New York State's top foreclosure rates in 2007, notably affecting visible-minority residents. Only a few weeks before Black Friday 2008, Long Island had proclaimed itself to be officially in recession.
If people had any chance of maintaining their standard of living and enjoying the consumer riches they had become accustomed to during the holiday season, they would need bargains – and lots of them. Retailers did not disappoint. With offers of up to 70 percent off – virtually giving products away in a calculated effort to bring in traffic – Black Friday 2008 marked the very pinnacle of discounting, one of the greatest consumer payoffs of all time.
"Five, four, three, two, one!" Beneath the blue and white Wal-Mart sign at Green Acres, the entrance doors opened a crack. The crowd surged forward with a force that knocked one of the doors off its hinges. One security guard used it as a shield against the torrent of people that streamed into the store. The door crumpled, its glass smashed, and people and workers began to fall inside Wal-Mart's foyer as more than two thousand manic shoppers rushed in. There were screams and panic as people poured over several fallen shoppers, security guards, and broken glass.
Eyewitnesses in the crowd would later recall that security guard Jdimytai Damour, thirty-four, was one of the first ones trampled to the floor. The temp worker had been recruited for door duty on Black Friday, along with several other workers who were employed by a service contractor that Wal-Mart had outsourced. Damour had already been working at the store for about a week in maintenance; like most others on duty that morning, he had no training in security or crowd control. He was built like a linebacker – six-foot-five, 270 pounds – but when the doors opened, he was quickly overrun after attempting to push people back. He had been protecting a young woman, Leana Lockley, who had also fallen. "I was screaming that I was pregnant, I am sure he heard that. . . . He was trying to block the people from pushing me down to the ground and trampling me," the nursing student recounted. "Mr. Damour was to the right of me, he was on his knees. I could look at him eye to eye, and he was trying to push them back, and the crowd pushed him down, and he fell on top of me."
Lockley was pulled to safety by her husband. Damour did not get up as more shoppers streamed over him. Other witnesses reported that he was gasping for air as people stampeded forward. Incoming crowds stepped on and knocked against police as they attempted to perform CPR on an unresponsive Damour. By the time paramedics arrived on the scene, most of the first wave of shoppers had passed through the entrance and filled the store. Inside, shoppers guarded the televisions; others swarmed the toy section. Damour died on the concrete floor between two vending machines, just inside Wal-Mart's entrance and only a few feet from where the greeters usually stand. While a small crowd had gathered around the horrible scene, many continued to shop. The store itself did not close until well after the paramedics had given up their attempts to revive Damour and police had begun to investigate the circumstances of his death. Nassau Police later described it as "utter chaos" and estimated that Damour had been "literally stepped on by dozens, if not a hundred, people." Damour's co-workers stood and said a prayer for him.
A full two hours after the opening rush, and an hour after Damour had been declared dead, shoppers were told that there had been a fatality and that the store was closing. Many refused to leave. One witness told the New York Daily News that shoppers acted like "savages." "When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been in line since Friday morning!'" said Kimberly Cribbs. "They kept shopping."
Four shoppers were also injured; Wal-Mart would later pay nearly $2 million in damages. "They took the doors off the hinges," said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, still in shock. "He was trampled and killed in front of me. . . . I didn't know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back."
For better and for worse, ours is the age of the bargaineers – the engineers of bargains – whose factories extend from rice paddies to suburban basements everywhere. Each year we are drawn to their doors by the millions. And if it's not Wal-Mart that reels us in, then it's its big-box brethren – Costco, Home Depot, Best Buy, ikea, Tesco – or smaller fish like the local dollar store. There are never single, isolated bargains. Most of us stalk value on a serial basis, sometimes in full contravention of common sense. Row upon row, aisle upon aisle, this realm of affordability, selection, and discount is a dominant force in today's world.
From family-owned discount stores to the world's largest company, it's all there: your next iPod, laptop, snack food, and the stuffed animal you take to a sick relative in hospital. This is you, even before you know it. And all of it is priced to sell. Nearly everything from clothing to electronics has miraculously decreased in price since the early 1990s. And if you're not getting it cheaper, then you've probably gained on quantity or quality, the outcome of a global economy that's been on rollback for the past two decades.
When we buy at our local dollar store or big-box mall, we embrace revolution: the most advanced logistics, marketing, and manufacturing net work ever invented. At one time our most expensive commodities – oil, diamonds, metals – were the core business of the planet's largest and most powerful corporations. Now snack food, paper goods, and pet supplies are the world's best-selling products and have been the unlikely building blocks of globalization since the 1990s. By 2008 Wal-Mart's $405 billion in annual revenue surpassed the gross domestic product of Saudi Arabia, underlining the degree to which affordable consumerism has come to dominate global trade.
It's all part of a global shopping marathon that helped turn the world's developed nations into consumer economies. By the time Wal-Mart became the world's largest company in 2002, consumer spending comprised roughly 70 percent of all employment and economic activity within developed nations. Economists call this the service economy, and it is anchored largely by economic activity in finance, technology, and retail and wh...
