This just happened during Black Friday and I’m still processing it. My sister and her husband Michael went to Walmart for their Black Friday sale. According to them it was absolute chaos - hundreds of people everywhere, barely any workers, total mess.
Michael managed to grab one of the doorbuster deals - a huge 65" TV that was marked down from $899 to $399. Apparently the checkout lines were so insane (staffed by one underpaid employee) that people just started walking out. Like literally just pushing their carts through without paying because there weren’t enough workers at registers and the underpaid security guard obviously wasn’t getting paid enough to care.
And my sister and Michael joined them. They walked out with a $400 TV because “everyone else was doing it” and “the store’s owners should have been better prepared.”
The part that really bothers me is they were bragging about it at family dinner yesterday. Right in front of their kids (8 & 10) AND my kids (7 & 12). They were laughing about their “amazing deal” like it was some funny story about outsmarting the system and they are right!
I pulled my sister aside and told her this was basically stealing and sets a horrible example for the kids, who may get fired in the future for not risking their lives to stop the theft of a commodity. She got defensive saying that she recently finally sat down & read some of the theory I’d sent her over the years and that she realized big stores expect this kind of loss during sales and that it’s not really stealing because the store “couldn’t handle their own sale properly and Joe Biden has done nothing for the working class the past 4 years.”
Michael jumped in saying I need to read more Marxist theory on class struggle & how it relates to crimes such as theft and that I’m probably just jealous I didn’t get any “deals.” I’m honestly disgusted by the whole thing. Later my kids were asking me if it’s okay to not pay for stuff when stores are really busy, which just proves my point about what message this sends.
My sister hasn’t talked to me since I called her out, and my parents are saying I should apologize for “making drama” and that it’s “none of my business” but someone needs to say something, right?
Am I seriously overreacting here? Everyone’s acting like this is just normal Black Friday behavior and I feel like I’m going crazy…
I wish Karma were real. If it were anyone who was positioned to become as rich and powerful as any one of the Waltons would be smote to ash long before they reach that point.
Karma is misunderstood. Most people think Karma is a cosmic will of sorts that strikes you down or lifts you up. Karma is the suffering you get when you don’t live according to your Dharma, that is, the way your own values, environment and consciousness determine as the way you live with the most happiness and least suffering.
Do you think that rich people are happy ? Sure, they have money and comforts, but when you own things, there’s a kind of misery that comes with owning things. Envy, theft, fake friendships, family issues, large unending responsibilities, insurances, places to store things, getting mentally stuck in this ever growing obsession with more stuff and more power to prove something to someone and not even for happiness anymore.
Sure, when you’re poor, money solves a lot of problems. But to amass large wealth and power carries a cost and a kind of suffering of its own. Buddha said that happiness comes from threading the middle way between asceticism and abundance. Owning less than you need or more than you require only brings you suffering.
I don’t care if rich people are happy or not, I care that they’re making everyone else miserable