Word choice so bad, it has to be a joke ... right?

Yeah. Pretty much. Inasmuch as a throng of shoppers pushed the guy to his death.

 

OK, without a link this is a total wild-ass guess but -- could this have been a generic "explanation of Black Friday" story appended (very unfortunately) to a specific "tragic incident on Black Friday" story? Just wonderin'.

 

In the context of that story, that's exactly what the writer was doing. (I don't have a link, but it's AP so if you want to read the original story, just search the Web.)

However, as I pointed out earlier, it's also an inaccurate explanation of the history of Black Friday. Profitability wasn't the reason it was called that at all -- it's said to be a Philadelphia term about the day between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy game being a day of heavy traffic (foot and car) all over the city, which brought back memories of the heavy traffic seen during the week of the stock market crash in 1929. Those days, of course, were called Black Thursday and Black Tuesday. Black Monday was also used in reference to the 1987 stock market crash. The phrase was picked up by the NYT and other papers, and it's become a common expression for the day after Thanksgiving.

But profitability had very little to do with it. If I recall correctly, haven't many retailers historically taken a loss on "Black Friday" (but make up for it over the next month, when people keep buying)?

 

Would it have been OK for the story to include that many retailers have Door Buster sales?

 

I like your work

 

On your last point, no. The very few loss-leaders are more than made up for. Depending on the retailer, Black Friday can be 3-10 times bigger in revenues than the next biggest day of the year. With most stuff on a 40-60 percent profit margin, it doesn't take long to make up for the loss leaders.

 

The term wasn't originally meant to be about profitability, but retailers have adopted the term in recent years, because it's true, Black Friday often does provide the boost to push retailers out of the red for the year. I'm guessing the writer didn't realize that retailers pilfered the term from Philly.