Courtesy: another casualty of the crunch

These days, shopping has become a modern version of Hell, with shoppers showing all the manners of a pack of starved hyenas.

Is there anything people won't do for a bargain, wonders Carol Midgley in The Times. The story of the Wal-Mart worker trampled to death in Long Island because he was caught between a crowd of shoppers and a pile of cut-price DVDs may be shocking, but it wasn't surprising.

That's because shopping has now evolved "into a modern version of Hell, with shoppers demonstrating all the etiquette of a pack of starved hyenas". Look at the way people behave in big stores, "the guerrilla tactics practised by ferocious women who link arms with their battle-axe friends to barge through crowds, the way they'll use pushchairs to create a cordon around a rack of sale blouses that they guard like lionesses over a kill".

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