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Just the mention of Black Friday brings to mind two thing: great deals and insane crowds fighting to get them.  Wal-Mart hopes to change the latter part by opening stores on Thanksgiving Day and staying open through Black Friday encouraging a steady flow of traffic instead of crazy mobs ready for deals at 6 am.

Last year, the retailer received a lot of negative press after one employee died after being trampled by deal-seekers.  Each Wal-Mart store will have a plan on how to handle traffic but most will not close in hopes of preventing chaos.  $5 off a blender isn’t anything to get trampled over.

This year, customers can walk into the store and form lines in front of must-have merchandise to receive the 5am sale price.  Surely this plan is more labor intensive as employees will manage each line to insure order and ease.  Even more employees will be stationed at the front of the store to keep the crowds moving in the right direction.

It beats waiting in the cold and it certainly should help ease the fears of getting caught in a wave of bargain happy zombies.

Read: [NYT]