We should be lucky they didn't faint dead away

Someone, apparently a microcephalic troublemaker unconnected to Wal-Mart, commandeered a microphone at one of their stores in Washington Township, New Jersey last Sunday evening and made the following bogus announcement:

"Attention Wal-Mart customers: All black people leave the store now.''

Sounds like the type of unfunny, childish skulduggery that several of our classmates were juvenile enough to commit back in our high school days.

Two (presumably) black women in the store are understandably quite upset (along with the store's employees themselves, the story notes the pair as generously saying) and ask the store's management to broadcast an apology over the same PA system.  Their request is immediately granted. 

Is that enough to soothe the delicate egos of the two aggrieved women?  No way:

"[Patricia] Covington and [Shelia] Ellington are boycotting the store."

Why?  What possible complicity does Wal-Mart have in this incident?  It wasn't one of their workers that played the "prank", and the store immediately did whatever the women asked of them at the time to calm the situation and reassure the patrons that the employees had nothing to do with the disgusting display.  Just what, pray tell, could the company have done to prevent this admittedly rude, hurtful and annoying but hardly felonious incident?

"'I can't believe it in this day and age,' Covington told the paper. 'Wal-Mart needs to be more responsible.'"

Oh please, ma'am.  Spare us your manufactured outrage.  What, should the store place all of its intercom phones around the sales floor under lock and key because of an unfortunate incident (that doesn't even appear to be the fault of the company) in one out of how many thousands of stores?  Then professional complainers like you will no doubt kvetch about how long (because of racism, of course) it takes to summon assistance to unlock the DVD cabinet.

Ms. Covington and Ms. Ellington need to grow some thicker skin, and Wal-Mart should strongly encourage them to make their Chinese-made shoddy goods purchases elsewhere.