"Mom Blames Target for 22-Year-Old Son's Suicide, Files

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Probably not, because I'm still here too. My guess it was a message generated in error.

Way to derail a thread, guys ...

I think I had legitimate reason to be alarmed, and thus to ask the why of the situation.

I don't have a problem with the walk of shame idea. It might be a deterrent for someone. Did the guy who killed himself actually steal something? If not then he should have gotten a lawyer and in this day and age it would be easy to sue somebody for hurting your feelings so he could sue them.

I also don't have a problem with businesses posting pictures of those who have been convicted of shoplifting from their store. I've been to a place or two that had pictures of people on the wall under a sign that said they shoplifted from there.

If you are going to steal something, you have to be prepared for the consequences of it. Just like anything else, everything has consequences and they aren't going to be tailor made to prevent from hurting everybody's feelings.

You seem to be extremely ignorant on the subject of suicide, also if he didn't even steal anything what the hell was he supposed to learn from the store essentially publicly shaming him over suspicion? Also people who struggle with problems like anxiety and depression much of the time have a much harder time handling stress, as well as systematic bullying or shaming like that.....Obviously you've never been there. People commit suicide because they are in pain and don't know where to turn and are desperate to end the unbearable pain, at least in my experience I've been down that road oh not to mention the feelings worthlessness, thinking the world would be better off without you. All the judgmental rhetoric about it being the cowards way out is BS and does nothing to help the issue....only serves to further stigmatize people who struggle with mental problems and suicidal thinking, as well as those who tragically end their life due to seeing no way to cope.

Meh I can't expect people that have never been suicidal.....to understand it. But yeah its like people think its somehow easy to kill yourself, no it pretty much goes against all human nature wanting the pain to end so much suicide seems the only answer...doesn't make the prospect and carrying out of suicide pleasant...there is nothing 'easy' about being in that state of mind. I know if I somehow managed to get a job....after being on SSI(as I imagine I will be on it a while) tried my hardest only to end up being discharged with public shaming on top of it would hit me pretty damn hard, I wouldn't be surprised if it would induce suicidal thinking and cost me another trip to the ER.

Also people cannot necessarily choose how something effects them...for people who are more mentally vulnerable like have problems with social anxiety, depression, autism social issues/sensitivity things like that can be entirely crushing. But as I said people who have never been there wouldn't know, and find it much easier to fall into the blame the victim trap in the case of suicide....yeah they should have just grew a pair and 'got over it' right. Its just depressing I work on my life and myself....am slowely building a sense of self worth and even a little confidence, but reading all the crap about how someone who's suicidal is supposed to somehow just pull them-self out of it with no f***ing support, and that if it finally gets to be too much and they succeed 'its the cowards way out'....guess easier than thinking about the sort of pain that might lead someone to attempt suicide or address any of the external factors that may have played a role.

In such a mental state you don't just get to choose to stop feeling suicidal....sometimes it really sucks to have survived a suicide attempt, at least if you succeed you don't have to hear all the nasty stigma about people who feel suicidal or people who have committed suicide.

^^^
Sweetleaf-
Thank you.

From what I gather they did a lot more than 'hurt his feelings', people don't typically kill themselves over a simple case of hurt feelings. A walk of shame for people who are 'suspected' of having potentially stolen or done something else undesirable to me seems an absolute BS concept....since if there is no proof and its a suspicion it leaves to much room to do damage to employees who turn out innocent since in that case it should be seen as harrassment at least from my perspective.

And the worst part is it turns out he wasn't convicted/proven of stealing anything....as for pictures of people who shop lift being posted in stores, I figured that was more so they can be identified by store employees or customers and possibly be reported to the authorities, not as a public shaming tactic.

Why is shame so bad? It's a negative emotion that will be tied to a particular act, making the person less likely to commit the act again. I'd have no problem publicly shaming people who were caught shoplifting. Not just suspected, caught.

Of course it was more to him than hurt feelings. I was talking about the overall mood of society. We can't have our feelings hurt anymore. I've been suicidal and have tried it before. I obviously suck at it. He blew the being fired and the walk out of proportion, but that's very easy to do when you are depressed. When you are depressed, anything else that's negative seems like a HUGE DEAL to you and anything good that happens seems like it's either not enough, too late, not going to last, somehow fake, etc. It was his depression or mood issue that caused him to kill himself, not target. What target did might have been the last straw for him, but they are not responsible for his suicide.

I have had a couple friends kill themselves. One was directly because of me, but I don't feel I was responsible. This was in 1990. I had ran into a guy from high school and invited him over. He was like me back then, picked on, bullied, made fun of, etc. He had been very dirty and fat in school and had horrible acne and all that caused him to get picked on. Well, he had grown up into a very nice looking man and he was very polite and nice and I invited him over to have dinner with me, my husband and son. We all hit it off and became good friends. He would drop by almost every day and come over every weekend. He and my husband loved math and spent hours talking about it and doing problems while stoned. Well, the guy started developing feelings for me. When he told me I told him I didn't feel the same and plus, I was married. He wouldn't leave me alone about that and so I started avoiding him. I had told him that I was going to stop talking to him if he didn't cut that s**t out, and he didn't so I did what I said I would do. He called me at work on a Saturday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go to the Nick with him that night. My husband was out of town and had our son with him. I told him no, I had plans with some other friends, which was true. He said "OK, Goodbye" and hung up. He never said "Goodbye" before, just "Bye". Anyway, he killed himself that night. I had trouble with it after, of course, but it was his issue that caused it but it was triggered by my rejection. I had even known about his history of suicide attempts but never thought he would do something like this, because he had done all that in school. So, according to his mother his suicide is my fault, but it's not. Just like that boys suicide isn't targets fault.

It seemed the article was saying he was not caught it was suspected...I would not take so much of an issue with some kind of shaming if the person was actually caught. But on suspicion such a thing does not make any real sense, since there is then the chance you're subjecting an innocent person to all that for no reason. Target cannot be held responsible for 'killing' that individual, however a policy of a shaming on the basis of suspicion rather than proof and/or getting caught is flawed and in this case was a contributing factor so it only seems fair some action be taken at the very least for an irresponsible policy.

I also imagine you could refuse to participate in it, if you tell the cops that if they walk you through that you are going to alert the media to their tactics and make the store look very, very bad. You can also say as you are leaving "I didn't steal anything, they will find that out in court and then I'll sue the store for this". Or something like that.

That's true, though can be hard to see those options if withing the depths of depression...but theoretically one could take a business to court over something like that. But I can kind of relate to the person described in the article, sadly I could see myself easily considering suicide if I endured something like that....I'd hope I would be able to manage getting to an ER/telling someone and then deal with it legally if need be....but I can't help feeling for this individual. I remember when I started realising college wasn't really working out and the stress was getting to me I remember a few times thinking of how to end it...and i wasn't even enduring any real mistreatment just feeling isolated and kind of dumb since I couldn't even pass remedial college math with a tutor and seemed like i could never quite live up to what my work study job wanted....I imagine any direct shaming/mocking/ostracism/bullying very well could have driven me over the edge.

As I said in this post here, Graham did not steal from Target. The rumor that he stole was fabricated by multiple media outlets that wrote about the story.

https://dwarren57.wordpress.com/2015/02 ... f-my-life/

https://www.facebook.com/GrahamAGentles

The Facebook link is to Graham's memorial page.

While I do not condone putting him in handcuffs to the store entrance, I can understand at least one rationale for doing so and it has nothing to do with humiliating him. Every once in a while when an employee is fire he will want to get even for the firing and will lash out and do damage. I read the other day about an employee at a McDonald's restaurant in Minnesota being fired going on a rampage in the store and doing some serious damage.

What might be better would be to take him to a back entrance out of sight of the customers and other employees and driving him to his car. Of course, one would want to have a video in case the employee made false allegations about being assaulted in the process.

Or in case they are in fact assaulted, and the ones responsible make false claims they did not.

Quite true. It should protect both sides. However, in that case, they would be more likely to wipe the tapes (or these days, delete the file) if it might incriminate them.

Why not have security or at least the biggest guy who works there, escort him out? If you want to prevent him from going off on everybody after he's fired, thats what you do.