Only hours after we celebrated the national holiday for giving thanks, a mob broke through the electronic doors of a Wal-Mart in Mineola, N.Y., and trampled to death a store clerk named Jdimytai Damour.

Damour was 6 feet 5 inches tall and weighed 270 pounds, but he was no match for the wave of willful disregard that forced him to the ground and proceeded to stomp him to death.

These people sound like terrorists, but news reports assure us that these were just shoppers looking for bargains. For Christmas.

You know, "For unto us, a child is born." That Christmas.

So far, no one has come forward to admit a role in this man's death. Officials said it will be hard to identify the hundreds of people who mowed over Damour. Hard to prove recklessness or intent to harm, too.

I'll leave it to those who are trained in such matters to explain how human beings could march across a man's body for a cheaper flat-screen TV. There are dark spots on some souls that no amount of light can illuminate, and sometimes the only consolation in the wake of such human ugliness is my inability to understand it.

After the stampede at Wal-Mart, I keep thinking about store clerks across the country and what they will have to put up with during this season of cheer. Thankfully, most of them will not have to risk their lives on the job. Not so secure is a clerk's dignity, which isn't worth a saved penny to those who love to dump their rage on the anonymous person ringing up the total at Register 7.

Times are tough for everyone, but there's an extra kick in the caboose for those paid an hourly wage to be nice no matter what, which includes just about everyone wearing a smock and smile at the local discount store. Especially these days.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that some chain stores are timing their cashiers at checkout lines.

"A clock starts ticking the instant (a cashier) scans a customer's first item," wrote WSJ reporter Vanessa O'Connell, "and it doesn't shut off until his register spits out a receipt."

At 185 Meijer stores, for example, management monitors a cashier's every transaction and scores his performance every week. If he has too many weeks that fall below 95 percent of the base-line score, he's either demoted to a lower-paying job or fired.

Apparently, this is a growing trend in retail, which means even the nicest of customers can become a drag. Think about it: Elderly fingers fumbling with change. Mothers wrestling screaming babies out of carts and fishing for charge cards. And then there are those annoying customers who want to clog up the works with human kindness, perhaps asking the clerk whether she's had time to finish her shopping.

What do they think this is? Christmas?

I'm thinking of a song. You know, the one about how good Christian men rejoice with heart and soul and voice:

"Now ye hear of endless bliss. Joy! Joy! Jesus Christ was born for this! Christ was born for this! Christ was born for this!"

So not .

Not every clerk at every store is a saint. I've met the occasional grumpy cashier in recent weeks, and as fun goes, these encounters rank right up there with eye surgery. But the thing is, in every case, I didn't know whom she had to deal with before I got there. What I did know is that toe-to-toe, the advantages were all mine.

I may have stood on my feet for, oh, maybe a whole 10 minutes. Chances are she'd been there for hours or had hours to go and there'd be no one to rub her feet when her day was over.

My timetable was basically my own, no matter how much I swore I was too busy to stand in line for a pair of hot pink Yoga Toes for daughter No. 2. For all I knew, the cashier ringing them up had to clock in twice: once when she arrived and again when she wrapped up another customer.

Here's something I did know: At the end of our transaction, I got to go home, and she had to stay.

And no one will ever order me to smile.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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