Tis the season for giving, no? No. Not in my vestibule

Barry Goldberg purchased 130 $10 gift cards from Wal-Mart. He was giving them away in front of the store. Dressed as Santa. No gimmick or stunt. He just wanted to do something nice to make the holiday brighter. But Wal-Mart wasn't buying it.

“They asked me, ‘Well, where did you get these cards?’” he said. “’I bought them from your store 20 minutes ago.’ ‘Well, what are you doing?’ (they asked). I said, “I’m giving out gift cards. It’s the holidays. The right thing to do is to give, isn’t it?’”

Wal-Mart was afraid he was interrupting the flow of foot traffic in the store’s vestibule.

Goldberg said he was contacted by Target and told he could bring the cards to a Target store and swap them for Target gift cards and pass them out. Barry is unemployed by the way.

I think Wal-Mart was just worried they'd have another trampling riot of consumers on their hands like the one a few weeks back.