# Are people assholes if they shop on Thanksgiving? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 21, 2014, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284 "2014-11-21T19:29:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/63 "2014-11-22T19:50:50Z")
I’m unhappy about the loss to our society that this change brings. For every retail worker on the job, there are probably 50 or 100 people curtailing their holiday to get those sweet, sweet, low prices. Yes, they have the option to stay home, but they’re being pressured to go out and shop. Prior to Thanksgiving Retail, it was Early Black Friday retail, people pressured to go out at unholy hours to wait on line for their chance at door-busting deals. Before that, it was simply Black Friday, the traditional start of Christmas Shopping, and a hellish experience, but it’s when the big sales start. It’s a slippery slope that actually happened. Stores started opening earlier and earlier to lure a greater share of customers, other stores have to follow suit or be left out. People were not out demanding the opportunity to shop on Thanksgiving. Nobody was bemoaning the fact that they’d have to wait until 9am on Friday to begin Christmas shopping. I guarantee that without big “pre-Black Friday” sales, the stores would be unusually quiet. Yes, there have always been people working on Thanksgiving, emergency services, convenience retail, entertainment. These jobs seemed to dovetail with the underlying idea that Thanksgiving is a holiday, a time to spend with friends and family. Outside of a few emergency purchase options and going out WITH friends and family to recreate, things were quiet. Big Retail does not respect the concept of a holiday, it sets out lures to drag people away from the holiday, I don’t like it one bit. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/64 "2014-11-22T19:57:36Z")
I am a cashier in a discount store. Thanksgiving is one of the holidays no employer in my state can make you work, or penalize you for not working. We are asked, and only scheduled if we agree to work. I agreed to work Thanksgiving and Christmas. I do not consider myself, my co-workers, or our customers “assholes.” Case closed. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/65 "2014-11-22T20:09:49Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > I am a cashier in a discount store. Thanksgiving is one of the holidays no employer in my state can make you work, or penalize you for not working. We are asked, and only scheduled if we agree to work. Cool! I did not know that. Do any other states have similar laws? And do they have more stores closed on Thanksgiving than other states without such laws? ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/66 "2014-11-22T20:13:35Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > I’m unhappy about the loss to our society that this change brings. For every retail worker on the job, there are probably 50 or 100 people curtailing their holiday to get those sweet, sweet, low prices. > > Yes, they have the option to stay home, but they’re being pressured to go out and shop. Prior to Thanksgiving Retail, it was Early Black Friday retail, people pressured to go out at unholy hours to wait on line for their chance at door-busting deals. Before that, it was simply Black Friday, the traditional start of Christmas Shopping, and a hellish experience, but it’s when the big sales start. > > It’s a slippery slope that actually happened. Stores started opening earlier and earlier to lure a greater share of customers, other stores have to follow suit or be left out. People were not out demanding the opportunity to shop on Thanksgiving. Nobody was bemoaning the fact that they’d have to wait until 9am on Friday to begin Christmas shopping. I guarantee that without big “pre-Black Friday” sales, the stores would be unusually quiet. > > Yes, there have always been people working on Thanksgiving, emergency services, convenience retail, entertainment. These jobs seemed to dovetail with the underlying idea that Thanksgiving is a holiday, a time to spend with friends and family. Outside of a few emergency purchase options and going out WITH friends and family to recreate, things were quiet. Big Retail does not respect the concept of a holiday, it sets out lures to drag people away from the holiday, I don’t like it one bit. I know this may be unimaginable to some (especially on this message board), but a whole lot of people shop with family members. Shopping is when they get a chance to do something fun with their friends and family, as opposed to sitting at home and staring at each other. It’s not like shopping can’t ever be entertaining. I hate shopping as much as anyone, but I’ll go out with my mother when I’m visiting just because I know she enjoys it. If I were to spend Thanksgiving with my folks this year and she told me she wanted to go to the mall after dinner, I’d gladly accompany her. It would give me a chance to walk off all that turkey for one thing. But also, it would be kind of fun to hang out with my mother in her “element”. I probably wouldn’t buy anything, but she’d probably insist on getting me something, as mothers are wont to do. IMHO, that’s just as much “quality time” as sitting around the living room, talking about politics and religion for the millionth time. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/67 "2014-11-22T20:16:07Z")
Don’t listen to the radio on Thanksgiving either - you are forcing a disk jockey or news reader to miss a holiday dinner with his family. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/68 "2014-11-22T20:55:56Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > I’m not offended by anybody’s decision to shop or go to a movie on Thanksgiving, nor the next day, either. The situation has created an artificially busy and crowded shopping experience. That’s why I stay home, not because I’m worried about somebody thinking I’m an asshole. Exactly. We need to get the terminology right. People who shop on Thanksgiving aren’t assholes; they’re morons. > [@AskNott](#): > > Throughout my working life, I occasionally had the opportunity to work a holiday, and I usually took it, for the overtime pay. For the better part of ten years, before and during college, i worked in various types of hospitality jobs, on three different continents. I went that whole time working basically every New Year’s Eve, almost every Christmas, and a whole bunch of other holidays. It never worried me a great deal. Thanksgiving doesn’t really mean anything to me. I didn’t grow up with the holiday, and my own family is over 7,000 miles away in Australia. The standard routine in my household is that my wife flies up to San Francisco to have Thanksgiving with her mother and other family and friends, and i stay in San Diego, where i hang out on the Dope and watch movies or football in my underwear. 🙂 I still tend to think, though, that the recent Black Friday creep, where stores are now opening on Thanksgiving Day itself, is fucking retarded, and a sign of corporate managers who are out of actual ideas, so they just blindly follow everyone else like sheep. I guess it’s possible that being open an extra 12 hours or whatever makes a difference, but i’m dubious about that. There were plenty of morons willing to storm the doors at 6.00 a.m. on Friday, without dragging people out on Thursday as well. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/69 "2014-11-22T21:41:47Z")
> [@Lowdown](#): > > If you’re on the clock you must be okay with it, otherwise why are you at work? If they’re on the clock it may be because they would rather be honestly working to support themselves and their families, rather than stealing, illegal drug dealing or other criminal activities. Unfortunately some employers exploit this. Those employers are assholes for doing so. People who help facilitate asshole behavior are assholes also. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/70 "2014-11-22T23:05:57Z")
If people shop on Thanksgiving they are enabling employers who insist they need to grab every buck and stay open. So, unless it’s an emergency, like meds from a pharmacy, yes, people who shop on Thanksgiving are, mildly at least, being assholes. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/71 "2014-11-23T00:27:10Z")
> [@Rhiannon8404](#): > > Summer break, fall break, winter break, President’s day weekend, spring break. It’s not wrong to want to get together on Thanksgiving. I’m just saying there are lots of opportunities other than Thanksgiving break. If people truly want to see each other, they will arrange it. It’s not that easy. Certain holidays are easy for families to get together precisely because _most_ people are off on those days . Not everyone, but most. Up until fairly recently, even retail and fast food workers were off on Thanksgiving and Christmas. ( and around here, the fast food places are still mostly closed on those days. I’ve known a couple that opened once and didn’t have enough customers to make it worthwhile) Other times of year, it becomes more difficult- when you’re talking about multiple schools/districts the breaks don’t always coincide and it doesn’t always work out well for 20 people at 20 different jobs to take a random day off. Even those of us who don’t work retail often have some sort of restrictions on when we can take time off. For some people , there are blackout periods during a busy season and for others there are restrictions on how many people can be off at a given time. It doesn’t matter how much I want to see my family - if they pick a day that I normally work, I won’t be able to get the day off if the only two people who can cover for me want the same day off. Although I enjoy going shopping with my family, it’s much easier to arrange that on a day other than Thanksgiving- because I don’t go shopping in a group of 20-30 people. The part that I really don’t get though, is the Thanksgiving shoppers who end up getting interviewed by the media and say they feel sorry for the people who have to work without seeing the connection between their shopping and the stores opening. Sure, they can’t shop if the stores aren’t open- but if the stores didn’t make money, they wouldn’t do it twice. ---
**Author:** ![Tread](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Tread](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tread)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/72 "2014-11-23T13:27:14Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > If people shop on Thanksgiving they are enabling employers who insist they need to grab every buck and stay open. So, unless it’s an emergency, like meds from a pharmacy, yes, people who shop on Thanksgiving are, mildly at least, being assholes. Would you include in that people, who purchase gas ( excluding of course the pay at the pump with a credit/debit card) , go out to a restaurant to eat, listen to the radio, or watch TV, to include the football games, or those who chose to attend the games, or attend a movie? ---
**Author:** ![AnaMen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@AnaMen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnaMen)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/73 "2014-11-23T13:35:03Z")
Yeah, what about those poor football players? Obviously they can’t just take the day off if their team is scheduled to play. Even watching them on TV is part of the problem. If no one would watch, these people could be at home with their families next year, to say nothing of the stadium workers, media workers, etc., forced along for the ride and NOT compensated with massive piles of cash. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/74 "2014-11-23T13:39:27Z")
> [@Tread](#): > > Would you include in that people, who purchase gas ( excluding of course the pay at the pump with a credit/debit card) , go out to a restaurant to eat, listen to the radio, or watch TV, to include the football games, or those who chose to attend the games, or attend a movie? Or shop online. Why should brick-and-mortar stores be forced to take a “time-out” when their online competitors are not? That strikes me as very unfair. When I was a little girl, my family would cap off the Thanksgiving evening by riding the train downtown to see the lighting of the Riches’ Christmas tree. I don’t think we were assholes for spending our family quality time on the backs of all the laborers (and police officers and subway workers) who put on the show every year, but maybe we were. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/75 "2014-11-23T13:56:21Z")
No. When is thanksgiving? And what is it? ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/76 "2014-11-23T14:09:44Z")
> [@AnaMen](#): > > Why do they have only “a moment’s notice”? Were they just born? They’ve had the preceding years of their life to prepare. If only schedules every day were the exact same as it was in 2008; think of the cost savings in calendars alone! > [@AnaMen](#): > > Why do they have only “a moment’s notice”? Were they just born? They’ve had the preceding years of their life to prepare. > I’m not calling for “understanding bosses” in the slightest. We don’t care WHAT corporate or any Boss understands; not our job. We, as consumers, won’t shop on Thanksgiving. Workforce development can change the shift availablity as needed, like they always do, because that’s what they are paid for. > [@AnaMen](#): > > There are many jobs between cashier and brain surgeon. Here’s [a nice cite from today’s CNN](http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/20/news/economy/america-part-time-jobs-poverty/index.html?hpt=hp_t2) about 'em too. YW. Happy Thanksgiving! 😉 > [@AnaMen](#): > > it’s just recognizing that we do get to make choices and are not just hapless victims of circumstance. Well, my money? I hear its good at Any store on the block, any day of the week. Has that suddenly changed? Because My money won’t buy things on the 4th Thursday of November, and I’m OK with that. If Corporate wants to pay a full crew to staff an empty store on Thanksgiving, let 'em. If they want to economize by running a short week that week? Let 'em. And if they want to bitch about it? They can… _points down_ gobble-gobble. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/77 "2014-11-23T14:23:41Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Back when I worked retail, before this whole Black Friday/Thursday insanity, we were given the choice of having off Christmas weekend, **or** Thanksgiving weekend, and were paid time-and-a-half. Whichever holiday weekend you did not work, someone else did. **Was not really a big deal - we all knew the score - the store had to make as much money as possible during the holiday rush and succeed so we could work there during the rest of the year.** I think it was rare that someone worked both, and if they did, they made a lot of cash, and were afforded time-off at some other point. Not everyone has a big, close-knit family they want to spend time with during the holidays, or do not celebrate as is customary. (bolding mine) Well said. Back when I worked regular (aka “mall”) retail it was a state law that no retail outlet was allowed to open on a holiday (convenience stores and gas stations were exempt). The law has been modified so that a store has to get a town’s OK to open. Most towns won’t allow mall retail stores to open until after 6PM on a holiday if that; supermarkets, OTOH, are allowed to open for a limited number of hours on the holiday, mostly for the “Whoops, I forgot X!” crowd. Back when I worked at my extended family’s restaurant we were open Thanksgiving Day. Lousiest tip day of the year, tbh. The rest of my extended family had to hold off dinner until Thanksgiving night so we could all eat together. By that time nobody was hungry so we all nibbled on appetizers and watched the football game. Working on an actual holiday wouldn’t have bothered me. It’d be double time in terms of pay 😃 ---
**Author:** ![stolatt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@stolatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stolatt)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/78 "2014-11-23T14:34:16Z")
At the very least, can everyone not be assholes while they shop? Don’t ask whether I’ll have time with my family today. No, I won’t, because you need whipped cream. You’re why I’m here. Worst of all, don’t be one of the people banging on the door at closing time, because you just need one thing. I’m way past caring and you should have thought of it earlier. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/79 "2014-11-23T15:01:42Z")
> [@stolatt](#): > > At the very least, can everyone not be assholes while they shop? Don’t ask whether I’ll have time with my family today. No, I won’t, because you need whipped cream. You’re why I’m here. Worst of all, don’t be one of the people banging on the door at closing time, because you just need one thing. I’m way past caring and you should have thought of it earlier. Could we extend this to not being an asshole when you go anywhere on Thanksgiving? The closest I ever came to just completely losing my shit on a client was my first winter at the emergency clinic. It was Christmas morning the first year I was married, I was 10 hours away from everyone except my new husband, and I hadn’t so much as laid eyes on him that day because left to round at the hospital before I got up to go to the clinic. Some guy brought in a dog that he’d let do something really stupid, possibly the one who’d eaten an entire pound of coffee. I went out to tell him it would take about an hour and a half for us to do labs and xrays, and he totally crawled my ass-- he couldn’t be away from home because he had family waiting for him to open Christmas presents and have breakfast together, and didn’t we care that we were ruining his family’s celebration? Yeah, I totally gave a shit, because he was doing my family celebration so much good. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/80 "2014-11-23T15:11:21Z")
> [@Rhiannon8404](#): > > Did I miss it or are we still waiting for someone to explain why it’s Ok to go to the movies, but not shop on Thanksgiving? I assume the difference in most people’s minds (and I’m pretty agnostic on the “issue”) is that the retail stores are attempting to draw in huge, potentially unruly, crowds for “pre-Black Friday” with limited inventory, door-busters and all that which don’t really equate to movie theaters or certainly not to emergency services or other 24/7 places like hotels or gas stations. Thanksgiving was at least the day off before handling all this on Friday. So, in the minds of the people against this, the retail worker is not only getting pulled away from family and the holiday but also placed into a work environment characterised by giant lines, rampaging crowds and people getting crushed to death at WalMart. So “But what about movie theaters?” doesn’t draw the same reaction. ---
**Author:** ![AnaMen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dfb087/32.png) [@AnaMen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnaMen)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/81 "2014-11-23T15:58:30Z")
> [@Count\_Blucher](#): > > We don’t care WHAT corporate or any Boss understands; not our job. We, as consumers, won’t shop on Thanksgiving. Workforce development can change the shift availablity as needed, like they always do, because that’s what they are paid for. > > Well, my money? I hear its good at Any store on the block, any day of the week. Has that suddenly changed? Because My money won’t buy things on the 4th Thursday of November, and I’m OK with that. > > If Corporate wants to pay a full crew to staff an empty store on Thanksgiving, let 'em. > If they want to economize by running a short week that week? Let 'em. > And if they want to bitch about it? They can… _points down_ gobble-gobble. I didn’t imply that people may be assholes NOT to shop on Thanksgiving, although, if I were the store employee, I’d be extra-pissed if I was at work and there were no customers, so I was there for no reason at all. It’s like Jesus – if he died for your sins, it’s kind of a slap in the face if you don’t sin, making him have gone through all that for nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284/82 "2014-11-23T19:11:44Z")
> [@AnaMen](#): > > It’s like Jesus – if he died for your sins, it’s kind of a slap in the face if you don’t sin, making him have gone through all that for nothing. That’s one of the dumbest statements I’ve seen on the Dope in a long time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-people-assholes-if-they-shop-on-thanksgiving/705284.md?page=5)