It must be nice, in your world where all retail workers have elected this work and can find another job at a moment notice. And where presumably understanding bosses only have them work on holidays if they freely choose to make more money rather than spending time with their family.
That’s also a world, presumably, where there are no people of limited means, and any retail worker is perfectly able, materially and intellectually, to study to become a brain surgeon?
Well no, but it’s not as though everyone (or in fact most people) can just afford to pick and choose jobs, especially not during the crisis. Yes, of course you need to make some sacrifices if you want to be employed. But it’s not as though employers can just do anything that exploits workers and if they don’t like it they can just fuck off. People have rights. People have dignity. What those rights should extend to can be argued, but I don’t think “well, people who need a job have to suck up everything” is not an argument in and of itself.
No, people are proposing to boycott the stores on all days, due to this “mistreatment.”
And the stores have obviously made the decision to be open so they can remain profitable. Being profitable is good for their workers, not bad.
Oh, I see I didn’t pay attention to who started this thread. It’s always interesting to see how you can find the George Costanza out for excusing bad behavior, AnaMen. 
I’d consider it more egalitarian to say even the lowly shop worker deserves a day off on the holiday as much as anyone else. I, for one, would prefer to give them a chance to enjoy the day off by not creating demands for unnecessary services.
But I see you desire to turn that on its head and say that since you can find an example of someone working on a holiday then they shouldn’t expect one either. Maybe no one needs the holiday off. It can be just another day of work like any other. I guess it’s all a bunch of humbug to some people.
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. The business exists to make a profit, and it is the job of those in charge to make decisions that succeed at this goal. “Understanding” as you mean it gets in the way of this and backfires, resulting in lowered profits and layoffs.
There are many jobs between cashier and brain surgeon. There is nothing inherently wrong with working as a cashier, but when your job isn’t worth the sacrifices it requires, it is a shitty job, and when you have a shitty job, it’s time to take steps to change that, period. That’s not my magical dream world, it’s just recognizing that we do get to make choices and are not just hapless victims of circumstance.
Maybe I am an asshole, but I don’t have a problem with stores being open on holidays. When I worked crappy retail/restaurant jobs I had to work on holidays. It sucked, but that’s part of having a sucky job and why I worked to have a career where I wouldn’t have to after college. Tips were pretty good on holidays at least.
Demands for unnecessary services are 90+% of the US economy. It isn’t “bad behavior” on one day, but perfectly fine the rest of the time, and I’m only pointing out other jobs that basically can’t not happen on Thanksgiving because it is definitely not the case that “everyone else” has the day off.
This is not a homogenous population, so we don’t all have the same needs or desires. Some people want to work holidays, others don’t. Some people have wonderful families with whom they would like to spend this particular day, others don’t. Some people don’t care about or even actively dislike holidays. The idea that “retail workers all need Thanksgiving off” is silly and assumes that we all want and value the same things.
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.
That said, I would never venture anywhere near a mall these days during the X-mas rush - people are assholes generally, and the holidays seem to bring out the most assholery in people in the shortest time.
Restaurants, theaters, casinos, ski resorts, ice rinks and lots of other purely entertainment venues are open on Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as other holidays, and have been for years. Why are we not outraged by this?
What crisis are you referring to?
Fair enough. Having stores open on Thanksgiving (or other major holidays) is going to be a bad thing for some people, a good thing for others, and a matter of indifference for everybody else. I have no idea how many of the people who work retail on Thanksgiving consider it a sacrifice to do so; I’d be interested in knowing what percentage of them are there because they in some sense have to be.
Can we all agree that people who shop on Thanksgiving and behave like assholes to the retail workers (and fellow shoppers) are assholes?
Yeah, I don’t think you’ll find anyone refuting the point that people who act like assholes are assholes. :rolleyes:
Obviously the difference form any other day is it’s a Holiday. Everyone’s day off is coordinated so they have a chance to spend it together.
To paraphrase, so, you feel spending time with family in this day and age is somewhat of an antiquated notion?
So, basically it’s every man, woman, child and invalid for themselves?
One of the things that seems to run through these threads is something of a generational/cultural/personal split.
Those of us that have families, and family traditions, and value the rare days when an extended family can get together without the fraughtness of Christmas - we think well of Thanksgiving and tend not to be people who would go shopping right after dinner, and think it’s sad that increasing numbers of people are essentially forced to choose between the day as tradition or the day as keeping your job.
Those that perhaps never had strong family bonds - the increasing numbers who rarely had a family dinner any of the other 364 days, or whose mother/parents were just as lousy at cooking that day as every other burnt-microwave-meal day, or came from fractured households where holidays were a trial for everyone… don’t care. I’d guess that there’s a large bulge beginning around 30-35 and going down to young adulthood in this category.
Then there are people who are past working and worked some form of retail (grocery/sundries) on holidays anyway, and think everyone who didn’t is just a sentimental slob who doesn’t appreciate the job they have.
Okay. Mark me down as a traditionalist, from a family and tradition of good cooking, who hasn’t missed a family dinner evening many nights of his life, even though messy divorce. Mark me as someone who values what Thanksgiving is all about and thinks it’s insane to HAVE to go shopping-mad a whole 12 hours earlier now. This isn’t just “shopping” anyway - it’s roller derby with a credit card. I know too many 20-30-somethings who grew up in distant and dissociated families, and yes, they’re just as happy to work and get the hours and the overtime and skip all that turkey and family shit.
It’s a loss, compounded by this insane rollback of Black Friday to Blacker Thursday Night. I think it’s one thing to shrug about it; I have trouble grasping anyone who would defend it.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I love to cook big meals. Lately we’ve even added a second version scheduled at our own convenience for those of us that had other plans on the real day.
If being open on Thanksgiving day are the difference between profit and loss for the store for the year, the hot tip for the employees would be to look for a job NOW.
This is one of those cases where no individual person is necessarily being an asshole, but the collection of people–the society or culture or whatever you want to call it–is becoming a bit more of an asshole collection.
It is nice to live in a world where there is some reasonable assurance that everyone will get to be with all the people they want to be with a few times a year, or at least be compensated for not having that opportunity. If I go shopping on Thanksgiving, I’m not causing or contributing to the problem that this reasonable assurance is disappearing, so that doesn’t make me an asshole. But that reasonable assurance is disappearing, and this is a genuine problem.
Must it be the last thing left keeping them in the black? It all adds up. Online sales have pushed brick-and-mortar retailers to this. All regular stores have to offer is instant gratification. They can’t compete on price or selection, because they have to employ vast numbers of extra people, which is expensive, and locate themselves near denser populations, which means high rent.
I can’t imagine buying anything at Best Buy ever, for instance, were it not for needing it in my hand right now. Why pay double or triple for something if I have time to wait?
[QUOTE=SaharaTea]
If Target could guarantee that every employee working Thanksgiving actually prefers to be there instead of at home, then I have no problem with it. But somehow I doubt that’s the case.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t work for Target, so I’m not familiar with their internal plans and policies, but about two weeks ago, a friend who works at Target found out that their planned day off had been canceled. She does not prefer to be at work that day, and had been planning to join us for Thanksgiving dinner. :mad:
Am I an asshole for watching TV on Thanksgiving?
Am I an asshole for running to the grocery store at the last minute on Thanksgiving because I forgot to get cranberry sauce?
Am I an asshole for surfing the internet? Or ordering movies “on demand”?
Am I bad for shipping something 2-day priority on the day before?
Am I bad for taking a train or plane? Or driving on a toll road?
If the answer is “no” to any of these things, then the answer to the OP’s question is simple. No, people aren’t assholes for shopping on Thanksgiving.
Does it suck for the people who have to work on Thanksgiving against their will? Sure. It sucks for people who have to work double-shifts and weekends too, and I feel sorry for them all. The whole system is inhumane. But somehow we all manage. As I said in the other thread about this, we managed when Sunday lost its gravitas. So I see no reason to weep over Thanksgiving.
There’s nothing stopping close-knit families from making their own holidays. If some significant fraction of one’s family members are retail employees and they know they will be unavailable during the traditional holiday season, how about everyone reserve another day on their calendars, synched with the kids’ school schedules? “OK, everyone! How about we have our annual family get-together on the long-ass Jackson-Lee King weekend!”
I don’t shop on Thanksgiving either. But I can easily myself going out on that day instead of watching “The Wiz” on TVOne for the millionth time, like I usually do. My family stopped doing the traditional dinner a long time ago.