Make those “Door Buster” sales harder to get to?
Randomly activated motion-sensing Browning .30 cals from the store roof-top thinning the herd? Parking lot mines deactivated in changing walkway patterns at different times of night? Pay for it all with “Live Carnage” PPV sponsored by the stores in question…
We wish you a Merry Xmas!
We wish you a Merry Xmas!
We wish you a Merry Xmas!
(Now, hit the deck & roll left…)
I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Back on topic …
I’ll be working the early part of TG. 200 people want to get from the West coast to the East and it’s my job to get them there. Presumably most of them have family gatherings to get to. As do I.
Nonetheless, I agree with the OP that the media hype driving the retail frenzy is Not a Good Thing™.
Just say No. It’s all we can do.
Denounce friends and acquaintances who play the stooge by forwarding, posting, liking, mindless twitting, etc., about the retail hype. Stay at home on TG to the degree possible. When you see a non-essential business taking a stand against TG opening, thank the manager. Even if it’s a huge retail chain, the collective effect of lots of folks telling lots of managers they’re doing the right thing *will *echo up to TPTB.
I don’t often use my sig line these days, but it’s particularly apt here …
People have been predicting the end of Western Civilization since the beginning of Western Civilization. Cure for Black Friday? Take two aspirin and call WalMart in the morning.
Yeah, no kidding.
It used to be that Sunday was put up on a special pedestal, and businesses that chose to stay open on that day were bashed along with the heathens that patronized them. But alas, Sunday business hours have not wrecked society. Most people have figured out a way to squeeze in worship services and family pancake breakfasts before they head out to do their shopping. And Sunday workers have managed it as well.
I would be sad if Thanksgiving becomes just another work day. Especially if it means that I have to work too. But human beings are resilient creatures. I don’t think Thanksgiving is the glue that holds families together. The “glue” it what happens all the other days of the year. If a business decides it’s good PR to keep its doors shuttered on Thanksgiving, but they treat their employees like crap all the rest of the year, they don’t deserve anyone’s support. My problem with this THANKSGIVING IS SACRED!! stuff is that it encourages paying of lip service and dressing of windows, rather than the implementation of actual “family friendly” employment practices. I think the majority of retail workers would gladly accept working on a major holiday if it meant having predictable scheduling, paid sick leave, and livable wages. If Mama doesn’t have these things, she’s not going to be in the mood to cook anyone’s donated Thanksgiving turkey. I think even Norman Rockwell would appreciate this.
My dad and brother plowed snow, and my brother also worked for the underground crew in our city and fixed broken water mains, or water problems in our city. If they were called out, they went. I agree with everyone who has mentioned the hospitals, police, fire departments, hotels, TV workers, movie theater employees, and others who work on holidays. I know some people think only essential workers should have to work on holidays, but who gets to choose essential? Is a TV cameraman essential? Or should there be no TV on Thanksgiving? Do you really need to fly, or take the bus, or a cab on Thanksgiving?
You may have to work your holidays around what your family does. You don’t like to cook and eat early, but you also don’t like to have Thanksgiving dinner without your daughter. You have to pick.
It’s really impossible if you’re on call for some job because you don’t really know when or if a call will come in, but you just do your best.
I guess when I was little Thanksgiving meant more because we went to an aunt’s or uncle’s, the cousins and grandparents were there, and it was chaos.
My aunts and uncles are dead, as well as parents and grandparents. My daughter won’t be home. Not everyone has a big, family holiday planned, and some never will. They adjust, too, and some adjust by shopping and going to a movie.
As do prisoners in the exercise yard - they can walk anywhere they want, within those four fences. Implying that the consumer population has “free will” because they can shop when they want, for whatever choices they care to make from the shelves, is just about as absurd.
Part of this thread has gone down an unintended and (IMHO) irrelevant road. I never said nor meant to say that Thanksgiving was, or should be, a rigidly enforced holiday for everyone. Of course there is always an infrastructure that has to work regardless of irrelevancies like “holidays,” and there is some part of the population that for one reason or another doesn’t do the traditional family/dinner-centric celebration.
Even Black Friday itself isn’t really at the heart of my arguments - contained on the day after Thanksgiving, it’s a separate problem and set of issues and yes, I suppose there is much “free will” about staying home that day. (Gosh knows there are almost 30 more days to do that shopping, anyway.)
I do think the rollback of the utter nonsense that is Black Friday not just to midnight, as in recent years and did have some slight impact on the “familyness” of the day, but back into dinner time on a day when the dinner is the centerpiece of the day for those who choose to celebrate it (some large majority) - that brute-force, uncaring, grasping push back into a time when people, goddamn them, are staying home instead of spending money is the problem.
It’s no longer a smallish number of people who have to work or have a major family member go off to work - that essential infrastructure - but some large portion of families who have members working in retail, sales and retail support. That alone represents millions of families that would otherwise be left to the day; add in the indoctrinated nonsense of having to rush off six or twelve hours earlier to “get the bargains” and you’re disrupting millions to tens of millions more.
But it’s all free will, right? These millions are simply opting, of their own initiative and for their own deeply-considered reasons, to fuck up what may be the last meaningful holiday with a carefully-planned sojourn to buy a bunch of unwanted shit just a little cheaper. (Maybe.) Not an ounce of coercion, conditioning or fostered desire in the mix… just the golden thread of free will exerting itself in a vacuum.
Oh, wait, I forgot - these are only the stupid and gullible people, not the ones who are so “free” in will that marketing has no effect on them. So it’s their own fault for being sheeple. And there are of course no 'eeples here.
I think you raise a lot of good points there, especially the ones about working conditions. Being able to plan is hugely important, and when you schedule is never set until the last minute, then your life is constantly in stress mode. At any rate, Thanksgiving is a fun holiday, pretty much the only one not hyped to the sky with commercialism, but I’ve had it a week early or two days late and it’s still the same. Turkey tastes like turkey if it’s Thursday or Saturday. It’s all about the people you are eating it with, not the particular day.
More and more families are being impacted by the scourges of retail since more and more people are employed in retail. As opposed to manufacturing jobs of yesteryear. If we could bring back manufacturing sector jobs and strong unions, maybe we could keep the Thanksgiving dinner table intact. But I don’t know how it’s possible to do that now in our current economy.
Brick-and-mortar stores are having to compete against Amazon and other online merchants. Those businesses operate 365/24/7. I hate Best Buy and most other big box stores with an irrational passion, but I do have a sense of fairness. It’s not fair to “punish” big box stores for doing whatever they can to stay competitive, while letting their competition off the hook just because they are invisible. If Amazon is selling gizmos for cheap, with free two-day delivery, and I’m a store owner who has those same gizmos sitting on the shelf, I’m going to feel compelled to come up with every gimmick I can to get warm bodies in the store. Why wouldn’t? I have a family to support and a pay roll to maintain. It doesn’t make sense to boycott me, your local merchant, but not boycott Amazon or the gazillion other online stores. Or the Home Shopping Network. Everyone else gets to rack in big money, but not me? Just so your daughter can help put the dinner on the table and then do her Christmas shopping from her iPhone before the pumpkin pie is sliced?
That’s what I would say in defense of the commercialization of the “season”.
There is a medicament for the symptoms, though. Try the Canadian solution: move Thanksgiving to early October. 
In this way, Halloween insulates Thanksgiving from the hype.
Black Friday in Canada is just a random weekday, though there is some spillover of hype from south of the border. Our Crazy Holiday-Related Shopping Day is Boxing Day, Dec 26th.
But this isn’t true. In your lifetime, there’s always been Thanksgiving football–those people have to work, and be away from their families. Thanksgiving parades–same. News anchors and news media have to be at work. Weathermen. As monstro mentions, grocery stores and gas stations and McDonalds to serve people traveling. Doctors and drivers. Just like movie theaters and Chinese places are open on Christmas. Everyone’s working but maybe a select few of the privileged middle class, who eats on the backs of the lower paid.
Plus soup kitchens working for the poor, and high end restaurants serving big turkey dinners for the rich, and Cracker Barrel for the in between. Those people are all working, and have every Thanksgiving for a century.
As an aside, I know a family that did all their Christmas shopping on Black Friday because it was “cheaper” and they were very poor. Very misguided, but that’s what they did. Bought last year’s items and this year’s prices to fund a holiday. That’s sad, but still in the spirit of giving, not consuming.
Again, a middle-class fantasy.
Welcome to how the world’s worked since, as John Mace says, the beginning of Western Civilization. There were always food vendors and doctors and charioteers and entertainment workers on festival days! Eat, drink, be merry, forget about the little people. People who would rather have the money for time and a half so they can feed their families. Consumerism is good for the economy, which is good for the working class.
Think of the workers!
/just finished working a contractually-obligated mandatory retail work day on Halloween
//to be fair to Amateur Barbarian’s argument, I hate every single person who orders pizza on Halloween. Stop it!
There we go. I was waiting for you to circle back around to your pet cause, Amateur Barbarian. People are slaves to the marketing machine. Of course! It’s so simple!
It’s bullshit.
A lot of people like to shop on Black Friday. They like to be out with the crowds or they like to go in a big group with family and friends. You can’t put everything at the feet of the evil marketers. Even though I know you really really want to. Do you shop on Black Friday? If not, aren’t you proving that you’re free from the marketer’s control? So why can’t other people exercise the same free will?
Basically, as soon as your argument comes down to “sheeple” behavior, you’ve already lost.
You’re absolutely right.
Oh… wait… we’re talking about different things. But I note it took you fifty posts to notice this entire thread, from the OP on, is about that topic. Maybe you were distracted?
Yes, of course, everyone here is deeply wise and highly observant and utterly unmoved by the noise and waste of consumer marketing. Everyone here is also comfortably behind a shield of almost total anonymity and can make any claim about their personal habits and behaviors they like… including the insistence that uninfluenced personal choice and “free will” guide their every day and act.
Same is generally true of the online world in general.
Which is why at most, those who deny the massive influence of marketing on the modern world will admit that the stupid, gullible masses - the “sheeple” (not my term, I don’t even like it much) fall for all that, but never, ever them. Funny, though, if you follow Mr. Socky Puppet’s posts long enough, it sure looks like they make a huge number of decisions that can only be driven by marketing, a consumption-driven life and all its baggage.
And it’s even more interesting that I have never met any of these paragons of self-determination in real life. Ever. Anywhere. And like Diogenes, I have my lamp lifted high at all times, and have for nearly two decades.
So sincere applause for your life above the tide, JB. <fx golf clap> You’re truly one in several million.
ETA: Oh, by the way - it’s my “pet cause” the way math is Steven Hawking’s hobby.
LibrarySpy, I hadn’t even considered the class angle to all this, but you’re right. The sanctimony does seem to come from a place of privilege. People working like dogs on holidays has always existed, but to let some people tell it, it’s a brand new thing. I can only guess that their concern comes from seeing their own children working like dogs. It’s only meaningful and “emblematic” if it’s happening to your family.
I’d also be curious if patriarchs and matriarchs feel the same way about this. Back when my family did the whole traditional thing, Thanksgiving dinner was a huge production put on by my mother, with the reluctant assistance of her female children. My mother would be washing greens in the kitchen sink at 3:00 AM in the morning and somehow vacuuming the living room at the same time. She’d be so exhausted when it was all said and done that she’d fall into a deep turkey-induced coma before the food was even put away. Of course, for my father Thanksgiving dinner was the holiest-of-holy days. For him, it was a day of watching football, carving the turkey to an adoring family, pigging out, and good times. For my mother, it was a day of hard labor and stress. The hardest day of the year, perhaps. Her and her arthritis might have appreciated some of the air being let out of this “special” day.
We managed to have an economy for years and years and years without Macy’s being open on Thanksgiving. I don’t think it’ll be the barrier to a “healthy economy” if it happens again.
(I missed this post until it was quoted.)
You’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head.
The issue isn’t as much about (over-)consumption on an individual level as that it is the root cause of a vast number of our destructive endeavors. There are few global problems that can’t be traced to excessive consumer-level consumption.
It is past time to rethink our notions of “a healthy” economy. From over here, it looks like only the highest fever and continuous seizures are considered “health”; let either one subside and it’s global panic and stimulus time.
Cynics gonna be cynical. Many of the rest of us realize that marketing is just something that’s out there without letting it control our lives. It is possible, whether you think so or not.
When Macy’s stayed closed on Thanksgiving for all those “years and years”, were they competing against online stores? Because I can imagine there was a time when Macy’s could easily afford to miss a day of sales. That time is not now.
Most of the discussion in this thread (not all) kind of misses the point of what is happening. “Deal” shopping is a blood sport. Not for well educated, family dinner loving, consumerist society hating, shaking your head at the desperate sheeple you maybe, but it is a near obsession for a lot of people, especially people with limited resources. If you are making 8-12 dollars an hour and can score a TV, notebook, GPS, game, or favored toy for substantive discounts it’s a BFD. If your kid needs a notebook or wants a gaming console for Christmas you can save a ton by targeting specific items and making decisions about the value of your time.
I’ve stood in a few early morning Black Friday lines (and I loathe standing in interminable lines more than you will ever know) to get “doorbuster deals”. The deals were (IMO) good enough that it was worth it, but I only did it twice over the years. My MO these days is to go after the main crowds hit in the early afternoon and score things like universal notebook power adapters marked from 90 to 20 dollars, half price GPS units and similar parts deals. I have to stand in lines but normally for 15-20 minutes not hours and spend a few hundred dollars but the deal score is worth it.
Am I jumping like a trained dog for deals? Probably. Am I so impoverished that I must shop these deals or not have the items, no, but I know the score and I know what the real deals are, and so do most BF shoppers or they would not be wasting their time. Going out on BF is a purely volitional choice.
Having said all this BF deals today are not what they were in years past. The discounts are not as pronounced and the times they are available are being stretched out to the point they are overtaking holiday meal times. The huge BF discounts of years past were gigantic money losers for manufacturers and retailers to get people in the door, and in fact I would argue that BF profitability hits probability helped push several electronics retailers out of business over the years.
In the end the decline of the values being offered and the inconvenience of shopping earlier and earlier will cause many people to sit tight. This is already happening with lot with people like myself who graze after the fact to pick over what’s left. The “problem” is slowly solving itself.
That makes no sense. Macys.com is presumably operating 24/7.
You may as well argue that every department store needs to stay open 24/7 because what if I go to Amazon.com at 2am when Macy’s retail stores are closed?
Just curious. Do you own a house?
Because I think real estate is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Most homeowners are banking on someone else’s desire to own property, regardless of whether they can really afford it. A whole heap of folks would be very unhappy if Millenials collectively decided not to drink the “American dream” Koolaide by buying a big suburban house with a white picket fence. And the economy would suffer for it. But it would also be quite a rational decision to make, given recent events.
We all benefit from someone drinking the Koolaide. Our whole definition of “success” is flavored by this pungent brew.