That might be true when you’re talking about grocery stores and supermarkets with skeleton crews that have been for open for at least a few hours on holidays for as long as I can remember. I would be very surprised if it were true of Toys R Us, Best Buy etc, which in my experience do not have skeleton crews when they start the Black Friday sales a day early.
I was waiting to see if anyone else caught that. Forced to work is slavery, but you can be disciplined or terminated for not showing up for “your shift”. Also, “proof” of an internal company memo on a public message board
that you are required to work an unpopular holiday shift might be swiftly followed by a “You’re Fired” thank you note from HR.
*FTR, I don’t shop on Thanksgiving, even when I don’t “have to work”.
It’s the grocery stores and the like that I am talking about: I don’t think it’s wrong to run to such a place for half a gallon of ice cream that you forgot. I think most of the handful of workers that are there are generally the ones that consider time and a half to be a fair tradeoff.
I believe that grocery stores out here pay triple time on holidays. People fight to get a shift to the point that no one works more than four hours and only the most senior people get to work. This is not the case at Walmart though.
I don’t think it’s wrong either- but I’m 50 years old and I don’t remember a time when grocery stores and bakeries weren’t open for at least a few hours on holidays. I don’t think anyone thinks that’s wrong (especially if the employees are volunteering in order to get get time and a half) and it’s certainly not new. The objections are to places like KMart , Best Buy and Toys R Us opening- the employees are not volunteering, they are more likely to schedule extra staff than they are to schedule skeleton crew, they don’t get extra pay and people are not shopping because they ran out of something needed that day.
Some people object that other people are shopping for something that they didn’t run out of that day? Wow. Some people should maybe fucking mind their own damn business.
Not saying that to you, doreen, but if what you say about “some people” is true, then to them.
The issue is that the workers are being pressured (almost coerced) to work those days and not even receiving extra pay. The consumers who then shop those days fuel the justification to stay open.
Then don’t work retail. I’ve missed plenty of holidays but I doubt I’d get much sympathy since it was my choice of jobs.
Well, not WalMart:
At any rate, I was responding to what doreen wrote. She said that was one of the things some people object to.
I wonder if they chose to do that in response to public opinion, or if it was always the plan.
I’m sure it was out of the goodness of their hearts. 
Their hearts grew three times bigger that day!
The objection isn’t as much to the people shopping as it is to the stores being open. But if people stayed away in droves, the stores wouldn’t open.
Although I do suspect that many ( if not most) of those Thanksgiving shoppers would be incensed if they had to work on Thanksgiving to conduct business that could have waited until Friday. And in my opinion that’s really what the objections to the store opening/shopping is about about - that the shopping could have waited until Friday, and the shoppers (who clearly had the day off themselves) would object to having to work on Thanksgiving to open bank accounts, sell insurance policies, answer the phones at a real estate agency, issue driver’s licenses, assist a non-emergency dentist or whatever else it is they do for a living (and very likely would resent the customers that made it a profitable decision). I’ve actually seen shoppers quoted as saying they feel sorry for the employees who don’t get to spend time with their families as if the fact that people are shopping isn’t the reason. I not only don’t shop on Thanksgiving, I try to avoid shopping in those stores that open on Thanksgiving the rest of the year as well- I buy all my appliances and electronics at a local chain that does not open on Thanksgiving. I don’t have any illusions that one person will make a difference- but I can and do refuse to participate.
There have always been jobs that required work on Thanksgiving, but up until recently they were jobs that met an immediate need and often operated 24/7/365. Hospitals, any type of emergency services from police to electric and gas utilities , pharmacies, hotels and in the non 24/7/365 category bakeries, grocery stores,gas stations, restaurants and the Butterball Turkey hotline. I don’t recall ever hearing any objection to those - of course if you provide emergency services or work at a hotel or the turkey hotline someone will have to be working over Thanksgiving. It’s not so obvious that someone needs to be working at Best Buy- especially since it’s such a recent change that many of the people who “chose to work retail” did so when these stores were closed on Thanksgiving.
It’s worth noting that its not just retail workers who are sometimes dragooned into working on holidays. My boyfriend is a project manager at Apple, and this year will be the fourth in a row where he has to work on Christmas Day.
It’s nice to see that an OP with such a massively stupid premise could turn into an interesting discussion.
I don’t participate in Black Friday (or Thursday) shopping because I hate shopping for reasons that are magnified on those days. I don’t shop at Walmart anyway because I think that they’re a despicable corporation in general.
All of that said, I think that the overwhelming majority of this is outrage on other’s behalf. I’m a degreed professional now but when I was working hourly jobs in High School and College, I would have been thrilled for the extra shift. I could well have been an outlier but I wonder how the majority of workers actually feel about this. I acknowledge that most of the big retailers probably have an all hands on deck policy so there really isn’t a choice to work that day. All of the outrage I have seen here (and on Facebook and reddit) seems to come from people who are not required to work that day or are chronically unemployed.
I bet that the majority of worker bees are happy for the extra pay and don’t need us to feel sorry for them from behind our keyboards.
Depends on what you mean by “extra pay”, doesn’t it? Is that like “extra pay” for a bit of bigger bag when Santa comes down the chimney? Or a bit of extra pay to keep the electricity on?
I am reminded about a Roseanne excerpt a friend of mine sent to me. knowing I’m far too much a snot to have actually seen it:
Her sister: So, did you call the electric company?
Roseanne: Yeah, but they wouldn’t budge, power goes off tomorrow.
Her sister: Well, didn’t you tell them you had kids?
Roseanne: Yeah, but they didn’t want 'em.
Honestly not seeing a huge difference between a store opening at Midnight and store opening at 6PM. But you hit it right in your first paragraph. No one is forcing the shoppers to shop, and if they didn’t, then the stores wouldn’t open.
I used to work for Verizon Wireless and trust me there’s a difference. At least I got to have Thanksgiving dinner before having to deal with all the hordes of Black Friday shoppers who believed the propaganda we put out about the great deals they’d be getting.
God, I still shudder at the memories of standing in front of the gates at 11:59 PM watching the mob of customers jockeying for position while I had an image of stampeding cattle, while our manager called out, “On my command, unleash hell!” followed by the command at 12:01AM “Release the Kraken” followed by the gate going up.
Also, I live in Rhode Island and people were wondering earlier if Lincoln Chaffee(RI) or Deval Patrick(MA) issued any executive orders or anything like that and I’m pretty sure the answer is no. In fact, I don’t think they’d even have had the authority to give say Best Buy or WalMart permission to be open on Thanksgiving.