With the creep of Black Friday into Thanksgiving day (I believe Walmart and Target are both opening their stores on Thursday evening around 8:00 pm) with slashed prices to bring in shoppers, many people are going to have to work on Thanksgiving day.
Several groups have started online petitions to pressure the giant retailers to give these people time back with their families.
Do you think this is unfair or just part of a job in the retail industry?
Many people in the manufacturing industries have had to work on Thanksgiving and Christmas since 24 hour/7 day a week operations began a century ago or more.
People work on holidays. All essential services are staffed, supermarkets and other food purveyors are open, convenience stores are open, movie theaters are open, restaurants are open.
So, some Target and Walmart employees get to have their Thanksgiving dinner with their families before going to work the night shift.
What bugs me more is the slavish devotion to Black Friday that is encouraging retailers to get a jump on the competition because a midnight opening isn’t early enough. I wonder how many jerks are going to skip the turkey to line up at stores, so they can get the best deals.
I guess it depends on the environment. Black Friday at the mall sucks ASS. Black Friday at Blockbuster wasn’t as big of a deal. When I worked retail and was low man on the totem pole, I generally had to work 8-hour shifts on both Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. I didn’t really care that much, being young and single with no kids. And working at a small store like I did, customers would tip us–keep in mind, this wasn’t a place with a tipping mindset. So that was cool. *And *some of our regulars would bring in cookies or other food for us, which was awesome.
I do think it’s a nice quality-of-life thing if retailers offer bonus pay for working on the holiday. Mine paid time-and-a-half (not sure whether Walmart or other big box stores do this, I’ve never worked at one). So the extra pay was definitely worth the fact that I wasn’t relaxing at home.
Having spent most of my working life in retail I support the notion that the stores should remain closed that one day. Particularly in the large chains that are opening on Thanksgiving, the next six work weeks are going to be the worst of the year. Best for the bottom line, but worst for the folks on the front lines. For me that was always a pleasant day of peace and serenity before the madness set in.
And of course I understand there are all sorts of folks who aren’t working in other types of jobs who are needed and expected to work on holidays. When I was a security guard I volunteered for holiday shifts because I was living too far from family to have plans with them.
Whether working on a holiday is unfair should be decided on a case by case basis. The mere fact of a holiday shift is not, to me, inherently unfair.
I don’t have to work on Thanksgiving (good old office 8-5 job), but I think that the folks from the head offices of Target and Walmart should be in the stores on Thanksgiving, working. If you are going to tell your employees that they have to work on what has traditionally been a family holiday, management should darn well be there too, not sitting at home digesting turkey while watching football.
Essential industries like hospitals, police etc. need to be open. To some extent, so do places like drugstores and grocery stores. And restaurants - serving food is kinda what they do, so while it sucks to work that day, I would hope that most patrons recognize that and tip, heavily.
But fuckitall, nobody needs to buy a big-screen TV at 90% off at midnight on Thanksgiving day.
Having only worked four months out of the past year, any time they want to pay me cash dollars to sit here in this chair and wait for something to break, I’m good. Somebody’s got to do it, might’swell be me.
Then again, I have no friends or family with which to share Thanksgiving or Christmas, so I might be biased.
If I work on Thanksgiving, I get paid time and a half for the entire shift, in addition to the eight hours worth of holiday pay I get whether I work or not. Count me in. It’s certainly a better deal than working the day after Thanksgiving (I refuse to call it by any other term).
When I worked in grocery I loved working holidays because it paid extra, plus it was busy as hell (which is good). Ideally it would be optional…I can see being pissed if I were forced to do it.
I think everything non-essential, especially retail, should be closed on all national holidays. The tiny grocery store I do a lot of shopping at is always closed on holidays, and I say good for them. I do this crazy thing called planning ahead.
When I worked technical support for point of sale terminals, people would FIGHT to be able to work on holidays. We got holiday pay AND double time and a half. On top of all that, full catered meals for everyone working that day. The best part? A ten hour shift would get you maybe 10 calls. It was awesome.
When I was a baker, Thanksgiving and Christmas meant coming in at midnight to get a jump on the crazy amount of bread that had to be made. It was actually a lot of fun working in the kitchen with absolutely no customers around. We drank a lot and blasted music and had a great time. I was also done by about mid afternoon, so I never really felt put out on Thanksgiving.
Now I’m a teacher, so Thanksgiving means a two-day work week and a five-day weekend. I don’t feel put out at all.
One of my best TGivings ever was the year my kids were traveling with their mom and I was alone. A friend in a similar situation knew a bunch of other similarly alone people and created a party at her place.
She worked at a local blues bar, and Anthony Gomes and his band played there TGiving eve. It was a travel date for the band, so they came to the party and did a bunch of short acoustic sets throughout the day/night/next morning.
Maybe you could try to organize or be included in someone else’s organizing.
In my experience, most are closed on Thanksgiving (especially during the day), although not as many as on Christmas. Those are the only two holidays that I’d expect a major retailer to close for, though.
When I was in high school, where I worked it was only open until two on Thanksgiving, it was volunteer, and you got time and a half. It was almost all of us teenagers working that day. It went by pretty fast, and you were out of there in time to eat. And yes, the owner was there as well. It was funny the one year when we had some guy banging on the door ten minutes after closing, looking pissed off.
Other than that, no, I can’t see the need to be open all day like that.
