What is your opinion of stores making employees work on Thanksgiving, to start the Black Friday rush?

I hate it. It is the one uniting holiday in the USA that has not been overly commercialized. It seems to me that there is more pressure this year on stores to stay closed; I have seen some announcements from the bib\g box chains (Costco?) that they will.

I don’t like it. I worked in retail years ago and hated it. I had a customer once say, “it’s a shame you have to work today” on Thanksgiving. I looked at her and replied with, “well, someone has to be here to take care of those of you shopping. If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have to be here.”. She got pissed and walked away.

For me, it’s not about having to work the holidays in general, it’s about having to do so unnecessarily. There is no reason these stores have to be open. I now work in an environment that never closes. I don’t mind spending some of my holidays with my patients.

I actually hate midnight to 9am on Black Friday morning more than working on Thanksgiving, but both suck. The last few years there was a big increase in opening extremely early Black Friday morning and I was very outspoken about how horrible I think it is. I think it is dangerous for employees to work hours they typically don’t. I think it risks more car accidents, more illness, more family strife, and more unhappiness among employees. It is already an incredibly exhausting time of year. People who have never worked full time on their feet have no idea. Seriously, none! This includes retail, housekeeping, construction, some areas of nursing, and many more industries. Plus, the more employees are pushed to the brink the more we open ourselves to unions and government regulations. Working a vastly different shift than typically worked, a time of day someone usually is asleep for the better part of that shift is practically abusive.

If a store is a 24/7 then it doesn’t bother or surprise me they are open every day of the year. However, most people who go into retail were not expecting to work Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, Easter or New Years. In the last 15 years New Years was taken away and stores have been open. The last 5 years some are open on Easter. Now, Thanksgiving is being taken away.

Many many people work on thanksgiving. Medical doctors, pilots, hotel, amusement parks, some restaurants, pharmacy, and on and on. That is part of those industries. Even then I think it is awful when someone works their sleep time shift.

Retail stores don’t need to be open on Thanksgiving or before 8:00 on Black Friday if the store normally opens at 10:. If the industry just decides not to do it as a whole then none of them lose anything. The playing field stays level.

Personally, I think it’s bullshit, and see it as just another reason we need to have a revolution in this country.

@JLeslie “Retail stores don’t need to be open on Thanksgiving or before 8:00 on Black Friday if the store normally opens at 10:. If the industry just decides not to do it as a whole then none of them lose anything. The playing field stays level.”

At some malls, they may lose about $1200/hr in fines due to stipulations in their lease.

I think it is terrible. I don’t shop on Black Friday and I sure wouldn’t shop on Thanksgiving. we have an appliance store called “P.C. Richards and Sons” where I live. In over 60 years they have never been opened on Thanksgiving and the owner takes out a full page ad in the local newspaper thanking their employees for all their help and wishing them and their families a Happy Thanksgiving.

In over forty years of being a home owner I have purchased every appliance in my house from this company. They have gained a lot of respect from people in my area and we don’t forget it the rest of the year.

@jerv I have never heard of those odd hours in a lease. When Macy’s opens at 8:00AM very often the rest of the stores are still closed. When I worked for Bloomingdales and we had late hours the whole mall didn’t stay open. Our entrance to the mall was closed. Only our outside doors to the parking lot stayed open. It is true there are fines for not opening the store at the contracted hours, but I doubt Thanksgiving is in anyone’s contract to be open. Not any contract that was signed before 2012.

I’ll point out there are Chick fil a’s in malls and they are closed on Sundays.

I am willing to bet that the big box anchor stores in malls negotiate their leases properly, with astute lawyers writing them up, and they have stipulations about holiday hours being open, and not being fined for those days.

When stores went from opening at 10am to 9am in malls during the holidays the stores figured a skeleton crew was there anyway getting the store ready for opening. It cost them very little more in payroll, sometimes not a penny more, and a little more in electricity, because full lights are not traditionally on in department stores until 10–20 minutes before a store opens. Late closings also often cost almost nothing or nothing in extra payroll, there is added expense for utilities and it was thought being open during recovery for the day when not many customers were still in store. Then it all snowballed into this craziness over the years.

I know some people have heard me say Christmas was the boringist day of the year when I was little. I would be glad to shop on Christmas or be somewhere businesses are open, but not enough to make those employees work on those days or hours where for as long as I can remember the stores have been closed.

Black Friday is what it is; one day of the year. Having more than one day represented as Black Friday, or anything to do with it is stupid, stupid, stupid. It is like having fourteen bull’s eyes on one target.
Black Friday is supposed to be the one special shopping day of the year. I used to love it. Now retailers try to duplicate it. fake it, make it hell. Thanksgiving is one special day for American families, and I don’t want to see it broken and twisted the same way retailers have done to the day when shopping used to be fun, special, adventurous.
There have been some kids appeal to their parents’ workplace on behalf of their parents. I think they should have a legitimate claim in lawsuits.
I am very tired of retailers marching all over the things which are still worthwhile, or even precious.
I’m done shouting now, I think.

A pox on them! It’s another marketing ploy at the expense of their employees. Retail wage slavery isn’t already grim enough. Let’s deprive the poor souls of Thanksgiving as well.

I find it despicable, but such is the way of our gluttonous gross consumerism culture.
The only Black Friday shopping I have ever done has been on amazon. The amount of crap people think they can’t live without is mind blowing. haha
I have friends like this, they make lots of money and have every gadget known to man, even a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Just more shit to dust and store if you ask me.lol

It a tactic to get more Christmas shopping days My understanding is that by expanding the number of days for Christmas shopping people will spend more money. That doesn’t make it good or bad but there is a reason for it. Personally, you couldn’t pay me to go shopping on Thanksgiving, let alone in the middle of the night. Thanksgiving is for family and football.

Just for full disclosure, my store is open on Thanksgiving, Christmas day, new years day, and all other holidays. I do quite well on those days. I don’t have much trouble staffing the store either. I have plenty of volunteers for the double time.

@BeenThereSaidThat AND a great point for buying from a locally owned company is that if you have a problem, you can talk to a real live person that speaks a language you can understand.

@chyna PC Richards is a fairly big chain retailer.

@Jaxk Great point about the short Christmas season this year. Thanksgiving is very late in the month.

Chanukah is mid December which creates a small shift in shopping too, especially in certain markets and certain categories.

Don’t you own a grocery store?

@JLeslie – Convenience store and gas station. Holidays when the grocery stores are closed make us the only game in town.

@Jaxk Your business is expected to be open so it isn’t a surprise to employees. Even some grocery stores are open Thanksgiving day for a few hours. Varies by chain and location.

@chyna exactly.

@BeenThereSaidThat Exactly what? It’s a fairly large chain store. I don’t think we can consider it local or mom and pop. Unless maybe the first few stores started in you neck of the woods.

I agree with what jleslie said in her post.
”“a great point for buying from a locally owned company is that if you have a problem, you can talk to a real live person that speaks a language you can understand.””

why so argumentative?? The manager and employees all live locally and have worked in the store for years. I live in a pretty big city in New York. not in hicktown.

@Jaxk One difference; you pay double-time in order to get volunteers while some employers not only pay straight-time, but also rearrange schedules and terminate anyone who even hints at refusing… sometimes in ways that make it look like the employee officially quit in order to avoid unemployment.
In that regard, you are far better than many employers. Just don’t assume that every employer is as generous as you; many are not.

@JLeslie You never heard of that? Well, here, and here are a couple links about it. Fact-checking it has been a bit difficult however, so there is a chance that it’s a hoax… but I’ve seen more outlandish things turn out to be true, so I;m withholding judgment.

@jerv I don’t think it’s a hoax. I’m just saying in my experience malls were not open on certain days if the year and stores had to notify it get permission from mall management to open on a typical day closed and for extended hours. I’m just talking about what is typical in my experience. As I said, I don’t doubt your examples.

@BeenThereSaidThat it’s not a local store. It’s a big chain that chose to stay closed on Thanksgiving and I’m sure they do appreciate the hard work of their employees, and they also appreciate that you think they are a wonderful store because they thank them in the ad they pay for. I’m sure corporate pays for that ad. They are as local as Neiman Marcus. Well, PC Richards is just in the tri-state area I think, but I bet they have just as many stores as Neimans if not more. I was just letting @chyna know, because it seemed like she assumed it was a local store. Everyone lives local to the store they work in, even people who work at Macy’s and they probably have 800 stores now.

I thought about it more and I half take back my comparison to Neiman’s, because I think they went public in the 80’s. It still isn’t like buying milk from @jaxk.

I think working in a gas station convenience store on a holiday and working in a large department store/Walmart/Kmart/Target on a holiday are like apples and oranges.

PC Richards has 66 stores, so they’re not what you’d call a small mom and pop store. That’s a pretty major chain, if not the largest that specializes specifically in electronics/appliances.

If they want the luxury of taking Thanksgiving off without being fired, they better figure out how to become self-employed an d successful enough to live off that income.

I am all for eliminating black friday altogether and everyone just taking both thanksgiving and friday off for a four day weekend.
But then again it wouldn’t bother me if stores closed for weekends as well.

I don’t like the media, so naturally I do not support this issue.

@Hypocrisy_Central Does that mean you support stores being open on Thanksgiving?

I’m all for it. I found thanksgiving prices to be cheaper than black friday’s.

@JLeslie Does that mean you support stores being open on Thanksgiving?
I support any store being open if they can do so with a staff that volunteered to work that day. If it is a business that wants to be open on Thanksgiving I believe they should ask their workers and if they have enough to adequately staff the place, they open, or open for the limited number of hours they can do so with a staff that volunteered. I also believe those who volunteered to work be paid double time and a half for working the holiday..

I don’t think I have ever been paid overtime or double time for working a holiday when I worked retail. Maybe my memory is bad, but I really don’t think so.

The details of the question specifies stores which threaten their employees jobs. Not stores staffed all voluntarily.

It’s appalling!

I see two people. One has agreed to provide services at times decided by the other for compensation. The other pays the agreed upon compensation and decides. At any time either party can terminate the employment agreement.

My question is, if it happens every year, and you are one of those employees, next time you interview for a job, might you ask what you are binding yourself to do in those circumstance?
“Yes, I would like to know if I will be required to work off hours or during holidays.”
And if the answer is yes, they reserve the ability to require you work on those days, then you may want to decline the position if it means that much to you.

As for the idea that employers need people to work those hours, and as long as there are people willing to work them, those are the people that will get the jobs. I have no problem with natural causalities. Nor do I judge either as being victimized.

@Sinqer What do you mean by “natural casualties”?

@dxs: “Causalities.”

@jca Ahh. I read that sentence so many times trying to understand it with casualties. It’s odd how the brain works.

By the use, I mean rewards and consequences (subjectively evaluated effects) that naturally occur as a result of their causes (our decisions of actions and the actions performed).

I guess in laymen’s terms, I mean I don’t blame others when I suffer the consequences of my own decisions and actions, even when those consequences involve others firing me, choosing someone else for a job position, disliking me, so on and so forth.

I choose my actions confidently, because I have considered the causalities (the cause and effect relations) that those actions will effect, mindful of the negative (consequences) as well as for the positive (rewards). And thus I am prepared for the consequences, and do not blame the person for finding my decisions not to their liking or not what they want in their employ. I simply do not meet their standards, or I deviate from their preference.

I consider this taking responsibility for the decisions and actions I take.

Holy snot! Ready to laugh? I just reread your question @dxs , and I only now realized you wrote casualties. I can’t stop chuckling that I made the exact same mistake. I thought to delete this post since it doesn’t really apply… but I had to share my suffering the same temporary dyslexia. I didn’t catch it for the quotes, my brain just assumed since you quoted, it said whatever I wrote.

Cheers! :)

Hah but it was an interesting read.
Casualties cause casual causalities.

& vice-a-versa

Causality causes casualties

It is easy to say if you don’t like it, don’t do it when dealing with the abstract but it is a lot harder to turn down a job, any job, when reality bites you in the ass and you have a family to feed, clothe and keep sheltered.

I have been presently unemployed for two years now, and I despise it. I am in the position I am in, because I chose to leave my job and move to Ireland… I don’t blame the 30 or so places I’ve applied for choosing others besides me for whatever reason they did.

It’s just as easy to say it here and now, even as I need a job. That simply means having a job (or that job) is more important than avoiding the inconvenience of having to work the hours. I would gladly be inconvenienced on every holiday if it would get me employed.

Don’t take the job: Rewards, no inconvenience on the holiday… Consequences, you have no job. (I chose the equivalent of this to move to Ireland… the reward)
Take the job: Rewards, you have a job and can feed yourself… consequences, you get to be inconvenienced on the holiday.

You’re free to choose as you prefer. Freedom doesn’t mean lack of consequences for your decisions or actions. There’s no decision that doesn’t carry consequences with its rewards.