What is your opinion of retailers telling employees they must work on a holiday?

I’m totally fine with it.

What I have a problem with is that unions have been destroyed over the past 40+ years. If we had strong organized labor, and our anti-competition regulations were actually inforced, then issues like these would resolve themselves.

I’m assuming that when they hire in they are aware of how things work or have access to that info.

OK as long as the burden of working on the holidays is spread fairly among all employees.

***enforced

I think nothing of it. It’s a job and that is usually sufficient to be grateful for. If I even have any issue at all it will be of the people whose lives are so chaotic that they have to go out and buy something on a holiday or Sunday for that matter. I am all for days off from work and like to spend my days off at home and not in a mall super store.

We not only have to work on a stat holiday we don’t get anything extra for it, and we are union, if you work a stat holiday you should expect time and a half for every hour you put in, but our union bargained that away.

I always had to work holidays.
It was okay because we got paid double time and a half.

I can remember a time when such an issue was irrelevant because NOTHING was open for business on Thanksgiving other than an oddball Chinese restaurant here or there. My opinion is that the policy sucks, but then of course the policy merely reflects the realities at the bottom of the labor hierarchy.

I think it’s horrible. Who can’t survive one day without groceries? People need breaks and relaxing time with family and friends. Underpaid Walmart employees probably more so than anybody else.

To the comment on unions and organized labor – keep in mind that the demise of unions was largely brought about by the republican party and wealthy corporate owners who greed and shortsightedness caused them break unions and become richer.

That, and also the political bullshit that you hear all over the south that unions are bad because they are socialistic—
combined to basically decimate union power.

So if you want to gripe about how Walmart takes advantage of employees – look no further the republicans, for the last 60 years, and their mendacious leaders.

VERY TRUE!!^^^

I worked on a holiday last week, voluntarily.
Took the following monday off to compensate.

Did they offer you that?? Or did you just not show up the following Monday?

@filmfann: That’s different. That’s voluntarily working on a holiday.

My employer (government) we get double time in pay and hour for hour comp time for working on a holiday, so many people don’t mind it, unless they have something else to do.

However, that’s not the same as being told you have to work on that day or else you’re fired.

@SQUEEKY2
I offered it, because I had a project deadline on friday.
And honestly, it is better to have a 3 day weekend, than a single holiday smack in the middle of the week.

It’s the employer’s right. If you want a holiday off, you would need to take vacation time.

Often, employees who don’t want to work can trade with those who do want to.
For every employee working as a store “associate”, there are 10 unemployed people begging for their job

@YARNLADY ”...there are 10 unemployed people begging for their job.”

I don’t think that is true, especially with full employment. Around here, stores can’t get enough workers.

I worked in a hotel my last few years of college, and had to work Thanksgiving and Christmas. Places like a hotel, you don;t close for holidays.

I remember a friend working the gate at the airport parking lot on Thanksgiving, from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. We took him two plates full of everything so he could eat on his shift.

I don’t think anything of it either. If it was me, and I had an employee who worked Christmas day, I’d give them an extra day off the following week.

Who else could do it? Somebody has to…

I was going by the lines that show up at every job fair. These are the jobs for people with no experience, and the lowest pay. Workers with experience and skills are the ones that are hard to find.
hard to find.

I know not everyone celebrates all holidays, and folks wanna shop when they wanna shop…but I really miss when everything was just closed on a national holiday.

^^^^ And Sundays. They just rolled up the sidewalks.

If you work for a company that operates on holidays you can expect to have to work at least some of them. I see no reason for any retail to be open on holidays. I was fine when everything was closed on Sundays.

I remember those “You are SOL if you forgot pumpkin pie spice,” days.
But things change. My cousin went out on Thanksgiving day in 2016 to get pumpkin pie spice. She got the spice AND won 100 million on the lottery.

In Germany, almost everything shuts down on Sundays and major holidays. I love it. The quiet and change of pace is well worth some extra planning.

The kebap shops are always open, though.

Does anyone here even work retail? I cannot believe most of these answers.

Traditionally, in the US, for most of the 20th century, in most places, retail shut down four days a year, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Easter. Then they took away New Years in the 90’s. We dragged our exhausted asses in on New Years, and it was not a very busy day. People were recovering from their partying, and they already had been shopping shopping shopping, the 7 weeks before. We are fucking exhausted! October we receive in a ton of merchandise. It’s exhausting. Black Friday at almost every retailer everyone was REQUIRED to work. Sometimes there were exceptions for part-timers who never worked Fridays, but often it was frowned upon any employee took the day off. It’s not uncommon for managers to be working 6 days a week during the 5–6 weeks of Christmas shopping.

The day after Christmas is one of the busiest days of the year. So, after weeks of hard work, when every part of our body’s ache, we even have to drag ourselves in for one more day of extremely busy, and it’s dealing with tons of returns!

About 20 years ago a lot of retailers started opening earlier and earlier and closing later for Christmas shopping. I was working for vendors as that started to really get extreme. I remember telling someone if I was ever required to come in at 7:00 am for Christmas hours (5 weeks before Christmas) I would quit that day. That’s how horrifying it was to me. I was in stores that had usual hours from 10–9, managers usually had to be at work at 9:00 am throughout the year for morning shift.

As the stores began making more extreme hours for Christmas shopping a ton of people in the stores did not originally sign up for hours like that; the stores changed the rules.

Also, you can’t just trade a day or ask for vacation on a day everyone is REQUIRED to work! They threaten your job. Remember Auggie’s daughter at 17? She either showed up Midnight Black Friday morning to work 8 hours or she was going to be fired.As the OP said in her Q, everyone had to work Thanksgiving.

It’s not safe. These aren’t 3rd shift workers, these are people who typically work 9am to 10pm hours being asked to work in the middle of their sleep time. It’s a risk for car accidents and catching illness.

If a store is typically open 24/7 then it makes sense to me they would likely have hours every day of the year. If a store regularly opens at 6am, then opening at 6 am Black Friday would simply be customary, but other retailers simply don’t need to, it’s abusive. Also, some tourist places like Disney World I can understand they are open, I assume their stores have some hours, but I can tell you a lot of stores in the greater Orlando area will be closed on Thanksgiving, although some have some hours.

Saying people need the work is ridiculous. There are plenty of work hours during Black Friday week. Employees are just spread thin during the very early and very late hours they add on, they don’t hire more people than usual for the Christmas season.

Some industries have to work, hospitals, hotels, etc, but people can do without one day of shopping in most cases.

Thanksgiving is an American holiday during a difficult work time, let employees have their day with family and friends.

All over my Facebook are my retail friends who ask to let people have the day of on Thanksgiving and not to make employees work such extreme hours on Black Friday. It’s a plea to the retailers to stop abusing our friends who still work in the industry, or a plea for themselves if they still do.

You are either scheduled for that day or you aren’t. If you are scheduled and you don’t show up you suffer the consequences. Most employers won’t fire you for missing one day. If they do you need to find a different job. Don’t say you can’t. Jobs are out there.

I work in a downtown deli open most days of the week. We are open every day except Christmas. I’m a new hire and I was able to secure Thursday and Friday off by asking my lead. It turns out Thanksgiving Day is slow and most lead in the department ask to work that day due to double and a half pay and little work needed. They don’t need the commoners to slow them down. They leave work from the night before to give them something to do to kill the time. I witnessed this tonight during my night shift.

I haven’t worked retail since I was seventeen, but I worked as a designer for a local farm who also had a large farm stand (grocery really) for five years. They were open every day except Christmas Day.

Everyone, regardless of your job, had to work holidays. No exceptions. I designed and ran their flipping website, but for seven straight days, ten hours a day, including Thanksgiving Day, I stood outdoors, at a table, handing out hundreds of fresh turkeys.

Back breaking work, but I tried to have some fun with it.

customer
“Are your birds fresh?”

me
“Absolutely. These birds are so fresh, they were making plans last week.”

What is it you can’t believe about these answers @JLeslie? If you apply for a job at Quik Trip, you know coming out of the gate they’re open on holidays. Hopefully the manager will stagger those holidays or find some other way to compensate, but you know the score going in.

And of course there are police and EMT, hospitals.

Police, EMT, hospitals don’t all have to work holidays. I work in government and the guys who work shifts, who do water treatment facilities, road maintenance, maintaining the facilities like the jail, etc., don’t all have to work holidays, @Dutchess_III. If they do work a holiday, they get triple compensation between pay and comp time. So if they want to take the holiday off, they can. If they want to travel cross country or to another state to visit family for Thanksgiving, they can. A Walmart worker can’t. The cashier at Walmart told me everybody must work Thanksgiving.

If you dont like it get another job. Its yours to accept or not imo. Holidays are good money, I volunteered a lot.

@JLeslie To quote your own words, “Some industries have to work”. Yes indeed they do and where do you draw the line where your argument applies for those you champion that they should not have to work on major holidays? Major holidays are some peoples only day off where those folks who rely on these days off to do their shopping. So many families depend on second incomes and weekends and holidays are when the stay at home mom has a spouse at home on their day off to watch the kid while they get to go work and bring home that much needed extra cash. Bottom line is no one is forcing anyone to have to work on that day off. And to those who do have to work on major holidays or whacky super discount holiday shopping days they often can trade out that work day for a different day off.

Plus there is the deeper dynamic of the managers/owners of the retail store, hospital, police department, Amazon etc who have to make sure they have people actually show up and contingencies for the nightmare moment when employees call in sick. Plus there are the retail employees who do know they would have to work these unfun days, but do so knowing 1, that they will have a job and a paycheck and 2, that their goal is to keep getting promoted to higher pay and bigger job responsibilities and further their careers.

I respect and give thanks and praise for the people who are working to day, because in the end I know most of them are OK with working today. Ask any one of them straight up, how do you feel about working today? I would venture to guess most if not all would say….yeah it sucks , but we need the money, or, yeah it sucks, but the extra money will help pay for our vacation next summer, I am going to college and working weekend and holidays is the only times I can work. Then there are the more than you think people who don’t celebrate these holidays and willingly work these days for the sheer excitement of having something to do.

The one things I do share with you is that aside from the emergency workers that HAVE to be there, the other retail type jobs are there because we demand their goods and services 24 hours a day and holidays be damned because we want our stuff now! I am still old school and take advantage of these days off to just do nothing or just pitter patter around the house.

But I will probably buy a thing or two online this weekend now forcing more people to work their IT jobs, warehouse and delivery jobs.

I know plenty of folks who are happy to work holidays. A lot of us like to avoid the family gatherings as much as possible.

^^ ...and there’s that.

It just makes me thankful that I have a job where I never have to work holidays or weekends.

I’d be fine with most retail places closing on holidays though (and some do; I went to an In’n’Out the other day that had a sign on the door saying they’d be closed Thanksgiving to allow employees to be home with their families).

My step daughter (sorry for the DIL confusion) just texted back that all Walmart associates have to work on Thanksgiving, but they’re closed on Christmas.
I’m sure that they are specifically told that when they hire in.
When both my son and his wife were in food services at a retirement home, and couldn’t take Thanksgiving off, we had it on another day, usually Saturday.

I draw the line at retail that is typically “mall hours” that is no big deal for consumers if they wait a day to shop. I’d include that these stores historically were not open on Thanksgiving.

Walmart is not like Macy’s and Saks. I’d like for Walmart workers not to have to work on Thanksgiving, but like I said, any 24/7 store I think it’s fine if they are open Thanksgiving. Some Walmart’s aren’t 24/7, but are 6 to midnight. That still isn’t mall hours, so that could go either way in my book. A Quik Stop sounds like it’s at a gas station, is it? That’s fine with me if it’s open on Thanksgiving.

Buying a TV at Best Buy at 2 in the morning just isn’t necessary, nor is buying a blush at Macy’s.

OK, so my Amazon Prime cart was at $198 on Wednesday, dropped to $170 on Thursday…going to check on it now….ohhh! It’s gone up to $188! (Today is Black Friday, 2019, for anyone watching.) The Light Brite I have in there increased by $3.00. How very interesting. Another item I have in there also increased by $3.00.
It’s like watching the Stock Market.