Black Friday Is Moving To Thursday (Formerly Known As Thanksgiving)
Every Thanksgiving you sit down and tolerate your family for a couple of hours. Watch some football, and then nap. But if you're a retail employee, you'll have to report to work that night and deal with crazy customers with too much money.
You see, the day after Thanksgiving is commonly know as "Black Friday". A few years ago, each retailer would open their store at 6 AM. Last year that moved up to midnight on Friday. Now some stores (Target, Sears, and K-Mart) are planning to open on Thanksgiving night!
As the junk-measuring contest continues among retailers, it looks like the losers will be the employees. If it continues, Thanksgiving will be yet another holiday that retail employees have to work through.
It is pretty well understood why places like hospitals are open on holidays. But is there really a reason why a clothing department store has to be? Is there really someone having sweater emergency on Thanksgiving, that requires a trip to a department store. Borrow a damn sweater till Friday!
On top of that, Black Friday shopping is overrated. There is this wonderful thing called "the internet", and you can even shop on there! You don't even have to deal with everyone else. And the stuff is shipped right to your door! The deals aren't the great either. Most of the stuff is horribly generic, cheaply made, and probably won't last till the next Black Friday.
There has been some backlash over the Thanksgiving opening. While the company says they are giving in to "customer demands". Most customers are saying they never demanded that. If the CEO of Target gets to spend the holiday with his family, then why not the employees who work for him.
One employee has already started a petition on change.org , and some stockholders have even taken to writing letters to the CEO. Its not like a later start time is going to hurt sales. People are still going to be there, because they still haven't heard of that "internet" thing.
If we have Thanksgiving to give thanks for the things we already have, then why do we need to shop on that day for things no one ever needs? And if you have to shop THAT BAD, I think your addiction can wait till Friday morning. If not, seek help. Seriously.
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