Say No To Shopping On Thanksgiving! (In stores, anyway!)

For the first time, my company is opening the doors on Thanksgiving Day. I actually left my last day job because it had gotten to the point where the ONLY day we closed was Christmas, and I really wanted to have some of my holidays back with my family.

I know some people will say, "but not EVERYONE can stay home on the holidays! Hospitals, fire departments, police departments (et al.) NEED to be open and they have to work!"

Yes, this is true. And for those people I am truly grateful. However they also entered their profession knowing full well there was a NEED for their service, potentially any of the 365 days each year. 

There is no absolute NEED for retail stores to be open any sort of prime hours for Thanksgiving. Restaurants? Maybe. I say take a vote and see if there are enough employees willing to work for 1.5x pay on that day and go from there. Supermarkets? Sure. Open from 8am to noon for those emergency "I forgot the cranberry" shoppers and then bar the doors. Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part, and it costs more to keep the store open for the occasional $2 sale than you'll even make that day.

Retail stores opening on Thanksgiving Day has come down to one thing: Greed. The need to be "first" and have just one extra second at getting extra dollars in the door. 

But here's the reality. In that weekend alone - "Black Friday" through the weekend - there will be MORE SHOPPERS out there than you will have enough product to supply at those prices. You're not going to miss any sales, you just may not be the FIRST destination. 

Let's say MegaMart1 has a TV on sale for $300. They open at 6am and have enough TVs for only 50 people. 200 show up hoping to get the TV. 150 leave disappointed. They don't stick around and browse just for the hell of it - they rush to the next store with the next best deal. MegaMart2 has the SAME TV on sale for the SAME PRICE. They open at 7am. Those disappointed shoppers from the first store are ALREADY over at store #2, hoping to catch the deal there. And so it will continue for the rest of the day. You could stay open until Midnight on Black Friday, and anyone that has ever worked retail will tell you, people will STILL be coming in looking for the magical $300 TV.

But that's not good enough. The next year, MegaMart2, not to be upstaged by MegaMart1, opens at 5am. And the same scenario plays out. The year after that, MegaMart1 opens at midnight on Thanksgiving instead, etc, etc. Until the cycle has now crept into full-on Thanksgiving Day.

I think we need to take back our holidays. Maybe not everyone celebrates the same days, but how many occasions are there where MOST businesses are closed. Schools are closed. Banks and government offices are closed. This may be one of only a few days a year that these families ALL have the same day off coincide. Let them have that day. You don't need another TV 6 hours earlier. It can wait, at least until the next day, and we need to teach retailers that by NOT using our dollars that day. 

I'm getting off my soapbox now - I have a family to spend more time with.