The answer is fairly simple, though. If you don't like stores being open on Thanksgiving, don't shop on Thanksgiving. Tell all your friends not to shop on Thanksgiving, and explain why. Social media is an important part of this: send out the word on Facebook and Twitter, post videos on YouTube and Vine, or even post a message on Google+ (if you're particularly fond of the sound of your own voice echoing off empty walls).
You can even slant your message to match your audience. "Abusing the workers" won't resonate with the Fox News crowd, but "destruction of American values" seems to do it for them.
Protests might work, but you'd be giving up your holiday at that point, and it's a little late in the game for that anyway: you aren't going to get massive crowds to help you out. So the best way to get your message across is through your wallet - by not using it. If the profits for sales on Thanksgiving don't pay for the employees to come in that day, the corporations aren't going to do it again.
Not being up on the particulars of Wal-Mart's decision and how it affects individuals who are employed by the big bad capitalist evil monster I have a question... Is working on Thanksgiving made voluntary or mandatory?
ReplyDeleteEither way I won't be shopping Thanksgiving Day. I will however be eating at a local restaurant that will be having a Thanksgiving Day spread.
No shopping for this family today. Just cooking, eating, and cleaning up. Then some board games with the grandkiddies. Enjoy the day, and best wishes to all my friends at The Swash Zone.
ReplyDeleteGreed. Makes people and businesses do odd things.
ReplyDeleteThanksgiving - the day I have to endure dinner with people I've been avoiding forever. Some of my worst memories. . .
ReplyDeleteBut anyway, For people I know, working today is mandatory and for one friend, work starts at 11:00 PM and runs until 3:00 AM and he has to start again tomorrow at 10. He's grateful to have a job and I can speculate that a lack of jobs is a delight to those who want to squeeze the life out of employees.
I seem to remember that the level of employment under a certain Democratic President whom the Republicans still love to revile and against whom every dire prediction of economic disaster and domination by foreign entities was leveled, presaging the same idiocy against the next Democratic president -- I remember that in those days McDonalds was offering benefits as good as real employers do just to get people to work there.
But hey, if there's a war on Thanksgiving, maybe it's in part because it's an impediment to having the howling, shrieking retail hysteria begin that late. It really starts at Halloween now and Halloween starts in September just as that amorphous, puzzling event know as "back to school" starts in June.
You know capitalism is a great thing, just like children and pets, but you don't give it unrestricted run of the house or it will eat up everything you own and destroy everything you value.
"Roll It Back America".
ReplyDeleteMaybe too much progress is actually a... bad thing?
At least in this issue. But, it seems Americans relish it.
When you get older the good old days. somehow seem to have been better.
Maybe they were.
Depends on what w think progress is. I don't see a lot of it where others do, but yes, those good old days seem like yesterday when you get old but they're sure as hell aren't and weren't so good either except for the being young part. From the perspective of all my years a lot of progress just looks like paving over everything and a lot of noise.
ReplyDeleteIndeed Captain.
ReplyDeleteIn times of high unemployment employer abuses are common.
ReplyDeleteThe true irony is that some of the same people out shopping on Thanksgiving will be the same people wailing about oyhers "taking the Christ out of Christmas" because nothing says Christmas like macing, punching and trampling your fellow man trying to obtain what crap you don't already have on the day reserved for reflecting on all you do have!
ReplyDelete