Stores Should Not Be Open On Thanksgiving
It’s Thanksgiving evening and you’re about to make a toast about being thankful for your family but there’s one thing missing at the dinner table: your father, grandfather, brother, or even your mother or sister. Some businesses do not allow their workers off on this day when you’re supposed to be spending time with your family and realizing the true importance of those you care about.
These businesses are too money hungry and have lost these common morals. Where did society go wrong? Are we so focused on making money and consumer goods? We should not be focussing on making money on a day where we should be focussing on enjoying family time. Having been someone who has had a family member miss out on part of Thanksgiving, it is understandable why other families would argue that having a member of the family work on Thanksgiving is disappointing. The only stores that should be open on Thanksgiving are maybe your local food store for last minute ingredients, the airport so that people can fly home to their families and of course hospitals. Work should not be your main concern on this day, and if it is, I, and the majority of the nation who still have common sense, feel sorry for you.
Let’s forget about these large retail business being open for a second and focus on a different problem. Consumers are still jumping to get to the front of the lines when these huge sales occur. Meanwhile, they could be fighting back by not shopping on Thanksgiving. I enjoy huge sales too, but there is a time and place for everything and that is not on a night you’re supposed be enjoying family. Help us all out and shop on Black Friday.
Stores like Radio Shack open at 8 am on Thanksgiving morning. 8 am. That is truly ridiculous. We should not be rushing off to Radio Shack at 8 am in the morning when the Thanksgiving Day Parade is going on. As a kid, and even now, I love waking up in the morning to the parade going on and my parents making breakfast together, laughing. Personally I could not imagine it any other way, but some wake up and their first thought is “I need to go to Radio Shack because there’s a sale.” It’s not even just Radio Shack’s but it is also these larger retail stores including Macy’s, Walmart, Best Buy, and even Toys R’ Us. The number of retail chains is rapidly increasing as years pass.
No one should feel the absolute need to buy a new television on Thanksgiving and at one point in time, that was universally agreed upon. Now things are changing and large sales are becoming more important than memories made and time well spent. At the end of the day, or maybe even your life, we are not going to remember that time we rushed out at 12 in the morning to buy a brand new tv, but we will remember the times we spent at the dinner table laughing whole heartedly or watching the annual Thanksgiving day football game all together with a fire burning. Stick to the traditions because when your time comes, those are going to be the only things you have left to remember.
Stores Should Be Open on Thanksgiving
In a free-market economy where businesses care solely about making money and benefiting the consumers, would opening retail stores on a holiday such as Thanksgiving day be such a bad thing? There are many conflicting arguments about whether or not people should work on this holiday. One of the arguments strongly states that since this holiday is family-oriented, workers should be spending this time with their families rather than standing behind a cash register ringing up items that are priceless compared to time spent with loved ones. The opposing argument on this subject is that it is the responsibility of companies to please the consumer and in past years, the amount of shoppers searching through retail stores for bargains has actually increased. So, the question still stands: is opening these retail stores on Thanksgiving really a problem if consumers seem to love shopping on this day? Some may think it is, but our economy calls for it and, believe it or not, many employees actually enjoy working on this holiday.
In past years, the tradition of sitting around the dinner table with your loved ones and delicious food has slightly changed; many large retail stores such as, Walmart, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Target, and Best Buy have started offering Black Friday deals on Thanksgiving day. Although this may enrage some, the majority of Americans cannot seem to get enough of this new shopping opportunity. As seen on AboutNews.com, over 30 million Americans enjoyed the luxuries of being able to shop on Thanksgiving day and companies also benefited from this by making an average of $630.5 billion in overall sales. Also, these companies provided about 750,000 jobs to employees who were struggling throughout the holiday season.
Furthermore, many employees, according to Garcia, a retail worker for many years who spoke with Deseret National News, actually enjoy working on this holiday due to increased pay incentives, and also due to different holiday traditions and cultural backgrounds. She observed in her many years of working on this holiday that the employees who worked with her were happy to accommodate the families who enjoy shopping together on this holiday and to those employees who didn’t celebrate the holiday, were happy to get a higher pay for this day. Also, as The Huffington Post points out, some people don’t enjoy sitting around the table with their families so, many enjoy the alternative of working. The capitalistic value in our economy is to give people a choice and since this is what successful business models do, working on Thanksgiving really shouldn’t be a problem.