Overindulging in bossiness
Published 3:11 pm Thursday, November 17, 2011
With the day-after Thanksgiving shopping tradition known as Black Friday morphing into Black Thursday, angst has followed, like gravy on mashed potatoes.
What’s at issue? The economy? Infringement upon quote, unquote “family values”? How to be the first in line when they keep moving the starting time? No time to wash your elastic-waisted Thanksgiving pants before they transform into your comfortable shopping pants?
The reality is, bickering about what constitutes proper Thanksgiving observations, and/or how much is exactly too much consumerism is just so much turkey stuffing. Leave it to some Americans to take a holiday designed to give thanks for living in this free country to tell fellow citizens how they should or shouldn’t spend the day. It’s not enough that we can do what we want, some people are insistent that others do as they say. Of course they take time to give thanks for being able to express their opinions, right?
On Thursday it was reported that Anthony Hardwick, a part-time cart attendant at a Target in Omaha, Neb., circulated a petition on Change.org to oppose his employer’s plan to open at midnight Friday. Hardwick said he’ll have to go to sleep in the afternoon to make that shift, and miss quality time with his family and fiancee on Thanksgiving.
Stores that will be on open on the holiday say they are responding to consumer demand. Target is offering holiday pay to employees who work. Was it really easier for Hardwick to start a petition against his employer’s plans than to trade his shift with another cart attendant who wanted to work?
Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary took up Hardwick’s cause, noting others have started petitions to boycott Black Friday or asking retailers to reverse their decisions to open earlier.
As long as Black Friday has been a “thing,” others have opposed it and urged people not to shop. Being America, people are free to shop, not shop, be with family, not be with family. They — gasp! — don’t even have to observe Thanksgiving if they don’t want.
Singletary urges: “People, please stay home. Let the folks who stock the shelves, retrieve your shopping carts from the parking lot and ring up your purchases have some peace…”
Urging people not to shop is odd advice from a business columnist in rocky financial times. Equally bothersome is the assumption that if people were kept from shopping and working, they would otherwise be safely snuggled in the bosom of family, observing Thanksgiving “the right way.”
To each his or her own. For this we give thanks.
