I am obviously not the quintessential 50's housewife. Quite the furthest thing, actually. BUT there are a lot of moral high roads that we bypass since "old fashioned" became the road not taken. One of those should be drawn back on our map.
Since the Great Recession started, stores have done everything they possibly can to get consumers back in their buildings and back to filling up their carts with unnecessary goods. I don't blame them, they're trying to stay afloat and they employ people in my city too BUT when we stop having integrity and start taking advantage - that's where I draw a line in the sand.
Years ago Black Friday was at 6am the Friday after Thanksgiving. It was tradition for a lot of people to go through their newspaper ads after Thanksgiving dinner and make a plan of attack, get up at 5, throw on some sweats, grab a coffee, pick up the other ladies in the shopping carpool and hit the stores just as they opened. It was fun to get some good deals, get most of your shopping out of the way, feel like you accomplished something - all before 9 am.
Then a store (we won't name names Ghetto-Mart) decided that if they opened their store an hour earlier that they would get people to spend all their hard earned Christmas savings before the other stores even opened. It was a beneficial plan - a monetarily beneficial plan. It was not a good plan though, good implies integrity and that officially left the building the moment some big-wig suggested crossing that line. The worst part? Their deals aren't on toys and scarves and cute sweaters for teenage nieces - NO, their deals are on giant TVs, Blu-ray players, DVD's, Kitchen Aid Mixers. Apparently Christmas is about giving but Black Friday is about KEEPING.
And that was just an hour extra! The next year it became 4am, and then 3am, and then we had to take it up a couple notches because competition was getting fierce - the malls, the stores, everyone - opened at midnight on Thanksgiving night. Fine for the shoppers - they got a few hours of turkey-induced sleep before heading out or they stayed up to shop and then went home with a car full of packages to sleep at 4am. But what about the employees? Oh wait, we forgot about them in our selfish need for $5 pajamas. Yes, they have to be in the store even earlier - sometimes 4 hours earlier - to stock the shelves, set up riot gear, etc.
Oh wait, what's that you say? This year it's 8pm??? Are we cancelling Thanksgiving? Oh....just for the people who work in retail - whew, I thought it affected me. It's fine then - let's look at the ads! NO. The buck stops here. RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. Those people in the blue vests or the red shirts with the tired eyes and the slumped, defeated shoulders - those are mothers, fathers, sisters, boyfriends, daughters, sons, single dads or moms. They're us. And they deserve turkey-induced sleep just as much.
What's that saying? "If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for everything." It's true. I know, I know - you want that 52 inch plasma 3D TV for $400 and you're willing to camp out in the freezing cold, miss out on turkey dinner, and fight tooth and nail to get it.....what does that say about you? Just stop, imagine that you can actually freeze time, take a step away and take a good look at yourself. Do you like what you see? Do you look like some crazed animal fighting over a scrap of meat? Is that bargain TV essential to your life? Probably not, and you can get almost the same deal in January when the stores are trying to unload all the extra product - and you'll still have your morals when you fork over the cash for it.
So - take a stand, stop the buck, just say no - whatever. The shoppers outnumber the stores. If we say NO, if we refuse to shop at stores opening on Thanksgiving and Christmas (movie theaters and Starbucks I'm talking to you) then we can make a difference, we can show them that the holidays are really about family, about whatever religious views you might have, about giving - anything, anything except consuming.
BOYCOTT BLACK THANKSGIVING!
Help Target Employees make a stand! Sign their petitions here!
Help Wal-Mart Employees make a stand! Sign their petitions here!
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