I will not be going Black Friday shopping. There is NOTHING I need that badly, regardless of the cost. In truth, on top of all the other things that can be blamed on WalMart, the Black Friday stampedes are the most terrifying. Is there a bargain, or a sale, or a material item worth dying for? Because people do, every year, in the Black Friday stampede. Now that Black Friday has been extended into Thanksgiving Thursday (remember Thanksgiving? It's the holiday for giving thanks for what we have), materialism is even worse.
A friend of mine, an entrepreneur in Florida, suggested that companies shouldn't be condemned for being OPEN on Thanksgiving, only for forcing employees to work against their will on Thanksgiving. I would agree with this; there are people that would like to earn extra money, or don't have family to be concerned with, or don't celebrate the holiday at all, and closing for the day would cheat them. The problem, though, is that Wal-Mart doesn't give their employees the choice. Ehrenreich writes, “We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship (210).” To force employees to work on a holiday, or risk losing their job, is just plain awful. The company my mother works for allows its employees to choose; if there is a quorum of workers that want to be there, the plant stays open. If not, they close for the day. Anyone that stays home gets 8 hours of holiday pay; anyone that wants to work, gets time-and-a-half for their trouble.
