I’m not trying to be heartless here, but again, I go back to the debate about working part-time at Wal-Mart with no health insurance. At any point when you were applying for the job did they tell you that you were going to have health insurance, then all of the sudden, take it away? No, they did not. I am sure they told you all along that your part-time job at Wal-Mart did not come with health insurance. So, why, then, are you sitting there with a part-time job at Wal-Mart, surprised that you do not have health insurance?
You work in retail. That’s the job you have. For whatever reason, that is the fact (I spent the first three years of my working life in retail, full-time while going to school, and even had to join a union for my first job, so there’s where I get off talking about working in retail). The store you work at is open on Black Friday. You can’t, at this point, sit there and be surprised that the store you work at wants you to work nut-shit-crazy hours on Black Friday. You didn’t see that coming? You somehow work in retail and do not understand what Black Friday is, and somehow never took notice that the starting gates open earlier and earlier each year? You somehow surprised? Really? The 5AM sale that became the 4AM sale that became the 3AM sale? You didn’t see where that was going?
Ask all the folks who are not in retail about a job that requires them to work nut-shit-crazy hours once or twice a year, and trust me, you probably won’t get a lot of sympathy from them. Just to clarify what I am getting at, most of us non-retail employees, especially those on salary instead of hourly, end up having to do that a little more than once or twice a year. Ask us about overtime pay and our 15 minutes breaks through the day too, so we can laugh at you. Do I even need to bring up the whole you work in retail and are lucky to be one of the 85% of people who do who actually still have a job in this economy thing? And don’t get me wrong, I get it’s a holiday. I missed many a holiday, birthday, etc. when I was working retail, but I also understood that it was part of the job I had at the time. Again, you can’t take a job working retail and be surprised when you are working nights, weekends and holidays at this point.
And while I’m on the soapbox, I have a little message for the consumers who are complaining on behalf of these retail workers. Really? So, year after year, you buy into the whole Black Friday deal, allowing these retailers to bait you into the store in deplorable, dangerous, and in some cases, deadly conditions, allow them to bait you into stampeding over each other to save some money on let’s face it, crap you don’t need to survive anyway, and now this is the line? Making someone miss part of Thanksgiving Day so they can work that night? If there was no one willing to show up at a Wal-Mart at 10PM on Thanksgiving, the stores wouldn’t be doing this. Yet, they can drop the prices on some key items, call it Black Friday, and there you go, off to camp out in front of Best Buy for three days. But this is the line that they can’t cross? 3AM was OK, but, no, not midnight or 10PM, huh? Sorry to break it to you folks, but consumers that buy into the concept of Black Friday are just as much a part of this as the retailers.
Again, America, we cannot sit here and be surprised that this year some of our largest retailers are opening as early as 10PM on Thanksgiving night, expecting their employees to work and expecting consumers to come in, risking life and limb, to save some money on all the stuff that they think they need to have in order to live. Like you didn’t see that one coming, America.
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