With it being the holiday season, choosing between spending time with your family and work is a difficult choice. What’s worse than that?
People are forced to work on Black Friday, which is completely unfair. This is why no one should shop on Thanksgiving.
For many that don’t know, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is a prominent day in the year for retail shoppers in the United States because practically everything is on sale. It’s also the one day where individuals might witness some people going crazy and having a full on brawl for certain products.
The only problem with Black Friday is that many retail corporations are focused on raising their sales, so they open their stores a day before, which is Thanksgiving.
For instance, Best Buy will be opening at 5 p.m. and Target will be opening at 6 p.m.
If some stores open on Thanksgiving, that means that employees that are celebrating the holiday are forced to leave their families and go to work.
Those employees look forward to spending time with their family, as well as the family wanting to spend time with them. So is it worth taking away that special time with their loved ones?
Absolutely not.
They don’t even get paid enough.
Most of the employees working on Black Friday are getting paid minimum wage from their jobs and they barely get any hours or too many hours, along with little to no choice when requesting a day off.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 45 percent of retail workers do not get paid extra for working on holidays.
It just isn’t right. Employees should either have the choice of whether they want to work or not, or get paid extra for working on a holiday.
Retail workers usually work an entire week (including weekends), and if they’re lucky, they’ll get two days off throughout a week.
Just imagine how difficult it is to find time to spend with family with such a schedule.
Making Thanksgiving a retail holiday is taking away the only time to spend with family and friends. It’s time to give employees a breather from working an entire week.
It’s not worth it to make Black Friday two days long. Either get rid of it or keep it to one day.
Including Black Friday, there’s 364 other days to shop throughout the entire year, and 30 days to shop until Christmas.
It’s never too late to help employees get Thanksgiving off, all consumers need to do is not shop.
Remember what Thanksgiving is all about. It’s about spending time with your family or friends and giving thanks for everything you have in life.
It’s not about leaving Thanksgiving dinner early to line up outside your favorite store.
