This past week, Mall of America announced that they would not be open on Thanksgiving Day. Many people have expressed anger for their valuable shopping time being taken away. It’s as if all-day Black Friday isn’t enough. Representatives for the mall say that this decision was made so that their employees can be home to enjoy the holiday with their families.
You go, Mall of America. Way to be.
As a former retail employee, many of my coworkers spent their Thanksgiving setting up for Black Friday, and working the first shift, beginning at 6pm on Thursday. I even had a manager who spent the night in the hotel across the street because she had quite a drive to and from work, and her schedule didn’t allow the time to go home and return later.
Now, before you say it was our choice, we were required to work on either Thanksgiving or Black Friday. It was first come first serve on who got Thanksgiving off, and some people did choose to work Thursday evening. Even if you weren’t working Thursday, the store was open all night long (28 hours straight) so somebody (me) got to work at 2am on Friday.
I didn’t get to make the traditional trip to my grandparent’s house for Thanksgiving. One year, my dad drove me home immediately after we had finished Thanksgiving dinner. So even though I got that one meal with my family, I had to turn and leave before anyone had taken their post dinner nap.
This has gotten too ridiculous. Society cares too much about how much stuff can be bought for the lowest price and abandons all familial tradition at the first chance. Everyone loves a good deal, but can’t that good deal wait 12 hours so that people can stay home to celebrate a holiday with their families? Maybe it’s your family tradition to go Black Friday shopping, but it isn’t someone else’s tradition to give up their family time when you could just as easily wait.
This isn’t just a matter of our personal choice to put off our shopping until Black Friday, but a decision to be made by large corporations. So many stores claim to be “family friendly” but it’s not really friendly to require your employees to work on a major holiday.
To all the companies and stores that refuse to close their doors on Thanksgiving, shame on you. I’m sure the people who would come shopping to get the good deal on Thursday would just as easily come on Friday. There’s no reason to be open except for the extra bit of profit, so I’m really glad that your greed takes precedence over family time. It makes me sad to think that money takes priority in society instead of the relationships we make, both with friends and families.
It’s important to see such a large and renowned establishment taking a step to revive an idea that should be more important to everyone- family time. Thank you Mall of America for being willing to branch out of the comfort zone of retail by making a decision that might not make popular, but is definitely right.
