It's Thanksgiving Day. Everyone is home and enjoying the company of their family and good food. Everyone's talking about possible Christmas plans when they're going to put up their tree (if they haven't already), and just enjoying the holiday season. Everyone except for you. Because you work in retail and the store is open every single day of the year except Christmas Day.
You're at work, trying your hardest to not be spiteful. You stand at the register and try to be thankful that you have a job and a family that is missing you. After all, it is a day that celebrates thankfulness. You stand there and think about how you'll get to see them all Saturday (not tomorrow, because tomorrow is Black Friday and you're scheduled to work a 10-hour shift.)
You're doing a pretty good job of keeping your spirits up until a well-meaning customer approaches the register and says, "It must suck that you work on Thanksgiving, huh?"
Let's just pause for a second and really focus. If you don't get anything else out of this article, please remember this: DO NOT DISCUSS THE FACT THAT I AM WORKING ON A HOLIDAY WHEN YOU WALK UP TO MY REGISTER. Customers say things like this in an attempt to express sympathy but guess what? Retail workers don't want your sympathy.
We want you to go home. Stop shopping on holidays. Customers often don't realize that the only reason stores are open on Thanksgiving Day is because there is a demand for them to be open. If everyone would stop shopping on holidays then the store would close because there wouldn't enough profit to justify it.
And don't tell me that I need to take the day off. Time off requests aren't always approved and when everybody wants the same day off, your odds of getting that day off go down. The store I work for put a freeze on time off requests for the day before Thanksgiving through Black Friday at the end of October because too many people were requesting off. OCTOBER.
On top of that issue, younger retail employees are often given the short of the stick when it comes to shifts anyway. We usually end up working weekends and night shifts because that's what no one else wants to work. We also tend to get the shifts on Holidays because all the "true adults" want to go home and be with their family. And quite frankly, they're the ones who make the schedules so why would they make themselves work on a holiday if they don't have to.
And don't talk to me about Holiday pay. I don't care. It's not about how much money I'd make. It's about the fact that I am stuck working on Thanksgiving Day and have to listen to people talk about how it sucks that I'm working on Thanksgiving Day when it's their fault that the store is even open.
This Holiday season do all the retail workers a favor, stay home on holidays. Don't go shopping on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Eve. Go on Black Friday instead. Or the day after that. Or shop Cyber Monday deals online. The sales are pretty much the same anyway. But if you do shop, please, for the love of Holiday Spirit, don't mention the fact that people are working on a holiday.
