A column in Saturday’s New York Times about Black Friday shopping hours creeping into Thanksgiving Day – and the impact that has on retail workers – prompted a spirited discussion in The Macomb Daily newsroom on Monday morning.
James B. Stewart’s column focused on Anthony Hardwick, a Target worker in Omaha, Neb.
Hardwick, 29, earns about $25,000 a year as a shopping-cart attendant at Target and a printing supervisor at OfficeMax. He was told last month he’d have to report to work at Target at 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving night for a shift that ended at 4:30 a.m. He then arrived at his OfficeMax job at 5 a.m., where Black Friday hours also prevailed.
Hardwick responded by posting this comment on a website, Change.org: “A full holiday with family is not just for the elite of this nation — all Americans should be able to break bread with their loved ones and get a good night’s rest on Thanksgiving!”
He is thankful for his two jobs in such a poor economy, but he said that doesn’t mean he should be forced to work when common sense says Thanksgiving should be a family day. The argument that he should be thankful for any job and should be willing to work any time, he told Stewart, is “the same argument that was used when 7-year-olds were working in coal mines.”
The message here is that the mania of consumerism has gone too far.
I ask: Why is it that a holiday designed to simply provide families with comfort time, an opportunity to reunite and give thanks, is being supplanted by a holiday which has become dominated by a ravenous appetite for expensive gifts: Who got what? And who gave what to whom?
As for the burden of retail employees working odd hours and getting assigned to holiday shifts, newspaper people are not exactly at the top of the list of those expressing sympathy. One of my co-workers, who certainly is not anti-union or anti-worker, had a decidedly blunt point of view about Hardwick’s situation.
“It’s just me, and working 30 years of nights and holidays and weekends, but I’m not sure why having someone work a midnight shift on a holiday is bad,” he said.
“I’ll bet that all of us used something Thursday that required someone working … gas station, watched television, went on a website. I’m not sure why I should feel sorry for the shopping cart guy.
“I worked at a gas station when I was younger — midnights on holidays. I worked at a 7-11 … on Christmas from midnight to 8 a.m. I’ve certainly worked holidays at the slightly higher position of journalist including at least 18 Easter Sundays with no holiday pay. And I’ve worked at least 18 Super Bowl nights with no holiday pay. Super Bowl Sunday is a holiday, right?
“Anyways, so Black Friday was pushed four hours earlier this year. Retail has been a seven-day-a-week gig for a long time with people working round the clock — on stocking shelves even if the store front isn’t open.
“Why is this year a big deal?”
Another colleague responded that, in a perfect world, the top executives of these sale-crazy retail companies would be forced to take turns working the middle-of-the-night shifts so that they stayed in tune with their workforce.
Frankly, I’m mainly disgusted that the same executives and supervisors who spent three hours on Cyber Monday shopping online on company time are those who complain the loudest about cashiers and shopping cart attendants who are “too lazy to work a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.”
On which side do you come down? Feel free to comment below.
