WHEN BLACK FRIDAY COMES
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons have all been deflated and put into storage until next year. The turkey has been consumed and the effects of the Tryptophan have worn off. The dishes should all be cleaned and put away by now and the football games are all over with. .Thanksgiving Day is officially over and the Christmas season has officially begun.
Many Americans celebrate the start of the holiday season by waking up early and hitting the malls and the “big box” stores. The stores have begun opening earlier and earlier while their door buster sales have gotten bigger. News helicopters will hover over the stores to show those at home what they are missing including traffic jams, overflowing parking lots, and lines that rap all the way around many of the stores.
Most of the big retailers use to wait until early morning to unlock the doors that had been closed while their employees and families enjoyed Thanksgiving with their loved ones. This year they decided to get a jump on things by opening earlier than they ever have before. Several retailers thought that instead of opening early Friday morning they could get a jump on things by opening their doors at midnight. Not to be outdone, the leaders of Walmart made plans to open at 10 pm Thursday evening with staggered start times for various deals that they were promoting.
When the retailer Target announced that they would be opening at midnight it set off a backlash from some of their employees. One Target employee decided to make a stand when he realized he would have to go to bed in the middle of the afternoon in order to wake up and go to work. With a little help from FACEBOOK he gathered over 190,000 signatures on a petition and hand delivered them to executives in Minneapolis.
Some people wonder why the stores continue to open earlier and earlier each year? The reason is fairly simple, if customers continue to shop earlier, they will continue to open. If there was no demand, they would just open at normal hours with normal sales for normal people.
I work for a retailer that is open every day of the year. Many of the locations, including the one where I work for have no different hours on any Holiday. We stay open 24 hours 365 days a year and we never close. I wouldn’t even know where to find a key if I had to try to lock the door. When people have asked why we stay open, the powers that be always have the same answer, because of the customers. Some people have said that it is wrong to be open on Christmas, for many stores in our chain, that is by far, the busiest day of their year.
Many people that I have talked to have said they would never get out in that mess. If “Black Friday” is not your cup of tea, the next day is “Small businees Saturday”. Conceived last year by the American Express credit card company, to spur gift buying at neighborhood stores. This year Fed-Ex donated $25 American Express Gift Cards to the first 30,000 people who “liked” their FACEBOOK page on November 1st. So American Express, Fed-Ex and FACEBOOK have joined forces to get more people to shop at small business.
Studies have shown that when you shop at locally owned independent businesses significantly more money is returned to the community in which they are based. Local independent business owners are people with ties to the community, and a vested interested on what goes on here. Local business owners generally hire employees with better knowledge of the products they are peddling and usually have more time to get to know their customers.
What if fewer people woke up early and rushed out to local malls and “big box” retailers on Friday? What if you just slept in and waited until normal people shop and find a local independent business to spend a portion of your Christmas dollars. If a significant number of people could make a simple lifestyle choice it would have a huge impact on the community that we live. Maybe someday the big businesses can open at a reasonable hour and their employees can enjoy the holidays with their families.
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