Really, just do it. I’m old enough to remember when only pharmacies and small corner stores were allowed to be open on Sundays and Holidays, and it was no great hardship. Holidays that are only for people who don’t work shitty jobs suck. If no one can open, no business suffers a comparative disadvantage for not being open.
This is yet another case where the best way to have a society worth living in is to simply take bad behavior off the table.
And while you’re at it, increase the minimum wage to enough so that people can live on it and Walmart workers don’t need Welfare.
It Is All So Obscene
It is all so goddamn awful that it all makes me want to vomit.
the hype the hysteria the endless consumer slavering
american media is just the worst – all should be taken out back and ….
Pelham
Generally agreed. And that higher minimum wage should be enough — say, $22 an hour — so workers aren’t so desperate that they actually welcome additional work on holidays.
Everythings Jake
What we’ve permitted is insane. Rage is the only sane response. I hope I live to see Jamie Dimon’s head on a pike.
Alcuin
Did you see where the manager of a Pizza Hut got fired by the franchiser because he refused to open on Thanksgiving? Corporate told the franchiser to give the manager his job back, but the manager is thinking it over.
Everythings Jake
@alcuin
Saw it and realized again, until that owner’s head is in a guillotine, nothing will change. The rich have to be afraid before they’ll give anything, and unfortunately they’re too stupid to be afraid until their heads are literally on the chopping block. They can’t help themselves.
Celsius 233
We are now inhabitants of Dante’s 9th level of hell, having already passed through the previous 8 levels…
Sunshine McButtercup
My landlady still has the daily newspaper delivered to our home (I didn’t know that was still done) and she showed me the Wednesday newspaper…it was 5x as thick as the usual daily paper and would make the Sunday ad inserts cower in shame. Endless glossy color inserts for ‘big blowout Black Friday sales’. I didn’t think anyone even bought the newspaper anymore, but I bet people bought the Wednesday edition simply “for the ads” and threw out the rest of it. Good for printers, I suppose. Not so much for the consumer slaves gutting the “news” to see which store has which piece of crap for sale at the lowest price.
In my travels today I passed by a Best Buy (electronic big box) and a Walmart, and the parking lots were just oceans of cars.
So often I feel like the only one left out here amidst the rabid hordes.
Sunshine McButtercup
A couple more thoughts:
Yesterday, Thanksgiving, my boyfriend mentioned that area retailers now start their “Black Friday blowout sales” on Thursday around 6 or 8pm. Not that I’m into the holiday whatsoever or trying to be nostalgic, but back in the day when I was young (1980s) our holiday dinner started around…6 or 8pm. Nobody was stuffing their face with food and then rushing off to start their shift at Walmart at 8 o’clock at night to sell cheap imported goods to hordes of shoppers busting through the doors. We have all seen the news footage and it’s absolutely retarded. Back in the day, it was a time for family & friends to spend an evening together with a homecooked meal, I don’t recall any childhood Thanksgiving, ever, of attending adults plotting out their shopping plan at the mall for that evening or the following morning. This is absolutely a birth within the last 15-20 years or so.
I made the mistake of traveling to Belize in 2007 during Easter Weekend. Unbeknownst to me, the entire country (being primarily Catholic) shuts down at that time and I was reduced to living off the granola bars I brought with me for 3 days because not one shop was open for business. No groceries, no restaurants, travel agencies, banks, nada. Even the national bus service shut down so I had to stay put for the weekend. Was I mad? No. I felt stupid for not realizing that some cultures actually value their “vacation” times and not everything is about money, even in a developing country like Belize that relies much on tourism.
EGrise
Both our discourse and our society are so degenerate that any serious proposal to force stores to close on holidays would be immediately condemned as fascism.
Dan H
Here are two quotes from a Black Friday thread on a computer hardware forum I frequent that caught my eye as concise examples of our American nightmare.
“2 PSA AR-15 lowers, 4 Li-ion batteries for my cordless tools and an Echo leaf blower. All online….yay!
First time in a few years I haven’t bought any Black Friday tech toys.
Wife left this morning with 2 neighbors, Jr., a stack of cash, credit cards, and her Colt detective special. May God have mercy on any poor sap who gets in their way. ”
“I’ve spent all day at home taking apart and cleaning guns. Amazon FTW”
Bruce MacKenzie
While it’s a frustrating circumstance — Black Friday and the attendant commercialism combined with low wage worker oppression — the answer isn’t a set of laws closing businesses on Sundays and holidays. We have a history of such “Blue Laws” and, having grown up in Massachusetts when the last ones were still in effect, they weren’t anything to which I’d like to return. Such laws go way back. The most recent resurgence of Blue Laws was brought about by the temperance movements of the 19th century, bringing a new round of legislation intended to regulate private conduct by banning the sale of cigarettes and alcohol, prohibiting amusements and “unnecessary labor” on Sundays, and providing for local censorship of arts and entertainment (such as books, plays, and films). This is not the kind of legislation that will change the fact that we are ruled by plutocratic oligarchs, exercising power through corporate forms, subject to a different set of laws than the rest of us, who would regard our passing a set of modern Blue Laws with amusement — thinking, “Hey, it might be another way to control them, by letting them to set up their own little oximoronic secular theocracy to cluck over the horror of it all, even as they continue to bow to our wishes.” You ought no tell people what they can and cannot do in their own bedrooms, nor ought you tell them what to do with their time on Sundays and holidays. It’s a slippery slope to a new authoritarianism.
Ian Welsh
Yes, you should be telling employers what to do on Sunday and Holidays. Just like you should be telling them not to work their employees 80 hours a week, to give them days off, and to make them wear steel toed boots on construction sites.
Celsius 233
Just forbid most retail stores from opening on holidays
~~~~~~~~
I don’t agree. Just who will forbid this opening? The galoots, ha, fat chance.
Isn’t it about time people (the workers who man the stores to name a few) take back their rights and lives, instead of acting like whipped dogs?
This would be a damn good place to start. Just say no, as did a Pizza Hut manager. He refused to open the store on the 28th and the franchise owner fired him; then corporate told the owner to rehire him.
I don’t know where or if a revolt will start, but it may come from an unexpected place/event.
Bring back the IWW (I know it still exists), but recently MIA. It should be painfully, excruciatingly so, obvious that actions must be taken. I never ate shit from an employer; they dished it? I spoke up and if no results; I bloody quit.
The galoots have had their way for far too long…
Celsius 233
When I was in my 20’s I was a warehouseman and thus an active, enthusiastic even, member of the Teamster’s union. I quickly became anti-union as a result of the blatant corruption and vote rigging. Years (many) later, as a machinist, I was required to join the very same union and was fined for not filing a withdrawal form. Pissed me off it did. For many years after I was even more, very anti-union.
I now realize unions are an absolute necessity if labor is to get a fair deal with the galoots.
But corruption must be dealt with or they’ll fail once again.
peon
Require employers by federal labor law to pay triple time for holiday pay for hourly workers. At the least you won’t have to feel sorry for the poor sap working the holiday and getting $24/hr instead of $8/hr.
Bill H
Normal Heights is a San Diego neighborhood. Favorite eating places: Ponce’s, which is always closed on Sundays, was closed on Thanksgiving day; DeMille’s, usually closed on Mondays, was closed on Thanksgiving and until 4:00pm the following Friday.
Needless to say, I will continue eating at both places frequently.
David Kowalski
I’m old enough to remember the state of Massachusetts closing most stores on all Sundays, something stopped bin the mid 1970’s. No law suit. CVS just started to sell everything on the Sunday following Thanksgiving and soon everybody else followed suit. I’m not sure that Massachusetts even bothered to defend their 300 year old law (that’s right, it dated to the mid 1600’s).
One more comment: Pelham, the original minimum wage was set at 50% of the average wage. That should never have been lowered. It should be that or higher.