Red Thursday

With only eight (eke!) shopping days left until Christmas,  people may now be looking back on Black Friday and wondering why they didn’t shop earlier or maybe you are glad you got your shopping—or most of—finished.  How did we get here from there?

Travel back with me to the week of Thanksgiving (and the week before, I suppose). That’s when all the ads came out from stores about their Black Friday sales.

This year, the problem: stores were trying to outdo each other by starting Black Friday at midnight or even earlier, on Thanksgiving! So efforts for stores to get into the black on the day after Thanksgiving created what I called Red Thursday—double entendre intended.

First of all, if the day after is black Friday, then stores are still in the red on Thursday. So far in it that they need some extra help to get into the black by the end of business (midnight?) Friday. Then we have small business Saturday and cyber Monday. And now encroaching on people’s Thanksgiving had them seeing red with anger and hence Red Thursday.

So here’s how it went. There are some people (millions apparently) who just have to be the first one in the door for those sales. Maybe there is something that they really want or need and have been waiting for this sale and need to get it before the stores sell out. Maybe they just get caught up in bargain fever. So, these people are not happy that they are forced to leave their Thanksgiving celebration early or miss it altogether in order to sit in line outside some store (and baby, it’s cold outside).

Add to this their relatives—people who know that their family members behave this way. So the ripple effect is that it ruins everyone’s Thanksgiving celebration because some people leave early or don’t even show up. And of course, someone’s got to man the store so people who work these shifts or have to get the store ready miss out. And let’s not forget law enforcement or security guards—extra ones—to help prevent deaths, trampling, not to mention theft.

In a supposed backlash, people said they were going to boycott. I wonder what that meant exactly: not go to a store until after 6 AM Friday morning? Not shop at stores who were making their workers work through Thanksgiving? There are 24-hour businesses that have to deal with this every year from nurses and emergency workers to hotels and airports. Of course, there, you know people have to work holidays and things are scheduled and paid accordingly. I don’t know how much advanced notice people got for working these shifts at stores. And generally, they are offered to those with the most seniority first. So workers can choose to make some extra money (at holiday pay). It is their choice. I have no idea how many workers with the least seniority were forced into working (or lose their jobs) because no one else wanted to.

Whatever the case, reports after Black Friday were that it was the largest grossing Black Friday on record. Clearly people did not stay away from the stores. So they complained all week, but actions speak louder than words—or money talks (even the Supreme Court agrees –but I digress).

As for me personally, we actually ran into Black Friday traffic around 9 pm on Friday night on our way home from our Thanksgiving celebration. The freeway was jammed with people trying to get to the mall!

It’s been 29 days now since Black Friday. With all the hullabaloo about it forgotten, we move forward and onward and prepare to face the next best (worst) shopping day of the year: Boxing day.