Target employee whines about working on Thanksgiving

He should be grateful to have a job at all in this economy.

 

If I was the guy's manager, I'd fire him and say, "Hey, now you don't have to work on Thanksgiving!!!"

 

Exactly. Working retail may not be your first option, but if you do sign up to work retail, you have to know you'll be called in to work on Black Friday, or even on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

It's like those of us still in journalism: Holidays, birthdays, etc. still mean we have to do our damn jobs. It's just part of the deal.

 

Hell, I'm actually hoping to have to work on Thanksgiving so I can get a day's pay on top of the holiday pay to cancel out one of the five furlough days I still have to take in the next month.

 

I understand what people are saying about "signing up for it," but it's just not true. This is the first year these stores are offering these deals on Thanksgiving instead of waiting until Black Friday. So anyone who "signed up for it" had no reason to expect they'd have to work ON the holiday.

They know the hours around the holidays will suck and they accepted that they'd have to work damn early on Black Friday, but most, if not all, would have expected to have Thanksgiving off because the stores were always closed that day in the past.

The stores are making a change and this guy is voicing his displeasure about it. I don't see the need for some of the vitriol directed at someone who, god forbid, wants to be able to spend time with his family on Thanksgiving.

 

IJAG, the next time you move, which given your history is probably three times before the next Black Friday, be sure to come to Rhode Island. I would be honored to rock Black Friday with you. My brother and I have been doing it every year since 1997 (He was six, I was 13) and are beyond pros at this point.

Last year we were in line at Best Buy at 8 a.m. Thanksgiving morning and while I'll never do that again (I felt sick for like two days afterward), we still plan on getting our shop on early and often.

 

UNION.

 

But if stores are opening at 10 or 11 p.m. Thanksgiving night, the ads in the Friday morning paper will be worthless as people will see them 8+ hours after the store opens. Haven't stores moved all the Black Friday ads to the Thanksgiving paper or the day before Thanksgiving paper to generate the early-opening hype?

 

Massachusetts has a law forbidding store employees to even be in retail stores before some time late Thanksgiving night, like 10 p.m. or thereabouts. Wal-Mart and some other chains are opening at 4 a.m. on Black Friday as a result. But a mall in Attleboro is still going to open at 12:01 a.m. and insists it's in compliance. So for getting Thanksgiving off, I figure the workers there put in 18 hour days on Tuesday and Wednesday.
All newspaper sportswriters work every Thanksgiving here due to the Thanksgiving morning high school football tradition. It was a sweet deal at the Herald. Time and a half for a holiday plus covering an event that began at 10 a.m. Scribe's paradise!

 

I hear what you're saying bigpern, but if you work in restaurants or retail, there are no guarantees about schedules or hours around the holidays. None. I know that if I decided to get a job at Target today, (they probably wouldn't hire me due to my poor attitude and foul language) I would not place any expectations on my schedule. I would just assume I'm going to work shitty hours every single day and be pleasantly surprised when the boss throws me a bone.

This is all not to say that I think Target should be open on Thanksgiving. I think it's ridiculous. But, the dude is wrong, and he's in the wrong industry if he doesn't want to work on holidays.

 

I heard that Romo & Stafford have circulated similar petitions.