All
around the country the popular retail holiday, Black Friday, has been slowly
gaining more and more momentum. In 2013 many shopping malls moved from a
midnight opening to an 8:00 p.m. Thanksgiving day opening. While this was a big
jump and actually cut into Thanksgiving, many people still went out shopping
and there was no lack of people that wanted to be
out that early.
This
year, the Racine Regency Mall, is opening at 6:00 p.m. Thanksgiving night. Many
Racine community members, both mall workers and customers, are not happy with
this decision. When asked what they thought of the early opening, customers had
an overwhelmingly negative response. One interviewee said that “I think it is
an absolute shame…Those poor families” and “Business are not looking out for
their employees and that they only care for money.” A mall employee said that
she did not even want to get into it so was so angry.
With
more and more people becoming against this early shopping, is it really worth
it to keep opening up earlier and earlier? Where is the line drawn? This year
it is 6 o’clock will next year become 4?
- Crystiana Schlitz
This is an issue that impacts my family greatly! My husband is an assistant manager at Walmart in Milwaukee, they started their opening Thanksgiving evening last year, and because of how early he needed to arrive for preparation he missed out on Thanksgiving. Not only do I see busniesses responsible but also consumers. It is not only because retail industries need to drive sales higher and higher but also the demand of consumers shopping on Thanksgiving and impacting these numbers to go up! If people wouldnt shop on Thanksgiving and would stay home busniesses wouldnt feel the need to open and start Black Friday earlier and earlier each year. It is very dissapointing that society has come to this. Family time on holidays has taken the back seat to sale quotas and materialistic needs of consumers.
ReplyDeleteWoops forgot to sign my name to reply above lol -Stephanie Kohel
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