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    JujyMonkey: Clever tagline goes hereKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:04pm

    Does anybody actually enjoy going shopping on Black Friday/Thanksgiving? If so, can you explain why? Every retail worker hates you with every fiber of their being.

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      RedWriterJujyMonkey: Clever tagline goes here
      10/14/14 2:11pm

      Restaurant people hate you too, especially after you come in, take up their time and space and then say you can't leave a tip because you spent all your money Black Friday shopping. Fuck all of you.

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      DeuteriumoxideJujyMonkey: Clever tagline goes here
      10/14/14 2:12pm

      I worked retail in a mall through four Black Fridays (Spencer's baby!) It was awful. I like to go out and experience the other side and to be really nice to the people who have to work.

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    JosephFinnKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:09pm

    She said the company received feedback last year that many of its employees "appreciated the opportunity to work on Thanksgiving

    Bullshit and fuck you, you soulless flack who's trying to justify ruining your employees holiday.

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      VodkaRocks&aPieceofToastJosephFinn
      10/14/14 2:15pm

      More like they appreciate the holiday pay to help earn some extra cash around the most expensive time of year. Stop lying to us Macys.

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      RedWillDanaherJosephFinn
      10/14/14 2:19pm

      I'm sure that statement is based on the opinion of one employee (and that guy is an asshole.)

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    XyzzyKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:18pm

    Please educate this Jew:

    I never realized Black Friday was even a thing until about 10 years ago. Is this because 1) I'm Jewish, 2) I grew up in a predominantly Jewish town, and/or 3) I'm roughly 40 and it wasn't a thing when I was kid?

    Also, why do people participate in Black Friday? Are the deals actually really good?

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      FridayFridayXyzzy
      10/14/14 2:22pm

      Black Friday isn't a Christian thing. Not sure why it would matter that you're Jewish! Some of the deals are really good, some people go batshit crazy for it, and no, it wasn't as big a thing when you were a kid. So to sum up - the reason why you didn't know about it is probably because you are now officially an Old.

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      Jenn still doesn't understand "following"Xyzzy
      10/14/14 2:27pm

      3. I think it just started in the mid-to-late nineties.

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    GinAndTonic Got Stuck in the BarneyKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:39pm

    You people who don't shop on Black Friday "except for online" know that means there are thousands of seasonal employees frantically working to fulfill your orders (and being constantly monitored and timed by software), right? Shopping on the internet doesn't mean real people aren't involved.

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      tangerinetreesGinAndTonic Got Stuck in the Barney
      10/14/14 2:59pm

      I know literally no one who thinks online retailers have no human employees.

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      GinAndTonic Got Stuck in the Barneytangerinetrees
      10/14/14 3:07pm

      Sure, but there are many people here remarking on how outrageous Black Fridays sales are and how they would NEVER go to the mall on that day, while in the same sentence saying they shop online instead. That's functionally the same goddamn thing.

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    forkboyKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 4:06pm

    There is nobody in my life, myself included, that is so fucking important that I need to rush out right after Thanksgiving to shop for Xmas.

    If stores REALLY want to get me in the door give me a Black Friday in July weekend and I'll do all my Xmas shopping then and there.

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      Kelly Fairclothforkboy
      10/14/14 4:19pm

      We were joking about Black Friday one Thanksgiving evening and, as my dad put it, "I'd take a bullet for any one of y'all as long as it doesn't involve going to Target at 4 a.m."

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      forkboyKelly Faircloth
      10/14/14 6:19pm

      So Walmart would be okay? Is that the moral of this story? LOL

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    The GaysianKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:03pm

    THANKSGIVING. STAHP.

    I swear, by this time next year, Thanksgiving is going to completely swallow Halloween.

    Oh hell no. Over my cold, dead body it is.

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      sasquatchpatchThe Gaysian
      10/14/14 2:10pm

      I was cutting through Nordstrom the other day in the mall and they already had Christmas related items out. ITS NOT EVEN HALLOWEEN YET!

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      GingerUnicornThe Gaysian
      10/14/14 2:13pm

      Apparently one of the radio stations around Dayton, OH has been playing Christmas music today. If there is a war on Christmas, Christmas is winning like 1023-0

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    UrsulaTheSeaBitchKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:59pm

    This shit has gotten totally out of control and it is fucking infuriating. My mother manages a store at her local mall that is forced to open Thanksgiving night in large part because the big anchor stores (*cough* MACY'S *cough*) keep inching up their open times. Last year they opened at 8 PM on Thanksgiving and stayed open until 10 PM on Friday. My mother literally finished her Thanksgiving dinner, changed, and went to work. It only gets worse because all business that the stores do in those INSANE hours is counted as their goal for the same day next year, meaning that failing to be open all goddamn night the next year will cause them to fall short of their goal. All their employees now eat Thanksgiving dinner in a rush, leave their families, and go to work to deal with the special kind of nightmare that is a Black Friday shopper.

    Kindly fuck off, Macy's. To paraphrase a tweet from Patton Oswalt on the subject, "YOU'RE CHUMMING THE WATER, YOU SOCIOPATHS."

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      financialpantherUrsulaTheSeaBitch
      10/14/14 3:45pm

      That's the thing, where does it end? When did shopping for useless shit become more important than people having time off to enjoy holidays with their families? I'm so fucking sick of what North America has turned into.

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      LovesMyLucyDUrsulaTheSeaBitch
      10/14/14 6:35pm

      You know, why don't they just fuck Thanksgiving and open up at 8 am on Thanksgiving? Hell, people can just set up tables in the Macy's parking lot and have their dinner, oh I'm sorry, lunch there. This pisses me off so bad. And so long as hordes of people show up to shop, the stores will keep doing this.

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    andsmokeit is mrs tormund giantsbaneKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:11pm

    Shit like this is forbidden in Massachusetts, which may be one of the main reasons that it is my favorite state.

    High five, MA!

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      Hamlet goes safariandsmokeit is mrs tormund giantsbane
      10/14/14 3:01pm

      Wow. Maybe blue laws are good for something!

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    adultosaur married anna on the astral planeKelly Faircloth
    10/14/14 2:05pm

    this shit is fucking bullshit.

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      snapdragonKelly Faircloth
      10/14/14 2:45pm

      As a retail manager, I love Black Friday. My kids get holiday pay for working Thanksgiving, and we have a lot of fun. Every company (Gap, Godiva, Anchor Blue, Gymboree, for reference) I have worked for has been similar. Also, this is a major source of income for actual human beings, as opposed to the people who pack your boxes up during the holidays.

      If you're going to buy from major retailers, it does the lower service industry workers a favor by justifying extra payroll hours and providing opportunities for commission. After all, you're going to buy all of that stupid plastic shit anyway.

      Yeah, I sound like a corporate shill. I don't honestly care. This shit is part of the job, and good managers (of which there are more than bad ones) know to minimize the stress and strain on part time employees in order to maximize productivity. The job sucks, but it's not fucking sweatshop labor.

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        oldscrumbysnapdragon
        10/14/14 3:14pm

        I'm going to bump this out of the greys not because I really agree with you, but because it's a good start to the conversation we're not having. Working on Thanksgiving is not the problem. The exploitation of labor represented by working Thanksgiving is, and "I had to miss dinner with my family" is not even close to the top of the list. Most places do not offer overtime pay for these shifts and they blackout the entire Christmas season so you can't trade a Thanksgiving/Black Friday shift for the next weekend off. There is no reward or benefit to working Black Friday and managers watch timesheets like a hawk to insure no one goes into overtime; if you're lucky they'll just send you home mid shift, but if they can't get by without you, which is common because running a skeleton crew is normal staffing these days, then they'll steal your wages and write you up for staying over. And no, shopping online is not the answer because a lot of the large online retailers run their warehouses under abusive labor conditions because they have little to no oversight. Working on holidays is not the definition of labor abuse and exploitation; it's a symptom of it, and as thoughtful consumers we need to recognize that and direct our ire accordingly.

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        snapdragonoldscrumby
        10/14/14 3:50pm

        Working on holidays happens because people shop on holidays. Stop shopping on holidays, and no one will be working.

        Let's talk about the four college graduates and three masters students that work for me and depend on traffic to get hours and pay their bills, instead of using their higher degrees to do work that matters. Let's talk about the millions of people who don't work at Walmart or Target and are not working in the conditions that you're talking about.

        Retail has many, many inherenteinherent issues. However, the longer we spend talking about the non-issue of when Macy's opens on Thanksgiving, the longer we continue to ignore the actual employment issues in this country. We are under-unionized, and workers pay the price for it. We are unable to use the degrees that we paid for because work is only valued when a dollar is made for someone. We shit on kids who take out student loans in order to concentrate on school, then turn around and shit on them again when they can't do anything with that degree and end up working in the service industry.

        Who gives a fuck about Black Friday or Macy's? At least my part time employees will have hours to pay for their December gas bill.

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