What Does The FL Think of So-called Black Friday?

[gear-guy]

LizzieM it is alway a pleasure to read your post. You are obviously a well read person, and it always a joy to see your post. Could not agree with you more on your comments. Even if I didn't agree it is still an honor to disagree with someone who knows facts and knowledge. Thanks

 

[gear-guy]

Corporate america will alway have the upper hand until the mass of workers fight back. As Lizzie said we don't know how to get our hands dirty any more. What a shame. What made America great was a strong middle class and that doesn't seem to exist anymore. We can all gripe about how it is unfair for these companies to continue this practice, but until we as individuals stand up and fight it will continue.

 

[Stormy]

It's the one day of the year that I refuse to leave my house, unless I have an emergency requiring me to do so. I just can't think of any retail item that I need so badly that I would endure such drama.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here in Maine our law states that no retailer over 5,000 square feet is permitted to be open on Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. That allows for gas stations, mom and pop groceries, and such -- businesses where it's often the proprietor himself working on those days and not an extensive staff of employees.

And lest some think this is some ancient Puritan law, it was enacted in 1969 -- specifically to protect Maine workers from exploitation by the big discount chains which were starting to make their way into the state around then, the Mammoth Marts, Zayre's, Woolco, and other first-generation strip-mall stores. Walmart has been lobbying and throwing money around for years trying to buy off enough legislators to repeal it, but we like it just the way it is.

Prior to then, of course, there was no need for a law, because no big store would have been so crass as to try and open on Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas.

 

[Tomasso]

LizzieM it is alway a pleasure to read your posts.

Everybody loves to read Lizzie's posts........with the possible/probable/definate exception of 'the boys from marketing.'

 

[Hemingway Jones]

L.L. Bean has an exemption to that Maine law, evidently. They don't have locks on their doors.

 

[LizzieMaine]

L.L. Bean has an exemption to that Maine law, evidently. They don't have locks on their doors.

Yep, they were written into the law as an exemption when it was first drafted. They'd always been open all the time, in the off chance some hunter or fisherman or woodsman might need something on a holiday. It's been a long time since Bean's was primarily a store for real outdoorsmen though, so that exemption continues now out of habit more than anything else.

I've only been in there once, in the mid-80s, and even then it was well on its way to becoming what someone from Westchester thinks Maine is like.

 

[vintageTink]

I just don't like pushing, shoving crowds. I'm not trying to stick it to any businesses. :lol:

 

[Tomasso]

Corporate america will alway have the upper hand until the mass of workers fight back..

Oh, like when the UAW put International Harvester out of business in the 80s. They showed them!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Everybody loves to read Lizzie's posts........with the possible/probable/definate exception of 'the boys from marketing.'

I've always suspected that a member or two might be in marketing.

 

[vitanola]

Oh, like when the UAW put International Harvester out of business in the 80s. They showed them!

Right.

I find it interesting that the IH-UAW strike of 1979-80 has for thirty years been used as a classic business school example of how management can poison labor relations. The general consensus is that Arch McCardell, a former whiz-bang manager at Xerox bumbled the negotiation of the 1979 contract. In his latter years, even McCardell himself admitted that his unfamiliarity with the world of heavy manufacturing led him to make errors which ended in destroying IHC. note that the committee of the firm's creditors firmly placed the blame with management.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Oh, like when the UAW put International Harvester out of business in the 80s. They showed them!

Right.

I find it interesting that the IH-UAW strike of 1979-80 has for thirty years been used as a classic business school example of how management can poison labor relations. The general consensus is that Arch McCardell, a former whiz-bang manager at Xerox bumbled the negotiation of the 1979 contract. In his latter years, even McCardell himself admitted that his unfamiliarity with the world of heavy manufacturing led him to make errors which ended in destroying IHC. note that the committee of the firm's creditors firmly placed the blame with management.

opcorn:

[video=youtube;68Lx6r4YnV0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Lx6r4YnV0[/video]

 

[ButteMT61]

How many here have run to the market on Thanksgiving day to get a needed item for the big meal? We did today. Not intentionally, just the way it always seems to work out. Always grateful for those working and I try to thank them.
Ironically I find the "open on special days" thing repulsive. I don't shop those days mainly because I think folks need time off with family and friends. But the big benefit for me is not running into pigs fighting over big screen TV's and xbox and cell phones etc. Look at the news showing videos every year of the inner city stores showing near riot conditions and people getting hurt and even killed.
Thanks but no. I'll wait 'til later and get better deals with humans nearby. We shop year-round for our gifts to get best prices and to not be rushed. You also don't drop a large chunk of money in a short time which is painful too.
I support not shopping on TG to let some folks stay home. If I shop a sale it will be online.

 

[sheeplady]

Sheeplady and others who oppose people working on a holiday, let me run some terms by you -- firefighters, hospitals, gas stations, steel mills, military, police/prisons, shipping, airports/aircraft, financial markets and the entire rest of the world which doesn't recognize our holiday but we do business with.
Would you have all of that shut down too or is it just retail stores you object to??

If your house is burning down, you can't wait until the end of Thanksgiving to put the fire out.
If you are dying, you can't wait until the end of Thanksgiving to get CPR.
If you are in prison, you can't be unguarded until the end of Thanksgiving.
We're not culturally obligated to recognize other's holidays and they aren't culturally obligated to recognize ours.

However, you can wait until the end of Thanksgiving to buy plastic crap.

The vast majority of occupations you are listing are considered "skilled" (such as healthcare) or unionized (in the case of "unskilled" workers). Most retail workers are not. Most of those jobs get time and a half pay for working on a holiday, these retail workers do not.

 

[vintageTink]

opcorn:

May I have some? I brought butter.

 

[sheeplady]

*Who decides?

*By what standard?

*How was that standard determined?

And probably a few dozen others. That is, if one wishes to not commit the logical fallacy of "arbitrariness"

In the end WE can decide. If we boycott those stores open on Thanksgiving and don't participate in their schemes for getting us to buy their junk, then we will decide.

All decisions like this are lines in the sand. Why can't bars be open 24/7? Why can't kids buy cigarettes until age 18? Why is the age of consent 16 in some states, and 15 in others?

Decisions like that are made because an authority comes to believe that it is better for general society to have laws and rules in place and that line in the sand is something most people are comfortable with and seems acceptable. However, the only way that authority comes to that conclusion and is supported in that conclusion is because society in general supports it. I want the people to reject this without needing the government to regulate it.

I would love to see society hand it right back to these stores on a silver platter and have these corporations choke on their own greed. Unfortunately I know too many people who worship at the alter of the mighty dollar.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I would love to see society hand it right back to these stores on a silver platter and have these corporations choke on their own greed. Unfortunately I know too many people who worship at the alter of the mighty dollar.

In the end, just who created the whole concept of "showing your love for your family and friends by showering them with disposable junk on Christmas?" Is it an expression of love to expect people to claw and stampede over each other to save half-off on a TV set that'll be in the trash pile in five years? Is it in any way a reflection of what Christmas is supposed to be about? If not, then exactly what *does* it reflect? Exactly what god is being worshipped?

It's sad that a lot of the same people who bemoan the "conspiracy against Christmas" are the same ones who defend the modern commercial orgy every December as being just "the market in action." In doing so they reveal just who and what they really worship.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Right.

I find it interesting that the IH-UAW strike of 1979-80 has for thirty years been used as a classic business school example of how management can poison labor relations. The general consensus is that Arch McCardell, a former whiz-bang manager at Xerox bumbled the negotiation of the 1979 contract. In his latter years, even McCardell himself admitted that his unfamiliarity with the world of heavy manufacturing led him to make errors which ended in destroying IHC. note that the committee of the firm's creditors firmly placed the blame with management.

Didn't Mr. McCardell in his great good wisdom grant himself a two million dollar cash bonus right at the same time he was demanding wage and hour concessions from the union? Such wise, enlightened leadership.

In any event, IH still exists as Navistar Corporation, builders of heavy trucks and buses. All that happened in the wake of the McCardell debacle is that they sold off their farm equipment division and changed their name.

 

[Two Types]

I had never heard of the 'Black Friday' shopping frenzy until last year (it was all over the news on the Saturday when I landed in New York). It immediately made me think of The Pop Group's 1979 single 'We Are All Prostitutes', which includes the lines:

Capitalism is the most barbaric of all religions,
Department Stores are the new cathedrals,
Our cars are martyrs to the cause.

before concluding that:

Our children will rise up against us
Because we are the ones to blame

Says it all really.

 

[Two Types]

Apologies if my comment on capitalism breaks the Lounge's rule on politics, but it doesn't really seem possible to comment on this thread without straying into politics.