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My state, NJ, is an at-will state. People cannot be forced to work.
At will for employer not employee..if a place is open for Thanksgiving and you are required to work and don't you will be at the very least written up or at the very most fired.
Sunday....Thanksgiving...New Years...Christmas..... One by one they fall as the significance of each holiday is steered toward commercialism. Thanksgiving is all about what you bought to eat, and what football game you watch. Christmas is all about what you bought, and what you got. New Years is about how much you drank, and how bad you felt the next day before gorging yourself on crap in front of the TV.
That there is/was some religious/social significance to these days is virtually lost. Generation by generation the ties to the real reason for the holiday are weakening, and the focus becomes how much you spent/bought/consumed.
That's the corporate way. And we follow their lead like lemmings into the sea.
If Macy's is open on thanksgiving, you can bet that their stores will be packed.
I personally have not been in anything other than a grocery store for years. I can find it, evaluate it, buy it, and have it next day for free (sic) shipping by dealing on line. The service is great, I don't have to deal with the commercial side of the world, smell the stench of the food court, nor put up with some idiot reading the label on the mittens when I ask if they are good to 20 below.
To each their own. Many people feast on the 'shopping experience' and Macy's is more than willing to give them another on which to munch.
The bottom line is that they wouldn't be opening if people weren't coming in. I don't like it personally, but clearly there is a market driving their decision.
It's all commercialism and profit which I well understand. That doesn't mean I find it attractive or commendable. I also understand the reality of, 'Open them a store and they will come' which I find equally unattractive and uninspiring. But the reality is, this trend began about 50 years ago in my memory and experience and has simply become worse over time. In corporate America, family takes back seat to profits every time. More's the pity!
So many people assert that they're opening on T-G as some sort of middle finger to their employees. If there were no customers showing up (or at least not enough to justify the financial outlay of paying employees to be there, and to pay the costs of electricity, etc.) then they'd be the first ones to recommend staying closed. In high school I worked for a supermarket that tried opening on Thanksgiving morning for a few hours, and the manager later said they had not made enough money to justify doing it again.
In every case where I've worked for a place that opened on Thanksgiving (and I've worked for several), it has always been voluntary in the sense that the schedulers will solicit volunteers to work, and in all but one case, they scheduled abbreviated shifts (four or five hours each) to allow the workers to have the majority of the day free.
I seem to recall the Macy's story said the stores would be opening at 8pm on T-G day, so being "forced" to work on T-G day is hardly going to interfere with their day. By 8pm I'm usually falling into the Turkey Coma anyway.
I hate the whole thing, because it's changed our Thanksgivings. We used to, after dinner, pour through the many circulars, making lists, giving the kids the toy circulars to make their lists, until we had room for dessert. It was fun. Now dinner ends, and my niece rushes dessert to she can dash off to go shopping. There are few enough times nowadays where we are all together as a family for a night, now T-Day is gone, too. I don't think more emphasis on commercialism is what we need today.
I hate the whole thing, because it's changed our Thanksgivings. We used to, after dinner, pour through the many circulars, making lists, giving the kids the toy circulars to make their lists, until we had room for dessert. It was fun. Now dinner ends, and my niece rushes dessert to she can dash off to go shopping. There are few enough times nowadays where we are all together as a family for a night, now T-Day is gone, too. I don't think more emphasis on commercialism is what we need today.
I have family who work in retail, and last year we had to have an early dinner because they had to go to work Thanksgiving. Maybe its because my kids are grown, and we don't give and shop for gifts the way we used to, but we managed in the old days to keep everybody happy without having to sacrifice Thanksgiving.
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I don't think more emphasis on commercialism is what we need today.
