The Desk: No Shopping Rush for Us This Year

After the turkey leftovers are put away for sandwiches and last licks are taken from the dessert bowls, what’s next on this annual day set aside to give thanks? If you’re a retail employee you’re probably headed straight to bed to get a few hours of sleep before your shift begins at midnight.

Stores in the Potomac Communities are opening earlier than ever this Black Friday – the one shopping day each year when retailers slash prices on electronics, home goods and just about everything else — to entice shoppers to rush their stores, open their wallets and take them out of the red and put them back in black.

K-Mart remains open on Thanksgiving, but other big box stores like Walmart and Best Buy that have traditionally waited until 4 or 5 a.m. to open Black Friday have now decided to join the ranks of shopping malls, like Potomac Mills, which has opened at midnight, and has remained open for nearly 24 hours, on Black Friday since 2009.

For years I have covered Black Friday madness, talking with shoppers who have literally made battle plans with friends, family members, and neighbors, who have all worked ahead of time plotting out who will make the mad dash for their most coveted items.

At midnight last Thanksgiving night at Potomac Mills mall, a fight broke out at the gate of Foot Action shoe store for no other reason that the store’s metal gate had not opened soon enough to appease the hordes of shoppers. Is fighting to get into a shoe store really worth the late night rush to the mall?

Employees working the sale counters at midnight, at first, usually tell me how funny it is to see so many customers at such an early hour. Later, into the early morning hours, they begin their own fight with fatigue.

And why shouldn’t they be tired? Sure, they had Thanksgiving Day off of work to be with family, friends, or to catch up on sleep. But, unlike us, they had to cut short their holiday or go without sleep to make to work so shoppers can feed their shopping need. Moreover, many shoppers each year simply venture out from their homes to be a part of the early shopping buzz.

I appreciate all the invites we’ve gotten from stores and malls asking us to come and write stories about the mob of holiday shoppers who rush their doors at midnight. This year, however, we won’t be there.

Thanksgiving is a time to be with family, friends, or the ones you care about no matter what your religion or creed. It’s a national holiday, and should be more than just some day wedged between Halloween and Christmas where we fat out on delicious fixings and then dream of the deals on computer gaming systems, enticing people to leave their homes on Thanksgiving out of curiosity to be apart of Black Friday.

Some argue retail workers must accept, given the state of the current job market, early Black Friday hours as part of the job, and the companies are just responding to shoppers’ demands. They’re right responding to demand, but retailers have also had help over the years creating the Black Friday craze with the help of advertising and media that put so much focus on the event.

Maybe the big box stores are opening earlier will alleviate mob scenes where some people in past years have been trampled to death. Maybe we’re seeing the evolution Black Friday, or maybe we’re just standing by to watch the continued erosion of the Thanksgiving holiday.

One thing is sure: the deals will still be around even if you’re not at the stores at midnight.