(no subject)
There's always a lot of clamor this time of year about the injustice that is businesses choosing to remain open on Thanksgiving day and the travesty of Black Friday deal-hunters scrambling over one another to get their mitts on the last Sony PS4. Critics accuse businesses of exploitation and insensitivity, but they're missing one crucial fact: A typical retail worker $9/hr will stand to make $108 by working on Thanksgiving Day thanks to time-and-a-half pay, and another $72 on Black Friday. If preventing businesses from operating on these days is meant to be a gesture of good will towards employees, it certainly is an odd one. Prohibiting low-wage workers from earning an additional $180 during a time of year where budgets strained by the gift-giving spirit is an odd way of showing your fellow-feeling. For starters, it leaves workers with less income to spend, making them even more frantic to get the best deals possible. Black Friday is retail Code Red, all-hands on deck. Keeping shoppers from accessing deals just pushes them into a more frenzied state, as Black Friday becomes Black Saturday. I don't know what the average person spends on holiday gift-giving but let's be incredibly generous and say it's 5% of annual income. That means a $9/hr working stiff who works full-time would spend $900 during the holiday season. Unless that worker expects an average savings on all his Black Friday purchases of 20% or more, he/she is better off having worked on Thanksgiving and Black Friday than having all of Thanksgiving off and spending 8 hours fighting the Black Friday mobscene.
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