Thanks, you too! Had family over, and now I'm playing Madden 07, because I'm kinda sick of the NFL for all the kneeling, but there had to be some kind of fotball, right?
" Ever had those days where you have amazing luck,
everything goes right, and you feel like the king of the world...
....And then you wake up?"
-Someone special, 2012
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
For some people. Personally I am doing all my shopping online this year. I'll hit my FLGS over the weekend for small business Saturday but I am staying in and enjoying not having anything to do today(for about 5 minutes, then my wife will start making me put up Christmas decorations)
I survived working as a cashier at Toys R Us on Black Friday two years in a row when I was younger. Thankfully avoided hostility, but my poor bestie had to get up at the crack of dawn to drive me to work (since the buses didn't run as early as they wanted me in), and then he had to practically carry me to his car after I got done because my legs were almost totally numb.
Apparently there was a fistfight in the software section between two lady customers one year, though. Which was hilarious because the manager was like "well, did you do anything to break it up?" and the dude in question covering that section was like about 5'4" and maybe 100 lbs soaking wet so he just gave the manager a withering "are you kidding me?" look.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Speaking about Black Friday, I'm utterly disgusted to find out we had stores in my area holding "Black Friday Sales" at 10 AM Thursday Morning!
Forget Thanksgiving and preparing food for your family and being grateful for what you have, just start shopping for Christmas. I seriously can't stand how Thanksgiving and even Halloween are slowly getting overshadowed by the Christmas season.
I've recently started thinking of the most popular song in early November as the year closer, because after then, Christmas songs take over.
" Ever had those days where you have amazing luck,
everything goes right, and you feel like the king of the world...
....And then you wake up?"
-Someone special, 2012
@Chaosmancer: I'm sincerely glad that Massachusetts is one of the few states where it's explicitly illegal for most places to be open or require employment on many holidays including Thanksgiving, with the exception of mainly places that have to continually operate for people's well-being. (Restaurants are the one major non-essential thing allowed to be open I can think of, but even there you can't require anyone to work.)
We have a lot of restrictions on how much and when people can work that originally started out as blue laws to help religious people stay observant, but stuck around because people who live here appreciated that they also provide general protection for workers as a side benefit. (Even the areas they're relaxed still tend to mandate compensation; for instance, non-essential businesses are now allowed to operate on Sundays but they're also required to pay time and a half to any worker who does.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Speaking about Black Friday, I'm utterly disgusted to find out we had stores in my area holding "Black Friday Sales" at 10 AM Thursday Morning! Forget Thanksgiving and preparing food for your family and being grateful for what you have, just start shopping for Christmas. I seriously can't stand how Thanksgiving and even Halloween are slowly getting overshadowed by the Christmas season.
I believe it's ThinkProgress that put up an image over Wednesday or Thursday that shows which companies were open on Thursday and which ones were not open until Friday. Should be easy to find, I would think.
This kind of stuf is why I was wearing Halloween shirts for the week after Halloween, just to give my own little bit of defiance to other holidays encroaching on time that isn't theirs.
@Chaosmancer: I'm sincerely glad that Massachusetts is one of the few states where it's explicitly illegal for most places to be open or require employment on many holidays including Thanksgiving, with the exception of mainly places that have to continually operate for people's well-being. (Restaurants are the one major non-essential thing allowed to be open I can think of, but even there you can't require anyone to work.)We have a lot of restrictions on how much and when people can work that originally started out as blue laws to help religious people stay observant, but stuck around because people who live here appreciated that they also provide general protection for workers as a side benefit. (Even the areas they're relaxed still tend to mandate compensation; for instance, non-essential businesses are now allowed to operate on Sundays but they're also required to pay time and a half to any worker who does.)
I am super ultra liberal but even I don't think the governement should be telling business owners when they can and can not open.
The thing is, everyone is getting all bothered about stores being open Thanksgiving but that is not a new thing. Convient stores and such have been open then my whole life(7-11, Walgreens, CVS). Grocery stores are open too(because people are always getting last minute needs). A lot of Zoos and Museums are open(Need to entertain people before they go off to eat Turkey Dinner). Movie Theaters are open and I know a lot of people who traditional go see a movie as a family Thanksigiving evening.
The whole idea of these sacred days where everyone gets off work just don't work in a modern society. Some people don't celebrate, some people celebrate really late or really early, some peoples only day off a work a week may be Thursday and it sucks for them that they can't get their grocery shopping done or buy something because "its a holiday". We don't close on Halloween, New Years day, Easter, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, or the other religious holidays or federal holidays people celebrate in a year.
That being said, the whole idea of Black Friday shopping is terrible and should go, and I do agree with the fact that "Christmas time" needs to learn its place and start being a thing the day after Thanksgiving for sure, I just don't think everyone needs to be closed on Thanksgiving.
I am super ultra liberal but even I don't think the governement should be telling business owners when they can and can not open.
Unfortunately we live in a world where businesses are happy to force workers to work against their will on holidays, force them to work on days of worship, force them to work on days when public transit doesn't run, force them to work long stretches of days and hours without a break, etc. under threat of being fired if they refuse.
So while there may well be other solutions to this problem other than the government enforcing that businesses give certain breaks to workers, this is the particular solution the people of Massachusetts came up with. It's not something the goverment did against our will; it's something we asked the government to keep. The government would put the blue laws on the ballot and we'd vote time and time again to either keep them or loosen them but also compensate workers at the same time.
Certainly as someone who already had to do things like ask my poor roommate to get up at the crack of dawn on a day he got off, so I didn't have to spend half my day's pay on a taxi to get to Black Friday hours before the busses start running, I'm really really glad I didn't have to choose between spending half my pay, asking my roommate to give up Thanksgiving with his family (since the buses don't run at all on that day), or losing my job. Likewise most of my coworkers had families they'd rather be spending the holiday with, and having to make the holiday brief so they could go to bed early to rush back to work at the crack of dawn for Black Friday was already a sacrifice.
Nilus wrote:
The whole idea of these sacred days where everyone gets off work just don't work in a modern society.
They work very well for people who work at the types of jobs that don't have 40-hour M-F weeks where the boss would voluntarily give everyone a paid holiday.
Nilus wrote:
We don't close on Halloween, New Years day, Easter, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, or the other religious holidays or federal holidays people celebrate in a year.
Massachusetts does close for some of those days.
And on the days we don't close, I've gotten close to being fired at a job where I had to explain I couldn't come in on days like Memorial Day or the 4th because my roommate had other holiday plans, the buses don't run, and I didn't feel like having to spend the entire day at work essentially doing nothing but earning back the money for the taxi to and from work.
Basically, I'm honestly sorry if you feel inconvenienced by these sorts of things, but as a former retail worker, I know we workers in Massachusetts at least both need and appreciate these protections afforded to us.
(And I'm honestly sorry this turned into a debate, but I just wanted to clear up what seemed to be some misunderstandings of the situation.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
No reason to be sorry about a debate. We are civil, we aren’t name calling, we just have passionate opinions.
I’m a former retail slave myself but our circumstances were different. I had access to a car for most of my retail life and even if I didn’t I could walk to the mall I worked at, it wasn’t a short walk but it was doable if I had too. My main purpose for working at that point in my life was to afford college, so I took every shift I could. Nights, weekends, holidays. All night inventories, etc. Especially if it was overtime or holiday pay. While a lot of people are in your boat, I would guess there are a good number of people on my end as well. A lot of people I know work the Black Friday crazy weekend so they can afford Christmas for their families. Those extra hours and holiday pay put Christmas dinner on the table and presents under the tree.
I can say say that when I managed my own store and made the schedules I worked with my employees to work as best around everyone’s schedule. I have heard of places that are not as nice about scheduling and that sucks but I wouldn’t say it’s the norm.
What can ya say, retail is hard work. I’m sure we can swap war stories of the crazy WORD REMOVED BY MOD we have seen and been part of. There was a full blown riot in the mall I worked at once!
I worked at the local mall which was 7 miles from my apartment at the time. Since my daily pay was about $56 at the time, trying to get to and fro via taxi really likely would have eaten up my entire pay for the day. I didn't own a car because no money. I couldn't feasibly work extra shifts because the buses only ran from 7 to 7. My roommate usually had his own job (which paid way, way better than mine which is the only way we could afford the apartment).
It really depended on the shift, I found. Basically the night shift would be mostly the high school and college students, while the day shift was part college students but mostly people like me trying to make a living.
It also depends greatly on the type of store. Small business retail places are more likely to be good about scheduling, but any chain store or franchise (who are generally the ones opening on Thanksgiving) is likely to be brutal about scheduling.
And it's really about choice, too. For every employee given the choice of working extra hours, there's another who is forced to work those extra hours under threat of being fired. For every business that's gracious about scheduling there's another that's brutal.
So it can be this clash of axioms where someone who's used to having free choice and nice businesses is like, "but I want the right to earn all that extra cash and my employer is really cool anyway so they should get to do their thing", and someone who's used to exploitative businesses is like, "I want the right to not be forced to work myself to death and my employer will bend any inch you give them into an employee-smashing instrument" and the politicians get to figure out how to make both sides happy. (Now there's a job I envy even less than my old retail work.)
I've worked both retail and white-collar and both chain and small business and a lot of weird stuff in between, so I have a lot of weird stories I could tell.
Like for instance, that toy store job was also where I worked when 9/11 happened. Since I would always spend the entire morning getting ready and on the bus and thus nowhere near a TV or radio, I basically then spent the first hour of my shift standing at my register wondering why there was barely any customers in the store even considering it was a Tuesday, until finally I saw that one of our floor associate ladies who was usually our resident ever-cheerful Pollyanna was instead crying and I was basically like, "Jen, what's wrong, I've never seen you not smiling, is everything OK? Also, where the heck IS everybody?", so she finally explained. :P
Addendum: I also worked that job during the Playstation 2 launch, boy howdy was that a mess.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I worked at a Babbages(which is what you young folks now cal GameStop) from 1994 till very early 2000. So I got to see almost all the 32 bit system launches(including the horrible 3D0 and Atari Jaguar). The last system I sold at launch was the Dreamcast, that was pretty insane. Although the craziest was the N64 and then Ocarina of Time(in the gold cartridge).
Hey, fellow Babbage's worker, represent. I actually also worked there during the Dreamcast launch. (Fun fact: I was the only lady employee at the store at the time because I was apparently the only woman who applied during that particular hiring period.)
Other quirky jobs I've had:
Book sorting in the processing warehouse for one of those book wholesaler places you see on Amazon.
Data entry at Smith & Wesson.
Beta testing data entry software at a regional company that helped with FEMA disaster responses.
Secretary at a moving company.
Ticket taker/seller at an expo for industrial machine parts companies.
You ever do those Christmas fundraisers where you sell wrapping paper and knickknacks? I did data entry and warehouse stuff for one of the paper companies that fills the actual orders.
Receptionist for a mom & pop graphics design and sign shop. (Fun fact: I now know how to cut and apply vinyl signage which is probably very high up there on the Esoteric Skills You Will Never Actually Use Ever Again list.)
And then there was the temp job where I literally spent one entire 40 hour week doing nothing but eight hour shifts of removing staples from stacks of paper and then feeding them into a shredder. Oh well, it was a paycheck.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
To throw some of my food industry expeirence into this.
My employer did not offer Holiday pay. In fact, it was when I was getting gas at the Speedway near our store, and trying to comiserate with my fellow worker forced to work the holidays that I learned that Holiday pay was a thing that some businesses did. So, that really added salt to the wounds to not only be forced to work a holiday and not see relatives, but to also find out that some people got paid time and a half for doing that... and I didn't.
I also was not allowed to work overtime. Wasn't hard since I was a part time employee, but there was only one person in our store who was allowed to work overtime, because she was the best shift manager we had (better than the manager in a lot of ways) and we needed her expertise too often to not have her come in and earn overtime pay. Anyone else? If their hours got too close to hitting overtime, they were let off early or told not to work a day so that the company didn't have to pay over time... but they needed to stay avaible in case there was a rush and we couldn't avoid calling them in. So, don't get involved in anything you couldn't cancel so you can come in to work, but don't come to work because we don't want you hitting overtime.
There are plenty of companies that will do whatever they have to to force people to work as often as they need, while doing everything they can to avoid paying them more than the bare minimum. I'm hoping I'm getting past that stage in my life, but somehow I doubt it will ever get to the point where I feel glad to work somewhere.
@Chaosmancer: That reminds me of my time working at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Literally every single non-manager employee including myself was always begging for more hours, but the managers kept claiming they didn't have the payroll for it. When I walked in one day and noticed a "Help Wanted" sign and other solicitations for applications, I decided that was the last straw and went and pointedly asked the manager how they could find enough hours to hire a new employee when they kept claiming there wasn't enough hours to give to all the existing employees. When I got a bunch of flibbertygibbetry in response, I prompted embarked on finding a new job. It was disappointing because I really loved the actual work, but it's just pointless working for a place that keeps making up flimsy excuses to not actually give you any work.
As for my own epiphany about the fairness or lack thereof in worker's issues, it was when I landed my first white-collar job in my early twenties. I sat there at the end of my first shift, and had a sudden realization that despite spending the entire shift doing nothing but processing paperwork and digital information in ways that were intellectually challenging but otherwise not very strenuous, I was getting $2 more per hour than all of my retail jobs which involved a multitude of tasks that were not only often also intellectually demanding but physically and emotionally demanding as well.
Like, I did already catch on that retail was a disproportionate amount of work compared to the amount of pay you got, but I figured "well, I guess that's the way it is, and other jobs probably pay more because they're even MORE work". To find out that no, many other jobs paid more simply because someone arbitrarily decided to pay more with no relation to how much more difficult the work actually was, and so conversely retail workers were very definitely getting ripped off, was quite the eye-opener to my young self.
P.S. Oh wait, bonus story. The reason I left that Toys R Us job? Because I kept getting too behind on mailing list quotas and presells even though the reason I was behind is because I respected the customers' expressed desires to not give out their info for the lists and to not be pestered with presells that are unrelated to what they're actually looking to buy, so I was given a "quit or we fire you" ultimatum. Yes, that's right, I got let go from a retail job expressly for actually trying to follow what customers wanted.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
@Matchstickman: Oh trust me, I have horror stories I can tell about jerk customers, or times when the company really did have a valid point.
But I also cared about trying to help customers who were just normal folk, and doubly so when they were actively nice, and I also cared about customers when they were the ones with valid points. And there's been more than one occasion where I got dinged for that.
Even with the jerk customers I often was willing to help whenever they were willing to calm down and accept they just got some of the details wrong. Like for more toy store related experiences, if you stop screaming at me because I pointed out that Grand Theft Auto is not a good choice for your ten year old, I will be more than happy to tell you about game ideas that ARE good choices for a ten year old.
I think I feel more like, customers are always right about what they want, they're just not always right about how to actually get there. Unfortunately the companies aren't always right about how to get customers there either.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
.P.S. Oh wait, bonus story. The reason I left that Toys R Us job? Because I kept getting too behind on mailing list quotas and presells even though the reason I was behind is because I respected the customers' expressed desires to not give out their info for the lists and to not be pestered with presells that are unrelated to what they're actually looking to buy, so I was given a "quit or we fire you" ultimatum. Yes, that's right, I got let go from a retail job expressly for actually trying to follow what customers wanted.
Oh my gosh, prepurchases and MSTs(multi-sku transactsion, basically adding crap onto someones purchases) were all upper management cared about at Babbages. I worked at the most profitable store in the district, we sold video games like they were free, and we still managed to keep our loss low despite working at one of the worst malls in the district.
That being said, they didn't seem to care about our numbers. They just wanted to see the number of people who prepurchased something or if we managed to sell some cheap ass key chain to go with their $500 dollar NEO GEO.
I was just lucky I left before they went head first into becoming the video game pawn shop that Gamestop is today. I don't think I have the lack or morals required to try to push someone to buy a used video game for $5 less then a new one.
The annoying part is that I have no problems at all with, like, ethical salespersoning. Like, I am totally OK with any company having a goal of making money. So if there's a version of a product which costs more but really is a worth-it upgrade, then I don't really have an issue with suggesting it to the customer. Or if there's a bunch of add-ons which really are useful and worthwhile to add on, sure, I'll point them out. That sort of thing.
It's the whole "you have to ask literally everyone if they want to preorder the latest Modern Warfare even when they're sitting there with a conveyer belt full of onesies and baby bottles and a car seat" that's like, do I really have to do this? Because I find it super annoying when I'm the one who's the customer in other stores and cashiers do that to me. Especially since we always had the preorder stuff on display, so even if the parent with the onesies was also secretly an FPS fanatic I'm sure they can just see the preorder for themselves and throw it on the belt.
Like the manager actually tried to talk me around and asked me "well, how do you like to be treated as a customer" and I was like "I like when people help me out when I ask but otherwise let me do my thing in peace, suggest stuff actually related to what I'm buying, don't ask me for personal info that isn't required, and the cashier rings me out efficiently with a minimum of fuss" and I could tell it was totally not what the manager wanted to hear even though it was the truth. :P
And yeah, I miss when secondhand stores were genuinely places you could find old games otherwise not available or find bargain games, rather than places to just bilk you for more dough. Especially since, like, whenever I ran across a customer who actually didn't chew my head off during post-Christmas season when I said we couldn't accept a return of their open game or software, I liked being able to say "You can take it to the local GameStop/FuncoLand/random mom and pop nerd shop/whatever and trade it in and you won't get full price or full exchange but you'll at least get something for it" because it was often parents who didn't know they could do that and would thank me for the info. Nowadays though it's pretty much just a ripoff all around.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
the whole idea of Black Friday shopping is terrible and should go, and I do agree with the fact that "Christmas time" needs to learn its place and start being a thing the day after Thanksgiving for sure
Hehe, that's so cute.* You should try spending the Fall up in Canada sometime. We celebrate Thanksgiving in October (the 2nd Monday of October, to be specific), which means that the Christmas Holiday decorations and displays go up immediately on Nov 1. (In fact, if you leave your Halloween candy purchasing to the last minute, you might see some poor employee taking down the Halloween displays and putting up the Holiday ones late evening on Oct 31.) So someone working retail up here in Canada (or at least in Southern Ontario) has already been staring at Holiday displays and listening to Holiday music for 3 weeks by the time Black Friday rolls around. That person has never been me, but this time of year if I'm interacting with a retail person who isn't being 100% pleasant to deal with, I try to remember that they probably lost their mind after hearing "Frosty the Snowman" for the 50th time back on Nov 20, and try to extend and extra measure of patience and compassion.
*(Note: If I sound condescending, please don't take it that way. Just trying to be funny.)
the whole idea of Black Friday shopping is terrible and should go, and I do agree with the fact that "Christmas time" needs to learn its place and start being a thing the day after Thanksgiving for sure
Hehe, that's so cute.* You should try spending the Fall up in Canada sometime. We celebrate Thanksgiving in October (the 2nd Monday of October, to be specific), which means that the Christmas Holiday decorations and displays go up immediately on Nov 1. (In fact, if you leave your Halloween candy purchasing to the last minute, you might see some poor employee taking down the Halloween displays and putting up the Holiday ones late evening on Oct 31.) So someone working retail up here in Canada (or at least in Southern Ontario) has already been staring at Holiday displays and listening to Holiday music for 3 weeks by the time Black Friday rolls around. That person has never been me, but this time of year if I'm interacting with a retail person who isn't being 100% pleasant to deal with, I try to remember that they probably lost their mind after hearing "Frosty the Snowman" for the 50th time back on Nov 20, and try to extend and extra measure of patience and compassion.*(Note: If I sound condescending, please don't take it that way. Just trying to be funny.)
While we dont do Thanksgiving till late November, if you go into a store on Halloween you can see the staff putting all the items in storage and pulling out Christmas. The malls start playing the music in October as well.
What!? That's ridiculous. I figured you at least got spared all that until AFTER your Thanksgiving. Good(?) to know we're all in the same boat after all.
Yeah, that's pretty much the reason nowadays the only Christmas music I can stand is Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
I'm fond of Mannheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls myself. It showed up in my Pandora playlist one holiday season several years back and it tickled my funny bone.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
I'm fond of Mannheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls myself. It showed up in my Pandora playlist one holiday season several years back and it tickled my funny bone.
They have a trippy sound; it's like electronica meets John Philip Sousa? I dig it.
I admit my fondness for TSO comes in large part from my fondness for Carol of the Bells in general that I developed during my choir singing days.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Thanks, you too! Had family over, and now I'm playing Madden 07, because I'm kinda sick of the NFL for all the kneeling, but there had to be some kind of fotball, right?
" Ever had those days where you have amazing luck,
everything goes right, and you feel like the king of the world...
....And then you wake up?"
-Someone special, 2012
Happy Thanksgiving!
Crush your enemies, drive them before you, and laminate their women! - Guise, Prime Wardens #31
Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
-Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Happy Thanksgiving everyone
Happy Leftovers Day!
I think you mean
"WELCOME TO SHOPPING THUNDERDOME DAY!!!"
For some people. Personally I am doing all my shopping online this year. I'll hit my FLGS over the weekend for small business Saturday but I am staying in and enjoying not having anything to do today(for about 5 minutes, then my wife will start making me put up Christmas decorations)
I survived working as a cashier at Toys R Us on Black Friday two years in a row when I was younger. Thankfully avoided hostility, but my poor bestie had to get up at the crack of dawn to drive me to work (since the buses didn't run as early as they wanted me in), and then he had to practically carry me to his car after I got done because my legs were almost totally numb.
Apparently there was a fistfight in the software section between two lady customers one year, though. Which was hilarious because the manager was like "well, did you do anything to break it up?" and the dude in question covering that section was like about 5'4" and maybe 100 lbs soaking wet so he just gave the manager a withering "are you kidding me?" look.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Speaking about Black Friday, I'm utterly disgusted to find out we had stores in my area holding "Black Friday Sales" at 10 AM Thursday Morning!
Forget Thanksgiving and preparing food for your family and being grateful for what you have, just start shopping for Christmas. I seriously can't stand how Thanksgiving and even Halloween are slowly getting overshadowed by the Christmas season.
I've recently started thinking of the most popular song in early November as the year closer, because after then, Christmas songs take over.
" Ever had those days where you have amazing luck,
everything goes right, and you feel like the king of the world...
....And then you wake up?"
-Someone special, 2012
@Chaosmancer: I'm sincerely glad that Massachusetts is one of the few states where it's explicitly illegal for most places to be open or require employment on many holidays including Thanksgiving, with the exception of mainly places that have to continually operate for people's well-being. (Restaurants are the one major non-essential thing allowed to be open I can think of, but even there you can't require anyone to work.)
We have a lot of restrictions on how much and when people can work that originally started out as blue laws to help religious people stay observant, but stuck around because people who live here appreciated that they also provide general protection for workers as a side benefit. (Even the areas they're relaxed still tend to mandate compensation; for instance, non-essential businesses are now allowed to operate on Sundays but they're also required to pay time and a half to any worker who does.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I believe it's ThinkProgress that put up an image over Wednesday or Thursday that shows which companies were open on Thursday and which ones were not open until Friday. Should be easy to find, I would think.
This kind of stuf is why I was wearing Halloween shirts for the week after Halloween, just to give my own little bit of defiance to other holidays encroaching on time that isn't theirs.
I am super ultra liberal but even I don't think the governement should be telling business owners when they can and can not open.
The thing is, everyone is getting all bothered about stores being open Thanksgiving but that is not a new thing. Convient stores and such have been open then my whole life(7-11, Walgreens, CVS). Grocery stores are open too(because people are always getting last minute needs). A lot of Zoos and Museums are open(Need to entertain people before they go off to eat Turkey Dinner). Movie Theaters are open and I know a lot of people who traditional go see a movie as a family Thanksigiving evening.
The whole idea of these sacred days where everyone gets off work just don't work in a modern society. Some people don't celebrate, some people celebrate really late or really early, some peoples only day off a work a week may be Thursday and it sucks for them that they can't get their grocery shopping done or buy something because "its a holiday". We don't close on Halloween, New Years day, Easter, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, or the other religious holidays or federal holidays people celebrate in a year.
That being said, the whole idea of Black Friday shopping is terrible and should go, and I do agree with the fact that "Christmas time" needs to learn its place and start being a thing the day after Thanksgiving for sure, I just don't think everyone needs to be closed on Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately we live in a world where businesses are happy to force workers to work against their will on holidays, force them to work on days of worship, force them to work on days when public transit doesn't run, force them to work long stretches of days and hours without a break, etc. under threat of being fired if they refuse.
So while there may well be other solutions to this problem other than the government enforcing that businesses give certain breaks to workers, this is the particular solution the people of Massachusetts came up with. It's not something the goverment did against our will; it's something we asked the government to keep. The government would put the blue laws on the ballot and we'd vote time and time again to either keep them or loosen them but also compensate workers at the same time.
Certainly as someone who already had to do things like ask my poor roommate to get up at the crack of dawn on a day he got off, so I didn't have to spend half my day's pay on a taxi to get to Black Friday hours before the busses start running, I'm really really glad I didn't have to choose between spending half my pay, asking my roommate to give up Thanksgiving with his family (since the buses don't run at all on that day), or losing my job. Likewise most of my coworkers had families they'd rather be spending the holiday with, and having to make the holiday brief so they could go to bed early to rush back to work at the crack of dawn for Black Friday was already a sacrifice.
They work very well for people who work at the types of jobs that don't have 40-hour M-F weeks where the boss would voluntarily give everyone a paid holiday.
Massachusetts does close for some of those days.
And on the days we don't close, I've gotten close to being fired at a job where I had to explain I couldn't come in on days like Memorial Day or the 4th because my roommate had other holiday plans, the buses don't run, and I didn't feel like having to spend the entire day at work essentially doing nothing but earning back the money for the taxi to and from work.
Basically, I'm honestly sorry if you feel inconvenienced by these sorts of things, but as a former retail worker, I know we workers in Massachusetts at least both need and appreciate these protections afforded to us.
(And I'm honestly sorry this turned into a debate, but I just wanted to clear up what seemed to be some misunderstandings of the situation.)
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
No reason to be sorry about a debate. We are civil, we aren’t name calling, we just have passionate opinions.
I’m a former retail slave myself but our circumstances were different. I had access to a car for most of my retail life and even if I didn’t I could walk to the mall I worked at, it wasn’t a short walk but it was doable if I had too. My main purpose for working at that point in my life was to afford college, so I took every shift I could. Nights, weekends, holidays. All night inventories, etc. Especially if it was overtime or holiday pay. While a lot of people are in your boat, I would guess there are a good number of people on my end as well. A lot of people I know work the Black Friday crazy weekend so they can afford Christmas for their families. Those extra hours and holiday pay put Christmas dinner on the table and presents under the tree.
I can say say that when I managed my own store and made the schedules I worked with my employees to work as best around everyone’s schedule. I have heard of places that are not as nice about scheduling and that sucks but I wouldn’t say it’s the norm.
What can ya say, retail is hard work. I’m sure we can swap war stories of the crazy WORD REMOVED BY MOD we have seen and been part of. There was a full blown riot in the mall I worked at once!
I worked at the local mall which was 7 miles from my apartment at the time. Since my daily pay was about $56 at the time, trying to get to and fro via taxi really likely would have eaten up my entire pay for the day. I didn't own a car because no money. I couldn't feasibly work extra shifts because the buses only ran from 7 to 7. My roommate usually had his own job (which paid way, way better than mine which is the only way we could afford the apartment).
It really depended on the shift, I found. Basically the night shift would be mostly the high school and college students, while the day shift was part college students but mostly people like me trying to make a living.
It also depends greatly on the type of store. Small business retail places are more likely to be good about scheduling, but any chain store or franchise (who are generally the ones opening on Thanksgiving) is likely to be brutal about scheduling.
And it's really about choice, too. For every employee given the choice of working extra hours, there's another who is forced to work those extra hours under threat of being fired. For every business that's gracious about scheduling there's another that's brutal.
So it can be this clash of axioms where someone who's used to having free choice and nice businesses is like, "but I want the right to earn all that extra cash and my employer is really cool anyway so they should get to do their thing", and someone who's used to exploitative businesses is like, "I want the right to not be forced to work myself to death and my employer will bend any inch you give them into an employee-smashing instrument" and the politicians get to figure out how to make both sides happy. (Now there's a job I envy even less than my old retail work.)
I've worked both retail and white-collar and both chain and small business and a lot of weird stuff in between, so I have a lot of weird stories I could tell.
Like for instance, that toy store job was also where I worked when 9/11 happened. Since I would always spend the entire morning getting ready and on the bus and thus nowhere near a TV or radio, I basically then spent the first hour of my shift standing at my register wondering why there was barely any customers in the store even considering it was a Tuesday, until finally I saw that one of our floor associate ladies who was usually our resident ever-cheerful Pollyanna was instead crying and I was basically like, "Jen, what's wrong, I've never seen you not smiling, is everything OK? Also, where the heck IS everybody?", so she finally explained. :P
Addendum: I also worked that job during the Playstation 2 launch, boy howdy was that a mess.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I worked at a Babbages(which is what you young folks now cal GameStop) from 1994 till very early 2000. So I got to see almost all the 32 bit system launches(including the horrible 3D0 and Atari Jaguar). The last system I sold at launch was the Dreamcast, that was pretty insane. Although the craziest was the N64 and then Ocarina of Time(in the gold cartridge).
Hey, fellow Babbage's worker, represent. I actually also worked there during the Dreamcast launch. (Fun fact: I was the only lady employee at the store at the time because I was apparently the only woman who applied during that particular hiring period.)
Other quirky jobs I've had:
Book sorting in the processing warehouse for one of those book wholesaler places you see on Amazon.
Data entry at Smith & Wesson.
Beta testing data entry software at a regional company that helped with FEMA disaster responses.
Secretary at a moving company.
Ticket taker/seller at an expo for industrial machine parts companies.
You ever do those Christmas fundraisers where you sell wrapping paper and knickknacks? I did data entry and warehouse stuff for one of the paper companies that fills the actual orders.
Receptionist for a mom & pop graphics design and sign shop. (Fun fact: I now know how to cut and apply vinyl signage which is probably very high up there on the Esoteric Skills You Will Never Actually Use Ever Again list.)
And then there was the temp job where I literally spent one entire 40 hour week doing nothing but eight hour shifts of removing staples from stacks of paper and then feeding them into a shredder. Oh well, it was a paycheck.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
To throw some of my food industry expeirence into this.
My employer did not offer Holiday pay. In fact, it was when I was getting gas at the Speedway near our store, and trying to comiserate with my fellow worker forced to work the holidays that I learned that Holiday pay was a thing that some businesses did. So, that really added salt to the wounds to not only be forced to work a holiday and not see relatives, but to also find out that some people got paid time and a half for doing that... and I didn't.
I also was not allowed to work overtime. Wasn't hard since I was a part time employee, but there was only one person in our store who was allowed to work overtime, because she was the best shift manager we had (better than the manager in a lot of ways) and we needed her expertise too often to not have her come in and earn overtime pay. Anyone else? If their hours got too close to hitting overtime, they were let off early or told not to work a day so that the company didn't have to pay over time... but they needed to stay avaible in case there was a rush and we couldn't avoid calling them in. So, don't get involved in anything you couldn't cancel so you can come in to work, but don't come to work because we don't want you hitting overtime.
There are plenty of companies that will do whatever they have to to force people to work as often as they need, while doing everything they can to avoid paying them more than the bare minimum. I'm hoping I'm getting past that stage in my life, but somehow I doubt it will ever get to the point where I feel glad to work somewhere.
@Chaosmancer: That reminds me of my time working at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Literally every single non-manager employee including myself was always begging for more hours, but the managers kept claiming they didn't have the payroll for it. When I walked in one day and noticed a "Help Wanted" sign and other solicitations for applications, I decided that was the last straw and went and pointedly asked the manager how they could find enough hours to hire a new employee when they kept claiming there wasn't enough hours to give to all the existing employees. When I got a bunch of flibbertygibbetry in response, I prompted embarked on finding a new job. It was disappointing because I really loved the actual work, but it's just pointless working for a place that keeps making up flimsy excuses to not actually give you any work.
As for my own epiphany about the fairness or lack thereof in worker's issues, it was when I landed my first white-collar job in my early twenties. I sat there at the end of my first shift, and had a sudden realization that despite spending the entire shift doing nothing but processing paperwork and digital information in ways that were intellectually challenging but otherwise not very strenuous, I was getting $2 more per hour than all of my retail jobs which involved a multitude of tasks that were not only often also intellectually demanding but physically and emotionally demanding as well.
Like, I did already catch on that retail was a disproportionate amount of work compared to the amount of pay you got, but I figured "well, I guess that's the way it is, and other jobs probably pay more because they're even MORE work". To find out that no, many other jobs paid more simply because someone arbitrarily decided to pay more with no relation to how much more difficult the work actually was, and so conversely retail workers were very definitely getting ripped off, was quite the eye-opener to my young self.
P.S. Oh wait, bonus story. The reason I left that Toys R Us job? Because I kept getting too behind on mailing list quotas and presells even though the reason I was behind is because I respected the customers' expressed desires to not give out their info for the lists and to not be pestered with presells that are unrelated to what they're actually looking to buy, so I was given a "quit or we fire you" ultimatum. Yes, that's right, I got let go from a retail job expressly for actually trying to follow what customers wanted.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
The customer is always right, unless it means the company making less money. :B
https://notalwaysright.com/
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@Matchstickman: Oh trust me, I have horror stories I can tell about jerk customers, or times when the company really did have a valid point.
But I also cared about trying to help customers who were just normal folk, and doubly so when they were actively nice, and I also cared about customers when they were the ones with valid points. And there's been more than one occasion where I got dinged for that.
Even with the jerk customers I often was willing to help whenever they were willing to calm down and accept they just got some of the details wrong. Like for more toy store related experiences, if you stop screaming at me because I pointed out that Grand Theft Auto is not a good choice for your ten year old, I will be more than happy to tell you about game ideas that ARE good choices for a ten year old.
I think I feel more like, customers are always right about what they want, they're just not always right about how to actually get there. Unfortunately the companies aren't always right about how to get customers there either.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
I don't miss retail.
I worked at Express both when it was still owned by Limited Brands and when it was independant.
They were really good about scheduling, and when I was there we weren't open on holidays.
Black Friday, OTOH...
*shudder*
"I'm Setback and I'm helping!"
Heartbreaker & Equity Kill the Sentinels Universe
Oh my gosh, prepurchases and MSTs(multi-sku transactsion, basically adding crap onto someones purchases) were all upper management cared about at Babbages. I worked at the most profitable store in the district, we sold video games like they were free, and we still managed to keep our loss low despite working at one of the worst malls in the district.
That being said, they didn't seem to care about our numbers. They just wanted to see the number of people who prepurchased something or if we managed to sell some cheap ass key chain to go with their $500 dollar NEO GEO.
I was just lucky I left before they went head first into becoming the video game pawn shop that Gamestop is today. I don't think I have the lack or morals required to try to push someone to buy a used video game for $5 less then a new one.
The annoying part is that I have no problems at all with, like, ethical salespersoning. Like, I am totally OK with any company having a goal of making money. So if there's a version of a product which costs more but really is a worth-it upgrade, then I don't really have an issue with suggesting it to the customer. Or if there's a bunch of add-ons which really are useful and worthwhile to add on, sure, I'll point them out. That sort of thing.
It's the whole "you have to ask literally everyone if they want to preorder the latest Modern Warfare even when they're sitting there with a conveyer belt full of onesies and baby bottles and a car seat" that's like, do I really have to do this? Because I find it super annoying when I'm the one who's the customer in other stores and cashiers do that to me. Especially since we always had the preorder stuff on display, so even if the parent with the onesies was also secretly an FPS fanatic I'm sure they can just see the preorder for themselves and throw it on the belt.
Like the manager actually tried to talk me around and asked me "well, how do you like to be treated as a customer" and I was like "I like when people help me out when I ask but otherwise let me do my thing in peace, suggest stuff actually related to what I'm buying, don't ask me for personal info that isn't required, and the cashier rings me out efficiently with a minimum of fuss" and I could tell it was totally not what the manager wanted to hear even though it was the truth. :P
And yeah, I miss when secondhand stores were genuinely places you could find old games otherwise not available or find bargain games, rather than places to just bilk you for more dough. Especially since, like, whenever I ran across a customer who actually didn't chew my head off during post-Christmas season when I said we couldn't accept a return of their open game or software, I liked being able to say "You can take it to the local GameStop/FuncoLand/random mom and pop nerd shop/whatever and trade it in and you won't get full price or full exchange but you'll at least get something for it" because it was often parents who didn't know they could do that and would thank me for the info. Nowadays though it's pretty much just a ripoff all around.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Hehe, that's so cute.* You should try spending the Fall up in Canada sometime. We celebrate Thanksgiving in October (the 2nd Monday of October, to be specific), which means that the Christmas Holiday decorations and displays go up immediately on Nov 1. (In fact, if you leave your Halloween candy purchasing to the last minute, you might see some poor employee taking down the Halloween displays and putting up the Holiday ones late evening on Oct 31.) So someone working retail up here in Canada (or at least in Southern Ontario) has already been staring at Holiday displays and listening to Holiday music for 3 weeks by the time Black Friday rolls around. That person has never been me, but this time of year if I'm interacting with a retail person who isn't being 100% pleasant to deal with, I try to remember that they probably lost their mind after hearing "Frosty the Snowman" for the 50th time back on Nov 20, and try to extend and extra measure of patience and compassion.
*(Note: If I sound condescending, please don't take it that way. Just trying to be funny.)
While we dont do Thanksgiving till late November, if you go into a store on Halloween you can see the staff putting all the items in storage and pulling out Christmas. The malls start playing the music in October as well.
Yeah, that's pretty much the reason nowadays the only Christmas music I can stand is Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
What!? That's ridiculous. I figured you at least got spared all that until AFTER your Thanksgiving. Good(?) to know we're all in the same boat after all.
Yup.
We really need to hire Suzie's Seasonal Assassins.
(I wonder if anyone will get that reference...)
"I'm Setback and I'm helping!"
Heartbreaker & Equity Kill the Sentinels Universe
...Merry Christmas, everybody...
Too soon.
"I'm Setback and I'm helping!"
Heartbreaker & Equity Kill the Sentinels Universe
I dunno, made me laugh.
I'm fond of Mannheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls myself. It showed up in my Pandora playlist one holiday season several years back and it tickled my funny bone.
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
They have a trippy sound; it's like electronica meets John Philip Sousa? I dig it.
I admit my fondness for TSO comes in large part from my fondness for Carol of the Bells in general that I developed during my choir singing days.
"If life gives you lemons, make a lemon cannon."
Not always the best at social skills; I apologize in advance. I don't apologize for any corny and morbid jokes, though.
Resident Argent Adept and Biomancer fangirl, be forewarned.
Google "Straight No Chaser 12 Days of Christmas" for a humorous take on that classic... :-D
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
I thought we were getting a bit too serious for a well-wishing thread, so I figured I'd just put in an 'out' from the current conversation...
Also, It's not REALLY too soon. December 1st is only a day or two away...
Thanksgiving has declared war on Christmas!
... Hanukkah caught in the crossfire.
Festivus is sniping from the sidelines.
"I'm Setback and I'm helping!"
Heartbreaker & Equity Kill the Sentinels Universe