Black Friday Consumes Thanksgiving

The logical thing to do after stuffing your face full of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie is to hibernate for a good 10 plus hours or so. Somehow, in the last 20 years, retail businesses lured family away from their homes and into lines to get into their stores. 

Need an extra 15 percent off of a television you don't really need that badly? Eat dinner early and stand in Best Buy's line for five hours while waiting for them to open. Worse, once they open, you find out that they only had two of those televisions and you're now in a mad dash to beat eight other people to that television. Just remember...no one talks about fight club.

To compound the problem, brick and mortar stores are now whining about online stores drawing these customers away. At least with the online stores such as Amazon, you don't have to be pulled away from your family on holidays to save five dollars. I'm not saying that brick and mortar stores need to go away, but it is hard to feel sympathy for businesses that don't allow for people to spend the holidays with their family so they can make two percent more in their overall fourth quarter sales than they would have if they had just opened during normal hours on "Black Friday". 

Is employee morale really worth that two percent? When you consider higher turnover rates and being less attractive to new potential employees, two percent is nothing. Turnover and training cost a company more than two-percent. Reputation on how a company treats their employees causes them to lose potentially stellar recruits.

The problem with retail businesses today is that they rarely think in long-term parameters anymore. They'll gladly sacrifice a potentially long-term customer to make a few extra bucks today. This is why Black Friday turning into Black Thursday and ruining some family's Thanksgiving holidays has come about. Businesses are determined to steal that extra dollar from their competition by beating them to the sale.

But from the standpoint of the common person who doesn't work in retail, is Black Thursday really worth it? Yes, it may get you out of those awkward conversations about politics that you may find yourself in with your Uncle Buck after he's been able to down several beers. What about the positive experiences from family get-togethers? Days such as Thanksgiving give some kids their warm memories that they revere so much in their adult years.

This is not necessarily a rant against Black Friday. It's more of a call out to those who shop on Thursday evening to save a few extra dollars for something they probably didn't need anyways. Without you, the consumer, willing to sacrifice precious family time and memories, retail businesses wouldn't deem it necessary nor profitable to be open on a major holiday. Rather than unwittingly punching your child's gym teacher in the face to grab the last discounted Blu-Ray player, spend it with your family and purchase it on Black Friday or one of the other days that come before Christmas.