In recent years Thanksgiving and Christmas has been witness to businesses opening their doors for the holiday. Some major culprits are Walmart, Cracker Barrel, Rainbow Ryders and any other big brand store or restaurant. Both Christmas and Thanksgiving are federally recognised holidays and federal and state employees are given the day off. This day off is intended for the employees to be able to spend time with their families and friends on such a family oriented holiday. It is my opinion that businesses should follow this same model because their employees have families and friends.
I work at a small grocery store chain called Natural Grocers, which will not be open on Thanksgiving or Christmas. With the nature of how we sell our turkeys it made for an interesting conversation with a customer that made me quite sad to think about. We have a limited amount of turkeys that only get into the store the week before Thanksgiving, so that we know which stores need certain turkeys over others, we have customers preorder a kind and size range with a deposit which prompts some interesting comments when asked if they’d be interested in reserving their turkey. There is one that sticks in my mind–they made the claim that since they had no family, and they were going to be having their Thanksgiving meal at Crackerbarrel by themselves. This type of comment was actually pretty common, where people were going to be spending the day by themselves.
In any case, I feel like I have a solid set of reasons why businesses should be closed, and people don’t have to spend the holidays alone.
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There are groups that get together and welcome anybody. Even if you are not religious, there are church groups that get together to have a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal together, attending this or participating might lead you to unexpected connections and new life long friends who maybe next year, will invite you to their home for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.
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Employees are not robots, they have families and friends who want to spend the holidays with them. Being forced to choose between your family and your job is not something anyone should have to face.
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Government employees have it off. These holidays are federally and state recognised, government employees have major holidays off from work. Both my parents work for the government and as a result they both have both holidays off to spend time with their families.
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In England a vacation is referred to as a holiday, in America, a holiday is a day for family. Holidays should be taken off for people to be able to spend that time with their families. A holiday is time off, time off is a vacation from work and it is rejuvenating for employees so that when they return, people are happier and provide better customer service. When customer service is better, so are sales and likelihood for customers to return.
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In particular, Thanksgiving is a day for appreciation. What better way for a company to show appreciation for their employees than to give them the day off?
In the end, there is the argument that the customer is always right, and as long as customers keep casting their votes with money to keep businesses open on holidays, businesses will continue to open their doors on federally recognised holidays. If you agree with this article, refrain from shopping on major holidays as a way of casting your vote to close doors on those days.