open for the holidays

I just heard a "friendly neighborhood" Walgreen's commercial on the radio, boasting that almost every one of their stores will be open 24/7 for the holidays this year. This type of disrespect for retail workers makes me sick. Let's be honest here. If you haven't picked up that gift by Midnight on Christmas Eve, is the receiver really going to miss it? Maybe there was a reason why your subconscious chose to ignore this person on your gift list until the very last minute. Is it really justifiable to make someone else spend their holiday away from family and at work, just so you could pick up a last minute holiday tin of Fiddle Faddle?

I worked at a grocery store as a teenager, and being low-man on the seniority pole, I distinctly remember having to close shop for most of the holidays. There was one Thanksgiving where we had this moron come in the store at 6pm, purchase a turkey, and feverishly bounce questions off each person he encountered as to how he could cook a whole turkey in less than an hour. "Microwave?" one of my coworkers suggested.

We were then instructed that we could not leave for the night until we had sold off all of the Thanksgiving cakes from the bakery. Thanksgiving cakes? Who the hell makes (or eats) cake on Thanksgiving? Pies perhaps, but cakes? None-the-less, a number of employees went home and started a strange Thanksgiving cake-eating tradition with their families that night.

Here's a suggestion - Let's give these poor folks a break for the holidays. If you have to wait until the last minute to do your holiday shopping, then pay someone else to do it for you early. Your karma will thank you for it. After all, there's a reason that they start those crazy holiday sales on the day after Thanksgiving - so that you don't have to wait until the "eleventh hour" to get it done.