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Early this holiday season, many Americans were outraged by the millions of people working ungodly hours this Thanksgiving. The outrage varied from angry Facebook statuses demanding to “Save the families!” to full on strikes by Walmart employees. Despite complaints of “broken families due to a parent working on Thanksgiving,” many of these self-proclaimed activists were the same people getting in fights over “Buy One, Get Five!” television deals on Black Friday.
In our capitalistic society of “More! More! More!,” family time for all and excessive consumerism cannot coexist. While we’re having quality family time (eating dinner as everyone texts the whole time), someone is producing the goods we’ll buy from someone else on Thanksgiving Day. On Thanksgiving, someone is a doctor saving lives, someone is a cashier selling forgotten food items, and someone is getting trampled at Best Buy. Our care is minimum because it’s not us.
We demand workers to be off on holidays and to be paid more, yet we are the demand that demands these low prices. If we didn’t NEED and DEMAND last-minute cranberry sauce and ridiculously cheap, marked-down cell phones, no one would work on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, or any holidays.
Nineteen-year old, Josh Stark commented on the relationship between capitalism and recent holiday complaints, “Once people stop buying stuff; No one will have to work on holidays. We are the demand.”
I am not advocating store hours to be extended during the holidays or people to work these long hours; However, I know it is inevitable due to our insatiable hunger for stuff…cheap stuff. Increased holiday pay is only a temporary solution to the real problem: our false needs and “first world problems.” Once every one decides to stay home and be satisfied with his or her preexisting belongings, no one will work on the holidays and genuine family time may begin to exist.
