I Resign From Idiot

American family values sink to a low ebb about this time of year, every year.

Sure, we’re going to invade the nation’s retailers at all hours of the day, and night.  We’ll go on Thanksgiving, and we’ll go on Christmas Eve.  We’ll wake up whenever the retailers tell us to awaken.

Then there are the retailers who respond by continuing to bring the value of family, the value of holidays, the value of celebration of holidays, and reasons for those holidays to the buys we’ll get from the retailers.

If you refuse to show up on Thanksgiving, do you think retailers are going to continue paying a premium to employees to interrupt their holidays to come to work?

Don’t show up when they dictate you should, and they’ll have to make it easier on everybody.  However, we’ll show up at their command.  We’ll show up to stand in line during the coldest weather, in the dark hoping, there might be something left by the time we get a chance to make a purchase.  All of that for a few dollars savings.

Dear Retailer:  I’ll show up when, and if I’m ready.  Not a moment sooner.  I promise you, I’m not leaving my family on Thanksgiving.  …And you want me there when you open on Black Friday?  Sorry.  I’ll be home in bed keeping warm.

If everybody did this just like me, you’d figure out something else because, you want the business. You’re just reacting to the public’s bad habits, and offering your contribution.

Is it for the seasonal momentum?  It couldn’t be the actual profit on those items.  It certainly wouldn’t be in the name of expense watching as extra payroll dollars pour out of your vaults.  Hopeful we’ll cruise, and find something else in your store?  No.  I either have what I came for or, I don’t.

Yes.  I admit it.  By responding to your whims, I’m an idiot.  Then again upon closer inspection of actual profits, maybe we are both idiots.

Yours truly.

My hopes are that more, and more people get back to true celebration of the holidays.  More and more families enjoy the shopping season but, not to the excess we have become accustomed.  Not the center of everything.

My hopes are for such little consumer response that there will be nothing left for the same retailer response.

I resign from idiot.