I can vividly recall the worst day of my life as a working adult. My alarm sounded promptly at 5:00 a.m. The sky was still dark, and I dreaded the day ahead. The reason for this dread is a feeling that any retail employee can understand: I was working on Black Friday.
I can’t remember the last time my family and I had a turkey at Thanksgiving. My grandpa isn’t a fan of turkey so we’d have different types of meat instead. “But turkey is the traditional Thanksgiving food!” people will say to me when they hear this. People also gasp when they hear that my family has mixed opinions on pumpkin pie, so we have other pies and desserts instead.
I don’t know about you guys, but Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Not because of the four-day weekend, and not because of the chance to see your entire family crammed into a small three-room townhouse. Forget all that. When I look down at my plate and see enough mashed potatoes, turkey, green beans and gravy to feed a small, impoverished country, that’s when I get the warm holiday fuzzies.
Though retail sales struggle all through the year, especially in the past two or three years, Black Friday officially kicks off holiday shopping season...