A lot of noise lately about retail establishments making their employees work on Thanksgiving Day. The critics lament that it should be a day for families to be together and the retailers are money hungry and insensitive to employee needs by remaining open for business. Well, how about all of the other workers in America who always work on Thanksgiving? About 25% of all workers will work on a holiday this year.
For as long as I can remember, my Father and/or my brothers worked on Thanksgiving Day. They are bulk milk truck drivers. They must go to the dairy farms and load the milk from tanks into their bulk tank and drive the milk to the milk processing plant (creamery). This work must be done 365 days a year. Cows do not have the day off.
So who else is working on Thanksgiving? Well, for starters:
- Police officers
- Firefighters
- Hotel and motel employees
- Radio and television employees
- Stadium and arena workers in the NFL
- Disneyland employees
- Hospital / health care workers
- Airport and airline personnel
- Highway toll booth workers
- Railroad engineers
- Bus drivers
- Dairy farmers
- Our military!
The beauty of America is freedom. Some people prefer to work on the holiday, maybe they prefer it to being alone, maybe they love their work, maybe they prefer it to being with relatives they don’t like (cynical me, I know), or maybe they just like the overtime or double time pay they may earn.
Boycotting and chastising retailers who are open for business of Thanksgiving Day is a “cause” that I am just “not buying”.