We were working on a list called “Why to shop local on Small Business Saturday and every other day of the year, unless it’s a national holiday dating back to the colonial days.” We wanted to start that list with lots of positive and uplifting items focusing on the benefits of supporting local small businesses.

However, we were recently reminded of one of the most important reasons we prefer shopping locally: The stores are run by people we know who still remember what it means to be thankful for a day spent with family and friends, appreciating what’s most important in their lives and the lives of their customers. (And we don’t mean half-priced flat-screen TVs.)

As we often say around here, the first rule of anything related to business is “Don’t be stupid.” And by that we mean: Don’t be an executive at a major national retailer and decide to pre-empt the entire day of a national holiday first declared by George Washington. Especially don’t pre-empt a national holiday called Thanksgiving in order to expand by 24 hours a sales event called Black Friday.

That’s being stupid. It’s also being unpatriotic, ungrateful and, once more for the record, stupid.

Indeed, if one did that, it would be the worst idea for a Thanksgiving sales promotion since the “Turkeys Away” episode of the 1970s situation comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati” (ranked by TV Guide as No. 40 on its list of “100 Episodes of All Times) in which the promotional idea was to drop live turkeys from a helicopter.

turkey drop

So, yes, even though doing that would obviously be stupid to most anyone, that’s exactly what executives at Sears Holdings (owners of Sears and Kmart) did announce a few days ago.

They decided that Thanksgiving should no longer be what Abraham Lincoln called it when signing the law making it an official holiday, “(A day of) Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” but should become, instead, a day of shopping for “customers who want to get an early start on their holiday shopping.”

The executives decided to make all employees of all the Kmart stores in America (the ones remaining) open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning and not close until 41 hours later. (Sears will open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night.)

Granted, the beleaguered Kmart stores need all the help they can get after a couple decades of being crushed by Walmart, but really? Making tens of thousands of employees skip their traditional Thanksgiving gathering so they can serve the customers who are missing their traditional Thanksgiving gathering in order to spend money on the day before Black Friday?

In the background, we hear WKRP radio newsman Les Nessman saying, “The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement!”

So, while we prepare for Thanksgiving and Small Business Saturday two days later, read the following Facebook comments (on Kmart’s Facebook page) and tweets and being thankful we’re not one of the turkeys who run Kmart.

(On Facebook.com/Kmart) Samuel Butts: “Having worked in retail for over 25 years, I am thoroughly disgusted that you care so unbelievable little for your employees that you are taking away their Thanksgiving.”

 

(On Facebook.com/Kmart) Kathy I. King: Is your motto ‘Greed before Grace’? — Your priorities are very sad. Shameful and shocking that you have no respect for your employees. There is still time for Kmart to turn this around… give your employees Thanksgiving day off … NO ONE wants to go shopping on Thanksgiving. Will the Kmart executives be working in their offices on Thanksgiving Day?

(On Facebook.com/Kmart) Scott Hall: Did you learn nothing from your lack of attention to customers that led to Walmart nearly sweeping you off the face of the Earth? Your customers are blatantly calling on you to do the right thing for your employees and decency.

(On Facebook.com/Kmart) Karen Apollony: I would rather lick a Walmart toilet seat than set foot in your stores ever again. Greedy, greedy, greedy. I wonder if your executives will be working all day on Thanksgiving.

(On Facebook.com/Kmart) Jeremy Brunaccioni: Seriously? You are so desperate for money, you’re going to make employees work straight through Thanksgiving?

(On Facebook.com/Kmart) Jay Tee: Corporate America has now crossed another line. Enough. Give the people who make money for you – a day off! Greed. I bet the Corp Staff have the day off. Count me as another American who will never step foot inside a Sears/KMart store again. Absolute & disgraceful shame!

 

HT NPR.org: 41 Hours Of Retail: Kmart’s Black Friday Plan Is Criticized (NPR.org)

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(Featured Photo: Hey Paul on Flickr)

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