Last night, the Black Friday bonanza started and some stores had some major problems and people were not happy about it. Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year as people are eager to grab the deals and get their Christmas shopping down early. However, the debate of whether or not stores should be open on Thanksgiving day to issues with online websites crashing has affected the shopping day.
Black Friday has kept on coming earlier and earlier, and now starts around 6 p.m which is about prime Thanksgiving dinner hours. Some major retailers stores like Costco, REI, and Marshalls are closed on Thanksgiving day and thus pleases the people that view stores shouldn’t be open that day, and should allow their workers to be able to spend time with their families. According to Business Insider, they surveyed Americans and found out that the majority across all generations opposed stores being open on Thanksgiving, except for one generation. That being generation Z. It’s not that surprising that Gen Z has more supports of stores being open because they are most prone to go out shopping. Nonetheless, the majority of Americans that were surveyed opposed the debate.
In fact, one store came under fire because of Black Friday. The shopping day lands on a holiday and is the most chaotic shopping time workers can experience. Potential trouble came for Walmart as some people demand to boycott Walmart because the retailer doesn’t give extra pay to their workers like Macy’s and Target. The only thing that the workers do get is 10% and 15% discount at their stores. This definitely does not make up for workers having to deal with the Black Friday situation and missing time with their families.
Stores that still participate in Black Friday, but only offer online discounts ran into trouble. Nordstrom and Costco’s websites crashed last night and delayed people’s joy of getting those amazing deals. Many people went straight to social media to air their frustration and hope the retailers see people’s frustrations. Each retailer communicated on Twitter that they are working on the problem hopes to get it done as quick as possible. Online sites are under huge web track during this time and if your site is prepared well enough, this problem can potentially occur. Even though the web track can be massive, these are big retailers and they should’ve been prepared for this and not let this potential problem to occur.
What are your thoughts on stores being open on Thanksgiving? Do you go Black Friday shopping?
