CSotD: Camel’s noses, boiled frogs and razzleberry dressing
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How did it come to this?
I'm hoping Retail is about to launch into an entire arc about the despicable lack of restraint in the "free market" that we have built for ourselves.
I never resented working holidays when I was in the newspaper business, any more than I would expect my son and daughter-in-law to object to working at the hospital on holidays, because some things don't stop for Sundays and holidays. (The priest-daughter having chosen that road in the first place.)
When I was in the newsroom, I had a simple system for Christmas: I worked every other year, when the kids were at their mother's. And, in more diverse communities, I've heard of Jewish and Christian workers swapping religious holidays with each other, which makes sense.
But the only people working would be you and the nurses and the cops and the firefighters and a few restaurants and convenience stores. Essential services.
There's no reason for 99 percent of stores to be open except greed. And, yeah, I'm gonna go all Andy Rooney on you here, and that's not being an old fart. It's pointing out what we've lost.
When I was a kid, we not only respected holidays but most places closed down on Sunday. There was a small grocery store in town that didn't, and he saw a nice after-church trade in Sunday papers, donuts, cigarettes and … well, that was about it. Today, he'd be called a "convenience store" but in those days, it was just "Cleavers" and the old curmudgeon who ran it was known as "Steady Eddie" because he didn't close down for much of anything.
But even Steady Eddie kept the holidays, or at least some of them. I can't remember if you could pick up forgotten ingredients there on Thanksgiving.
It was nice to have a day when most people were off work and things slowed down a little. There were people who observed the Sabbath to the point of not doing yardwork or other labor, but nearly everyone at least geared down, and it was a day when families sometimes went on picnics or visited relatives.
I'm even old enough to remember when coming in on the Friday after Thanksgiving was pretty much optional in a lot of places, which is, after all, the genesis of "Black Friday."
The fact that Black Friday is kind of a myth doesn't stop distant beancounters from milking it for all it's worth, including opening the night before.
And today's Retail points out something else that doesn't stop them: It ain't the beancounters whose holiday is at risk.
I don't know what childhood scars motivated Steady Eddie, though he was prime age for having been shaped by the Depression. What I do know is that, when Cleavers' was open, Ed Cleaver and his wife were the people working.
Fair enough, and I've seen that with other family-owned small stores and restaurants. The decision-maker, the profit-taker, becomes the holiday-loser.
When the decision-makers and profit-takers are 700 miles away, however, you can bet they aren't going to come work the cash register Thanksgiving night or any other night, for that matter.
Free-market cultists like to grouse about unions, and particularly about how rigid they are about certain things. For instance, when I was in TV, I once helped out a fellow-salesman by putting on a pair of sneakers and dribbling a basketball for a shot of my feet and shins in an ad for a shoe store.
The union (IBEW) didn't file a full grievance, but they did make a complaint because non-union employees were not supposed to appear on camera. Not even from the knees down.
They needed to get it on the record, because what good unions know is the price you pay for "understanding" and "being a team player."
It's the camel's nose under the tent flap, and it's more than a question of attitude: If you fail to grieve a breach of contract, you can find yourself barred by labor law from deciding later that the employer has gone too far.
It's similar to letting the neighborhood kids cut through your lawn to get to the swimming hole: If you allow it long enough, it can become a public right-of-way.
Of course, retail workers aren't often unionized, and, even if they were, the days when other workers would honor a picket line are well behind us.
And so the distant beancounters will sit in their comfortable chairs Thanksgiving night, surrounded by family, with this dialogue playing on their televisions but never in their hearts, or, at least, not playing in the spirit intended:
'You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?' said Scrooge.
'If quite convenient, sir.'
'It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, 'and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?'
The clerk smiled faintly.
'And yet,' said Scrooge, 'you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work.'
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
'A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!' said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. 'But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.'
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