The video above genuinely scares me. It is one thing to market your products for a shopping season. What concerns me is the season this store is advertising isn't Christmas or some other holiday with a more relational purpose. It is celebrating Black Friday. A time that is entirely dedicated to either spending money or making money depending on who you are. I get not wanting to alienate those with different holidays than the mainstream. But this celebrates something much more insidious to me, prioritizing money or stuff over people. This commercial is simply an example of the situation in question. It is what drives stores to require their employees to work on Thanksgiving which is widely celebrated as a time to spend with your family. I don't want people to be required to ignore their families when they don't have to. There are jobs that mandate working on a holiday for good reason: doctors, police, road maintenance, travel industries, sometimes even grocery stores. I don't always like it, but I see why those professionals would be required to work. Retail is not an essential service for the most part so, why do businesses treat it like one? The priority of any service should be people, not stuff. I'm scared that many in our country may forget that.
