Also, in all this arguing over Black Friday…
…and who’s more in-touch with “real people,” it’s striking how all the discussion centers on the consumer, and none of it considers, for just a minute, the retail worker: the hourly-paid, benefit-lacking working stiff today who doesn’t get that holiday between Thanksgiving and the weekend off, but instead has to work weird hours smiling and being nice to customers who, if they consider “the help” at all, largely treat them like chattel.
Perhaps, instead of playing “I’m less classist than you” on Tumblr, on a day when a lot of other people have to work, we could think about what we’re actually going to do to improve the situations of everyday laborers and customers, rather than defending the corporate practices of some boardroom execs looking for a shot in the arm for their late-year market cap.
