Black Friday: An American Holiday

For a long time, I didn't understand why the Friday after Thanksgiving in the U.S. would be called Black Friday. Why associate darkness with such a nice holiday whose humble purpose is to feel gratitude, even and especially if a person has little externally for which to feel grateful. Black Friday is so named because the shopping day is so bit it can bring retail businesses out of the red and into the black, as if profitability were dark rather than something worth rejoicing--in business, I might add--rather than for a whole society. For American society to so easily have come to call the day following Thanksgiving black just because that is how managements perceive it demonstrates just how commercialized, or business oriented, American society has become. What this means for that society, and even perhaps the majority of the people themselves, is very troublesome, even disturbing.

It seems that every Black Friday reports come in concerning customers fighting for products of artifically (and doubtlessly intended) limited supply--meant to lure a lot of "guests" to the stores whether they get the real good deals or not. After many years avoiding going to retail stores on that day of the year, I finally went to a Walmart and Best Buy to investigate my thesis and even maybe buy something--a laptop in particular.

At the Walmart store, I arrived about an hour before the beginning of the store opening only to see customers with huge television screens--in some cases, even five in one cart! As for laptops, people could not get them until the opening bell, so a long line was already forming. Comparing the in-store sales I had looked at online (not just online sales) with what the store actually had, I was disturbed by the discrepancy. So, while I was standing at the end of the line, I asked a saleswoman whether any laptops, rather than notebooks, were among the "laptops" available at the front of the line. "Laptops and notebooks are the same thing," she replied in a tone that indicted that she didn't think she could possibly be wrong. Matter of factly, I corrected her, and asked her to go the department's main desk to as other employees my question. Although she she said she would check and come back, she seemed more concerned with me standing in the middle of the aisle rather than to a side (to speak with her). She did not return, which gave me that bad taste that she had been more focused on telling me to do something myoptic rather than make good on what she was supposed to do. I went to the desk myself, and as for the products actually there, let's just say I immediately left the store. Can bad management itself, especially concerning rude employees, be unethical?

At the Best Buy store, a salesman told me that the store has a supply of the laptop I had seen on my phone just a hour earlier. It was a "late day sale" not available Friday morning. The salesman went back stage with his supervisor, who also had told me that he was sure that supplies are behind in the back area. Yet when they came back out, the salesman had a laptop that was from another manufacturer and for $70 more. "The last of the laptops you want is being sold right now," he said. He didn't offer to call another store and have a laptop held; ignoring the fact that I would naturally be disappointed, he said with excitement that he had a totally different laptop for just $70 more! He wanted the sale; I could sense the intensity of his greed. I was so disappointed (and disgusted) that I walked away shaking my head in disgust. Later, I called another store and explained. "Unfortunately we can't..." was an answer, I suppose. I then called the original store and asked to speak to a manager about an issue I  had in your store. With conceit, she dismissed me by remarking that all of the managers were busy with customers. No offer to take my number, for the managers would not make the time to call. I was done with Best Buy, I resolved.

Between fighting customers, which I did not witness (but I did see a lot of police stationed in throughout the Walmart store, as if anticipating), and the rude and incompetent customer service (i.e., management, including HR training), and with so many people in the stores, I had a dark thought that I had just seen a glimpse of the underside, or the real nature of, American society so formed by business interests, which of course helps the bottom line. A dog-eat-dog aggressiveness among strangers, and sheer rudeness (i.e., passive aggression) by employees evading accountability and drunk with the momentary power of being in demand for once, for one day. In a commercialized culture, it is particularly easy for retail managers and especially their subordinates to go over-board. It is the aggressive demeanor of the retail employees that struck me most on that Black Friday in which I said to Thanksgiving, so sorry your theme of gratitude is not only run over by eaters bent on pigging out, but also allowed to be immediately followed by such a squalid human nature on display. Do managers revel in their power to dominate or serve customers? It seems that perhaps at many or even most retail businesses, at least in America, the nature of service has never penetrated training. Where contact with customers actually happens, greed and perhaps even a desire to dominate eclipse service. Even in settling on a price, the managers typically make sure the store's position dominates even if this means losing the sale altogether. But the passive aggression (i.e., the hyperthropic urge of the weak, according to Nietzsche, to dominate) is most apparent (and yet it's not!) in disputes with customers. "So sorry, but it is going to be my way; take it or leave it." Are managers so afraid to allow their subordinates no actual discretion, or do the employees themselves relish the power-trip? Moreover, had I seen the logical extreme of unbridled capitialism, or just a capitalist society in full operation?


See related: Bad Management as Unethical: The Case of Walmart, and The Arrogance of False Entitlement, both available at Amazon.