On The Shopping Front
Looking around at the preliminary reports, all the retailers did by annoying the hell out of their employees and opening on Thanksgiving was to steal sales from Black Friday. So they paid a lot of people to open a few extra hours and to open their stores for no real increase in sales, i.e. they increased their costs without improving their sales.
It is obscene what the people who make these kinds of stupid decisions are paid.
Update: The new spin is that there were more people shopping this year, but they didn’t spend as much money as last year.
Last year people were recovering from the effects of the devastation caused by Sandy on the Atlantic Coast. People and businesses are coming back from that, but most people don’t see their individual economic situation improving. The cut in food stamps at the beginning of the month certainly didn’t help people feel like they could afford to spend money on holiday gifts.
December 1, 2013 6 Comments
