Walmart officially hates families. It’s not crazy enough that people have to stuff turkey into their mouths like a July 4th hot dog eating contest so they can be out and in line by midnight for Black Friday, now the superstore aims to move the sale up to 8 p.m. Thanksgiving night. Or what you’d otherwise call “dinner time.”
The retailer also announced that anyone already inside Walmart between 10 to 11 p.m. will be guaranteed three gadgets of their shopping heart’s desires – including an Apple iPad (albiet the second-generation edition) priced at $400 with a $75 Walmart gift card. The stores will be open overnight onto the standard Black Friday sales hours to accommodate shoppers not willing to leave Thanksgiving dinner to shop just yet. But of course, you snooze, you lose so don’t blame the retailer if your sought-out laptop is gone by the time you arrive.
“We got customer feedback that says ‘I like to shop earlier so I can go to bed earlier,’” Duncan MacNaughton, Walmart’s chief merchandising officer, said in a statement.
Walmart says this year’s sales will be its most “aggressive” yet, including video games starting at $10, a 43-inch Samsung 720p HDTV for $378, Beats by Dr. Dre headphones for $179, and a Nintendo Wii console for $89. MacNaughton says any combination of the aforementioned items will be available during the Thursday night sales hours, and Walmart will have enough inventory to meet the anticipated demand. “We bought deep, very deep, and we bought deep on items that matter to our customers,” he said.
In addition to the earlier extended hours, Walmart will also include online-specific deals that will be available on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. We’re not sure who Walmart polled to decide to ruin family traditions with consumerism, but if you need an excuse to escape your family or don’t so much as care to watch the annual Thanksgiving NFL football game, you’ll probably want to plan for a Thanksgiving lunch or forgo the meal altogether so you can line up by 2 p.m. You poor, lonely, materialistic thing.
People have no respect for Thanksgiving anymore… Hell, they have no respect for Christmas anymore either. In stead, we MUST feed our insatiable need for items. It doesn’t matter that statistically in 6 months we won’t even remember most of what we got for Christmas. But we have to get get get. Mine mine mine. This is why my family doesn’t do presents. We do them for the kids (1 and 3). But for the adults, we just eat, drink and be merry.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because there is no pressure. There is no corporate raping of the holiday. Now I see, Walmart wishes to do away with that. Just goes to prove that Walmart is one of the worst companies in the world. I am glad I don’t shop there. But that’s mostly due to other moral issues I have with them.
Target announces they will open on Thanksgiving at 9:00pm. Associates will start their shifts at 8:30pm. Just got a call from our HR with the news! I am processing the information, but as a family tradition is dying for consumerism to stay “competitive” I am saddened. I can only hope that dispite claiming that “we are hearing that is what the customer wants”, soon the reality will hit, that as last year things slowed after the initial opening and shifts were cut all day! People soon learn the same deals are available all weekend and almost all the way until Christmas. Maybe after another year of this madness things will change back to how they were. I hope so.
Walmart isn’t conspiring against family tradition, they’re trying to become family tradition and consumers are greedily buying into it. Don’t like Football? We’re open and sales are rampant. Finished dinner at 7pm? Come on down to Walmart, our prices are low, low, low and we’ve got all your Christmas needs.
People punching each other in the face over an Elmo doll opened a gaping abyss of opportunity for retailers and started this trend, and Walmart has simply been stepping up to capitalize on it. Sheeple everywhere are getting ready for 8pm Thanksgiving night as you read this. Never mind that Walmart employees everywhere are hating their lives even more now. Never mind that real tradition, morals, compassion and family values are a thing of the past. Polish your pistols folks; Halo 4 is on sale at Walmart for $10! One night only! Ho, ho, ho, motherf*ckers!
This comment. I just can’t. It’s so true, it’s sad.
Sorry Natt. Once you start down the slippery slope to misanthropy, it’s hard to turn back. Enjoy your Turkey Day!
In all fairness to Walmart, my family has eaten dinner, finished the football game, and are getting ready to leave before 8pm.
While I agree that the rampant Black Friday violence is a truly sick expression of the holiday spirit, it’s simply playing towards the 24/7 deliver it yesterday mentality that we have been asking for. How many times have you seen someone banging on the door of a business well after closing time because their time was too precious to be wasted arriving during normal store hours? Or the line-ups outside of stores before they open, banging on the doors because their wrist watch is set 5 minutes too fast and the store should be open by now by that?
This is one more step towards not closing at all for the holiday. We have been moving in this direction as a country for decades now. There was a time when people didn’t work on Sundays at all. All you could do was spend time with the family. There was a time that election day was a mandatory day off for everyone as well. And we wonder why voting rates are down in our country?
That is just plain ridiculous! Sooner or later, Thanksgiving won’t be a holiday to spend with family. Truly sad…
Thanksgiving remains my least favorite holiday. Going elbow to elbow with white trash in hopes of getting ten month old, rebranded, knock-off tech for 10% off is way more the thing to be doing with the day. Kudos to Walmart for getting it right.