What do you think of the department stores (etc...) pushing for earlier Black Friday hours?

More like this then....

I just don't get it, how can people be so easily manipulated?
It strikes me as sad that so many people apparently have such a huge void, and the idea that they can fill it with material garbage.
It's not like they're trampling each other to get bread, that would be sad enough. They're trampling each other to get worthless junk.
I've read about lines for food in places like Russia, and felt grateful to live in America, now I'm not so sure. It's an embarrassment to live among people who will trample each other for a f&%ing doll.

Sorry to rant, I just find this so thoughtless and ignorant.

Well, as I tried to post before my cursor got all wonky - I didn't find the people at my local walmart any different than any other place around here, and I'm fairly put off by the photos of one berserker, or another with a low pants line to show how bad Walmart (which I have politically fought against in another life) is. Not what I am seeing. However, I don't get to Whole Foods or TJ's now, due to distance, people with better outfits may sway the cultural assessment of albuquerque. Offhand, walmarters are normal. Will report back, as I haven't tested this a lot.

I did blame store design and perhaps store size, in my way.
As I learned in a humans in the environment or some such class (I forget the title), human behavior is ongoing. Design doesn't cause it. But design can be useful or poor. Walmart has a kind of racetrack thing going.

Maybe something about walmart brings out the frantic in people - I highly doubt the average person going to the store is aiming to be in one of these shown photos.

Mostly, you're right about holiday pay. When I was working in the power plant, the rule was time and a half for overtime, which was defined as over 8 hours in a day, while the fed requirement was over 40 per week. Double time for holidays. If the holiday fell on a Sunday, the rule was double time pluse 8 hours. Working 10 on and 4 off, this actually happened as your first day off was considered to be saturday, followed by sunday, then another saturday and sunday. This worked out so well that during plant overhaul, you actually had a biweekly check with more income from overtime that straight. It was a union agreement, of course, but plant downtime was fantastically expensive for the company, too.

Oh, sometimes we hated it. It kind of depends on how much mandatory overtime you had put in in the past month.

Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch will have hot shirtless guys at their stores for Black Friday. Good to know they're catering to the gay and female market. Hot shirtless guys tend to intimidate straight guys.

Yay! Unnecessary outrage over Walmart starting Black Friday sales at 8pm on Thanksgiving night. I actually think this might be a good thing. A lot of Americans could benefit from standing in line and not eating large quantities of food. Of course, the 3 deals they are offering guarantees on all suck. They are: an Apple iPad 2 with Wi-Fi for $399 plus a $74 Wal-Mart gift card; an Emerson 32-inch LCD TV for $148, down from the original $228; and an LG Blu-ray Disc player for $38.

So an overpriced Apple toy, a TV from a crappy brand, and a Blu-ray player for what I already assumed was the regular price!

If you lived in NYC, then you'd be exposed to hot shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch greeters 365 days a year. You gotta pity them in the winter time.

I don't like going outside in the winter time

And for the record, if anyone wants to buy that iPad 2 for me, I won't reject it.