What do you want for Christmas
“Attention holiday shoppers, don’t miss your opportunity to have your picture taken with Santa and his Elves. And today only Macy’s special holiday sale…”
Think back to last year. For the Holidays what did you give and what did you get? I can almost guarantee you that for the gifts you bought you either spent long hours searching a department store or long hours racking your brain for what to buy. The perfect gift, where can I get it? And how much will it cost? Why is it that we can’t just tell someone how much we care? Corporations in our society have placed such an emphasis on finding the perfect gift that we can no longer settle, for homemade toys.
As a child what is it that you actually understand? Is it the meaning of the holiday or what the holiday brings to you? I can recall as a child running down the stairs to peek at what Santa had brought me. According to my religion, Christmas was meant to be a celebration for the birth of Jesus. Instead it has become a commercial holiday based upon how much we spend on each other. We have put aside traditional values for the most part, by masking them with material gifts.
Consider this. Is it any coincidence that most stores do a majority of their business between November and February and several major holidays fall in this range; Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years and Valentine’s Day. What about Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year? On that day billions of people across our nation leave their homes to flood the malls in search of Christmas or Hanukkah gifts. This holiday season has been predicted to bring in over $180 billion. Each year the annual holiday sales rise by approximately 5%. (CNN) Stores explo...
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... newer products to draw us in. If we don’t go all out for the Holidays we too will become Ebinieser Scrooge or the Grinch who Stole Christmas.
Our corporations have set the standards for our holiday shopping. It is something that you cannot escape. Our corporate giants have told us that in order to tell someone you care, you must go out and spend. “Those who have the money make the rules.” It just so happens that the ones with the money are the heads of the exact companies that you go to, with your holiday needs. They call us to their stores to shop, and like zombies we go. Trudging through the stores on our mission to buy the perfect gift and to spend, just as we have been told.
Works Cited
Retail Insider. Executive Decisions Systems Inc. October 1994.
Lenihan, Rob, Black Friday Brings out Green. CNN America, INC. New York, November 25, 1999.
...he holiday season. No imaginable Supreme Court is going to create obstacles to this consumer juggernaut. Nor is any Jewish group or Islamic group likely to finance a test case to bring down Christmas. They too are merchants" (p. 28-29).
To this day, when I walk into Wal-Mart and come face to face with a manager I once worked under they give me dirty looks. People report that managers will trash talk you to another job that applied for if that job contacts Wal-Mart about you. Wal-Mart has unrealistic workloads for some overnight stockers, their managers aren’t the best in the world, and their policies are harsh. This is why I constantly call Wal-Mart a communist regime; not because it shares the ideals but because it is just bad for everyone in general. Hopefully one day a high positioned power will restore the order and peace that once was Wal-Mart according to the history they teach you in training and that their policies and workloads may become more realistic and doable.
Wal-Mart has become a household name with many positive attributes but they have been riddled with a large amount of negatives. Their motto of “Always low prices, always” have created soaring profits at the expense of their employees. Most Americans loves the convenience and low prices offered by Wal-Mart. Do Americans know what it actually costs for Wal-Mart to keep prices so low? With thousands of lawsuits filed each year it is a wonder why Wal-Mart refuses to change its practices. It is fairly safe to say that Sam Walton would not approve of how his company has been completely changed from its original intent by such a large margin. Employees are no longer happy working at Wal-Mart and to make matters worse the employees can no longer afford to work there. The average Wal-Mart associate earns about $1000 less t...
There are three articles that will be referenced during this analysis. The first article is taken from the mainstream media publication USA Today. “Wal-Mart takes hits on worker treatment: Lawsuits, unions slam megaretailer”(Armour, 2003) argues that Wal-Mart is coming under attack from critics who argue workers are underpaid, women are discriminate against, and illegal tactics are being deployed to kill unionization efforts. Armour (2003) states, “company officials say they don’t know why the attacks are coming now, and they also say the allegations are unfounded.” The next statement made during the article states that Wal-Mart employees agree with the statement. The author continues reporting on the issues at stake, but focuses mostly on how unions may be less relevant in today’s world. The article makes mention of both sides of the argument, but the rhetoric and terminology used leans towards the portrayal of Wal-Mart as a victim of biased attacks to further union interests in the market.
The Wal-Mart Corporation is a multi-billion dollar low-cost retail organization, consisting of 6400 stores and 1.8 million sales associates worldwide. Wal-Mart’s influence on the retail world and the enormity of their corporate size is unparalleled. Wal-Mart can easily report sales of $312.4 billion dollars per fiscal quarter and net profits of $3.8 billion dollars. Wal-Mart promises her customers "Always low prices. Always!" and upholds this motto by providing low prices to her customers and high return on investment to her stockholders. One way that Wal-Mart has managed to maintain a competitive edge over other low cost retail giants and provide low prices is by cutting wages and by not offering too many company benefits to their employees. Full-time employee working at Wal-Mart only make $8 an hour, while only 45% of the workers can afford to be covered by health insurance. Wal-Mart also increase part time employees from 20 percent to 40 percent so that they do not have to cover all of their employees for health insurance . Although Wal-Mart may not provide excellent benefits to her employees, it successfully performs as a legitimate business operating in a capitalistic society. Wal-Mart upholds the primary fiduciary duty to satisfy her stockholder and follows free the market libertarianism model, which states that a business should not interfering with the free market. In a free market Wal-Mart has a direct responsibility to her primary stockholders rather than the employees of a company.
First off, he explains that nowadays Christmas is directly associated with commercialism and that people now feel as if they have to buy things for other people. Whether that be something they will use every day, something that they will throw in the back of their closet and forget about or something that they will just throw away. Not only do they buy the gifts, they buy wrapping paper, bows, cards, bags, tissue paper and many other unneeded things. Which is true, but there are many ways to get around the typical holiday gifts. Some families make things for their direct family members and some families just have a dinner and go their separate ways.
Thanksgiving Day is a day of family, food, and giving thanks for the blessings in life and yet some people believe Thanksgiving to be a prep day for Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. The focus of Thanksgiving shifted from family bonding to incessant shopping. This trend of taking away from the hours of Thanksgiving in order to shop is enraging. It steals away from family time for the shoppers and the employees. Employers threaten workers that if they do not work on that certain holiday, they will be fired. Black Friday should be kept to Friday instead of moving in on my family time. The whole culture of Black Friday has become repugnant and unnecessary.
...ety and has a negative impact on everyone. Mistreating employees, unfair business practices, and hurting small businesses are just some of the vicious activities that Wal-Mart participates in.Wal-Mart is not a business, but a tyrant. This tyrant must be stopped before it is too late. Wal-Mart may have started out with good intentions, but it is not that way anymore. Now they are just another company who cares about their money rather than worrying about customers, employees, and society itself. Wal-Mart will learn its lesson, even if it is at the expense of others.
Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for
“Doing the right thing and doing things right” (Devin) spoken by their CEO at a conference on their profits and annual reports, however this does not pertain to their employees or their suppliers even though he states “the Wal-Mart way is to stay the course, because Wal-Mart is too important to individual families that are stretching a budget, to important to the suppliers who employee millions of people, to important our associates who we value and love so much." (Devin). Wal-Mart values its employees and suppliers so much; “since 2011, Wal-Mart has spent over $35 million and hired more than 300 outside lawyers, accountants, and investigators to deal with bribery issues” (Sethi) and Wal-Mart’s “penalties under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Securities Exchange Commission regulatory filings are likely to be in the $100 millions, which is such a small fraction of Wal-Mart’s earnings” (Sethi). If only this mega retailer could reinvest this negative...
Wal-Mart has been the center of employee wages exploitation and for years they have been practicing the same labor abuse throughout the nation in order to save their labor expenses and maintain profit. Weldon Rich Olson, a former W...
It is seen in everything from the hoarding of material objects to the destruction of friendships, both of which are popular themes when regarding the topic of Black Friday shopping. Black Friday has become Black Thursday, a trend which has only shown up within the last decade. The great American holiday that is Thanksgiving is celebrated because of our gratefulness toward all that we have, a holiday that is meant to be spent gathered around a table of our loved ones. However, the retail holiday that consumes the day afterward has begun to overflow into our gatherings, and it is due to the greed of the American people. Were it not for the market’s demand for earlier sales, stores would not open their sales on Thursday nights. Everyone would simply wait until early the next morning to start off on their shopping extravaganzas, and the sales themselves would likely be far less violent as
Walmart has had a long-standing presence in America society since the middle of the 20th century, seen as a place to get everything done, Walmart has become a fixation in our society. From grocery shopping, to changing your oil and even filing your annual tax returns, Walmart is always there, everyday. Started by Sam Walton in 1962, it began as a small operation catering to a small Arkansas community. It was started on principles very similar to small local businesses in small towns. Today Walmart has gotten a different, darker reputation. On the surface, Walmart may seem like the solution to everyday issues. Low-income families are attracted to the low prices, and people who work odd hours benefit greatly from the 24 hours a day that many Walmarts are open. Lately, Walmart has also managed to be publicly recognized as a store that sells many of today’s green products, including organic food, environmental conscious cleaning products, as well as, paper products made from recycled paper. However, underneath all this, Walmart has a different side. Exploitation of its workers is widespread amongst Walmarts who do not belong to a union, especially in the United States. Wal...
All the children put their First Christmas ornament on the tree, that I brought, as a gift.I am not usually a shopper, but during the Christmas season, I actually enjoy shopping. I rarely go into department stores, but during the Christmas season, I love to shop. The stores are so beautifully decorated and very festive. I can easily get carried away, with spending so much money. I must admit the thought of spending too much money hardly comes to mind.
Holiday shopping, for me, is a nightmare because of the abundance of crowds, all of the fighting and competitiveness. I believe those last minute shoppers are the worst, they are the ones that are rude and impatient. For some people, with lots of patience, dealing with holiday shoppers is a good experience. For people like me, who has very little patience, it is a dreadful experience. Another aspect of shopping during the holidays is dealing with tired, overworked and frustrated employees. They are just trying to get their jobs done as quickly as possible, so they can go home to their families. Meanwhile, you have those employees that are cheerful and are eager to help the distraught shoppers. Also, during the holidays horrible accidents can occur often at this time of year. I am going to portray the dangers and mishaps that can occur during the holidays. I am not anti-holiday, but the older I get the more I don't have any desire to be exposed to all of the potential chaos.