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Being able to spend the holidays with my family. It was something I always yearned for those few years I spent working the 3-11 p.m. cashier shift at Wal-mart, trying to raise a few bucks to pay my rent while I attended school at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were always especially hard - and I grew to despise the people that wandered into the store to buy junk on those holidays instead of spending the day with their families and friends, something I would have much rather been doing.
It was with great delight that I read last week that the Mall of America would be closing this year for Thanksgiving. Finally! I felt like that little voice inside of me, and surely inside many others who have worked retail, had been heard.
"We think Thanksgiving is a day for families and for people we care about," Jill Renslow, the mall's senior vice president of marketing told The Associated Press. "We want to give this day back."
This year, I am thankful that Mall of America employees will have the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with their families. I think it is a travesty that retail employees have been robbed of this opportunity for years. Have we really become such a materialistic society that taking a day to spend time with the ones we care about and be thankful for what we have takes a backseat to excessive shopping deals? Makes me sick!
I can do without the $400 jumbo flat screen TV. I can do without the $3 Blu-Ray DVD. I can do without the discounted sweater. You can too. Consider spending time with your family on Thanksgiving this year instead of filling your day with materialistic junk.
The 20-year-old me would have given anything to do just that.