Some work on Thanksgiving? Blame the shoppers

It's a measure of the esteem Americans hold journalists in that no one ever mentions, even in stories about retail workers having to toil on Thanksgiving, that the reporter doing the interview is at work, too. I wonder how it would play out if reporters tried to cram this angle into the stories:

Frazzled shopper: "I do feel terrible about the clerks and salespeople having to work on Thanksgiving, but money is tight this year, and getting great bargains means the difference between slim pickings and a big pile of presents."

Reporter: "Don't I know it. I mean, I'm at work right now. Do you feel terrible about the journalists having to leave their families today, too?"

Frazzled shopper: "No, not at all. Journalists have families? But they're glad you have to work, right? I bet they can't wait to see you leave."

Just because that's true in my case doesn't mean the words wouldn't hurt.

I've worked many a Thanksgiving, although this was back before retailers opened on the actual Turkey Day. We reporters mostly covered poultry frying explosions and car wrecks and domestic incidents ("I told him if he ate all the white meat, I was going to put a carving fork in his forearm. So yeah, that's how it happened.").

There have always been lots of folks who work holidays. The world doesn't stop turning for the day just because they make a Charlie Brown special about how it ought to. Cops work holidays, as do firefighters. Doctors and nurses and EMTs, of course, because somebody has to pull the carving forks out of the forearms, and treat the heart attacks and strokes and other emergencies. Gas station attendants and truckers and, well, you get it.

We've singled out the fact that retail workers have to leave their families and work on Thanksgiving as a tragedy because we know how silly and empty the whole holiday gift-buying situation is. And yes, I said "holiday gift buying" instead of Christmas shopping. I'm Jewish. If you want to accuse me of taking the Christ out of Hanukkah, feel free.

It isn't the fact that companies make workers leave their families on Thanksgiving that causes the separation, and the heartbreak. It's the fact that the rest of us, the shopaholic consumers, are champing at the bit to leave our own families and hop on line at the local ShlockMart till the doors open. Or we break them down in a stampede. Whichever.

The riddle "Which comes first, the worker or the customer?" is not much of a riddle at all. The customer comes first, and if enough customers valued Thanksgiving, they, and the workers, would stay home.

Personally, I don't care. The whole controversy is just another way to feed the false outrage machine of cable news. First the breathless liberal proclaims, "The fact that these heartless companies are opening at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving is just another sign of how corrupt capitalism is. Buy my book, 'How Buying Stuff Corrupts You,' if you want to learn more." Then the breathless conservative responds, "These workers should be giving thanks that they even have jobs. When ShlockMart replaces them all with robots, these whiners will be able to stay home with their families all they want. Obviously, they won't actually have homes anymore, but you catch my drift."

Movie theaters and stores and restaurants and bars open up on major holidays because many of us don't want to spend more than nine hours with Uncle Milton and Aunt Rose. Having to work is an inconvenience to people who'd rather stay home with family, but an inconvenience isn't the same thing as a national disgrace.

Telling the difference, like taking an occasional day off from rampant consumerism, is something we used to know how to do.

Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.