twelve plus two is fourteen

Nov 26, 2021

Friday after Thanksgiving is not really a work day for me. It’s a public holiday in 22 states — like Florida, California and Kentucky — but not in Indiana or Nevada. Still, statistics show that while about 40% of workers get a paid day off — a whopping 69% aren’t required to work that day. The rest of the population is employed by Walmart. 😉

Perry drives one full hour to work and another hour to get home. He will work at least 12 hours today (Black Friday). Even with my pathetic math skills, that’s no less than fourteen hours. Now I know it’s not just Walmart. It’s a bad time of year to be a salaried employee in retail. Any retail establishment.

To help with morale, Perry’s store has special days… like plaid day. I don’t think it’s working. None of the people in plaid look thrilled in the photo below to me:

plaid day for morale

Hard to tell when everyone is masked, and I wouldn’t know about those things anyway. It’s been decades since I’ve worked in a public setting and I don’t know if I even own anything plaid.

For this Thanksgiving holiday, I’m most thankful for my wonderful family, fabulous friends, awesome hound dogs, and that I don’t work in retail. (In that order… well… maybe dogs should be moved up a notch or two.) Besides requiring more time than a 2 year-old child, their faces keep me smiling.

TIL (Today I Learned): A raccoon was sent to the White House to be served as the 1926 Thanksgiving dinner entrée. Coolidge instead adopted it as his pet and named it Rebecca.