I will not shop in any establishment that makes its employees work on Thanksgiving

[Daemonaquila]

17. Hooray for YOUR employer(s).

That isn't the case for everyone by a long shot. It might work at a restaurant or even a grocery store, but it sure doesn't work that way at large retailers, much less at whole malls worth of retailers, which is where we're headed next.

I've had some jobs where I've been asked to work holidays. But I've seen as many dick moves by employers about this as I've seen reasonable policies. The worst of them was one of my bosses, when I was in management and had given a month's notice. I intended my last day to be our last working day (Thursday) before Christmas, which fell on a Saturday. For a whole year, the calendar had been set to give people Friday off (Christmas Eve, makes sense, virtually all companies did it that way). My boss decided he wanted me for one more day - busy season at year end, would rather pay my salary for that week as all working days rather than part holiday pay to get his "best money's worth" - so less than 2 weeks before Christmas he told the whole company that he was changing the calendar and everyone would have Monday off instead of Friday. There went 12 people's holiday plans, some of whom were traveling to family gatherings hundreds of miles away.

So, you can argue about how lucky you've been, but don't generalize your experience to the hundreds of thousands of retail workers who are going to get shafted this year, and even worse in years to come.