Everybody's Working for the Weekend, Even Main Street

 

by Pa Rock

Retiree

As a retiree I guess that I have limited grounds to complain about the weekend schedules of local businesses - I mean, for me every day's a weekend, right?  And I can just as easily go shop on a Tuesday ad I can a Saturday.

But for a good portion of American society, the salaried portion who work traditional five-day-a-week schedules, the weekends represent their time for shopping and for getting things done that they can't afford to take time off from work and do during the week.   There are already certain tasks that generally pull workers out of the offices and away from the line during the work week - things like medical appointments for themselves or their children, meetings at their children's schools, and unavoidable appointments - but if a task can be performed on a Saturday, that saves one more hard conversation with the boss or even a cut in pay.

Now, however, more and more small businesses seem to be closing on Saturdays.

I grew up working in a family business in a small town, and we knew the importance of getting customers into our store, and we also knew that the surest time to get those people through the door and into the store was on the weekends when the two major industries in the area were both closed.  Sure, we would have liked to have had our Saturdays off like a lot of other peo[ple in town, but the days when others were available to shop were our most productive work days.  That's just the way it was.

Yesterday I had a surprise chore land in my lap, something that required me to go to town and visit a certain business.  It was Saturday and I hopped in my car and headed right into town.  As I pulled into the parking lot of the local business, I noticed there were no other cars present.  The schedule on the front door told me that this business was closed every Saturday and Sunday.  Nice, I thought.  I guess I will come back on Monday.  But then I realized that Monday is July 3rd and that this business will probably also close that day, linking it with July 4th on Tuesday.  

Great!   The task that I would like to have gotten out of the way on Saturday morning when it first came to my attention, would now be pushed back to at least Wednesday morning - or possibly even longer if the business owner had to deal with a hangover, sunburn, snakebite, or powder burns!

Everybody's working for the weekend, and as more and more small town businesses shut their doors to enjoy their own personal weekends, more and more salaried workers and clock-punchers are forced to do their shopping in big-box stores and on-line.  Main Street is shutting itself down, and the America that I grew up in is disappearing.  

That's life, I suppose, but I find it sad anyway.

Play safe over the Fourth!