Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Too Too Takei

There's been a fair amount of justified criticism of several big-box stores -- Walmart, Target, others -- for starting their post-Thanksgiving "Black Friday" promotions on Thanksgiving itself, requiring their employees to come in late in the day to deal with hordes of demented holiday shoppers.  Some people are pledging not to shop on Black Friday. 

But I haven't seen any criticism of Old Navy, whose Black Friday will begin at midnight as Thursday turns into Friday.  That's certainly going to eat into the quality time their employees might otherwise spend with their families.  I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that Old Navy hired Star Trek icon and social media celebrity George Takei to front the promotion.  I'm not going to link to the Cheermageddon site because I don't want to send any traffic their way, but here's a celebratory blog post with links to the TV spots.

I wonder how many of the critics will be able to resist the temptation of all those great bargains, especially since George has granted them dispensation.  And while they're in the mall in the wee small hours, why not look to see what's left at Walmart or Target or Toys R Us?  It's not like they went in on Thursday, after all...