Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
Newsgroups: ont.general
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: Re: Sunday shopping
Message-ID: <89Dec28.174239est.11306@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <656@crk56.bnr.ca> <1989Dec20.122639.1563@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <25900FAC.1DA4@telly.on.ca> <691@alias.UUCP> <1989Dec22.185231.8501@me.toronto.edu>
Distribution: ont
Date: 28 Dec 89 22:43:12 GMT
Lines: 52

zougas@me.utoronto.ca (Tom Zougas) writes:
>What is the point of changing the legislated day off? Monday, Sunday,
>Thursday? Change for change sake?

Sarcasm for sarcasm sake?  Or provincialism for provincialism sake?

Evidently you are talking about "the legislated day off" as applies principly
to the retail sales sector?  Isn't the idea simple?  The vast majority don't
earn their living as retail salespeople and cannot do shopping on Sunday,
which constitutes 1/2 of the usual time they have to do much anything each
week.  If the vast majority maintained their current Saturday-Sunday weekend,
as they have without any prohibition to do otherwise, and the legislation on
days of shopping allowed flexibility or at least some other day of the week
as a the retail day off, everyone would get as many days off, the vast majority
wouldn't be constrained from living during half their free lives, and there
would be a lot less aggravation for the whole.  That would be responsible,
wouldn't it?

If a day were required but left flexible, who does not suppose it would find
it's own way to Monday for the most part, when the vast majority are back at
work and unable to make use of the retail sector's time, having had 2 full
days to put their needs in order?  Who does not suppose that plenty of stores
and businesses would not bother moving their day, competetiveness bedamned, as
is the case now for plenty of businesses not regulated by such laws?  At any
rate, if the primary concern is time off, what is the point in restricting
that time off, for the far greater majority, by stopping them from doing some
of the most usual things to do with it?

And who, other than our own self-styled Socrates thinks that what we really
want is to worship our dollars all day in an apocolyptic frenzy of grubby
consumerism?  Anybody ever try to help a pent up grandmother get about to do
as she needs?  It can consume a Saturday faster than anything known to man.
Anybody ever want to have a BBQ on a nice sunday afternoon and wish there was
a place to get some steaks?  The one day of the week you can do something
distinctly relaxing or out of the ordinary, you're stuck.  Anybody ever try
to work on the house or go shopping for school clothes?  Is it all "Money
before Time"?

The only valid point that I have heard made here relates to the "common time
off" argument, as applies to families with members working in the retail sector
(and more importantly, to families with 2 working parents, one of which works
in the retail sector, and would be forced to work different days -- an
interesting special interest group, though I once came across an address for
"Toronto Lesbian Daughters of Survivors of the Jewish Holocaust" once which
put my ideas on the limits of an interest group to shame).  Well, what are the
costs to the rest of us?  Are the current cost-benefit tradeoffs so obviously
tilted in favour of the current situation?

And it was once the general case that one member of each family was not tied
to the Monday-Friday workweek, and did a great deal of the shopping.  Hasn't
some of that changed, even if a few people still think that that, too, was
change for change sake?