With the holy day of St. Conan nearly upon us, the Horde begins its preparations to celebrate in His name with abandon after the fear and deprivation of the previous year dogged their every step. All Hail St. Conan! The specter of Plague still hovers over all, but those who would go forth to battle now know how to arm themselves against his foul taint and guard their families against his cutting scythe. But still go with care, warriors! For not only does Plague lurk in the shadows of the emptying shelves, but some of your fellow warriors have grown strange of mind and reckless in action after months of isolation from all but the 24-hour news cycle, and their behavior may be far less than honorable when you encounter them in the aisles and the parking lots and the busy streets. You may even need to employ your melee-honed skills and the audacity granted you by St. Conan to protect those who service the Horde from them, as they are consumed by madness and may commit unspeakable acts which will then end up on YouTube.
Again this year you can access one handy chart to see all the holiday openings, closings, and online sale info in one place. For 2021 the prime offender in the opening too early category appears to be Old Navy, throwing wide their doors as the first stroke of midnight calls an end to the holiday of family and feasting because they’re apparently having delusions of grandeur regarding how important their weirdly-sized clothes are to the survival and happiness of the average person. Hear me, Old Navy employees! Shed the marks of your servitude and use the arrival of the Horde to cover your escape on the dawn of St. Conan’s Day, because your masters have proved themselves unworthy and dammit, literally every place is hiring right now and you will be welcomed with open arms and bonuses and a freshly-printed badge of honor with your name on it pretty much wherever the tide of melee-based traffic may take you.
Of the places that will be open on Thanksgiving Day…this year most of them are actually not that bad. Calling out the sporting-goods stores as base and craven servants of Mammon because there is absolutely no reason those employees shouldn’t be home watching football (or the dog show) instead of selling fishing equipment to people who already have too much of it, but the rest are either stores that don’t really close for anything (always-open grocery stores, pharmacies) or a service that might be really necessary in an emergency kind of way for someone (Pep Boys), so they’re really not just torturing employees on a holiday for the possibility of making some extra coin. Rural King gets a pass too, because farming is 24/7/365. Build-A-Bear seems to have learned its lesson, Target swears they’re not going to do it anymore, but Big Lots is probably never going to see reason and then there’s…Radio Shack?! What the fuck, guys.