Blue Laws Thwart Midnight Black Friday Openings in Massachusetts

A petition on the website change.org urging Target to “Save Thanksgiving” by returning to 5 a.m. opening hours rather than midnight had just under 160,000 signatures by late Thursday afternoon, the website said. A part-time Target worker was behind the petition, news reports said. The petition said: “A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day. By opening the doors at midnight, Target is requiring team members to be in the store by 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.” Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel did not address the petition in Wednesday’s earnings call but did tout the midnight opening.

Massachusetts retailers have had to scale back plans for a midnight Friday opening after learning that the state’s 17th-century blue laws prohibit retail employees from working until 12 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving, leaving no preparation time for midnight openings, according to The Boston Globe. According to the Globe, Target and Best Buy changed to 1 a.m. openings in Massachusetts and Walmart has retreated to 4 a.m.

Some consumers are pushing back, too, as the shopping schedule has backed into Thanksgiving plans. Bradsdeals.com, which owns the blackfriday2011.com URL, has an active poll, which as of Thursday afternoon had registered 1,128 votes in a poll asking consumers if they were excited about Black Friday midnight sales. Of the responses, 24.6 percent said they'd be there, 21 percent said they would not be there because the midnight sales were throwing off their shopping experience, 35 percent said they didn’t know how they'd make it to multiple stores at once, 7 percent wondered why people would leave a warm bed to go shopping and encouraged online shopping instead, and 11 percent thought family Thanksgiving time was more important than shopping.

Meanwhile, retailers continued to leak doorbuster deals to Black Friday shopping websites to entice shoppers. Hhgregg posted its doorbuster Black Friday deals late Wednesday, led by a Toshiba 32-inch LCD TV for $199, a Canon 12.2-megapixel digital SLR bundle for $599 and a Flip UltraHD camcorder for $39.

Best Buy added to its Black Friday doorbuster list Thursday with a Dynex 24-inch 1080p LCD TV for $79, a Lenovo AMD 15-inch laptop for $179, a Toshiba 17-inch laptop with Intel processor for $349, an HP all-in-one PC with 20-inch LED-backlit monitor and 1-terabyte hard drive for $399, a Toshiba 320-gigabyte external hard disk for $29, a PNY 16-gigabyte USB drive slashed from $28 to $12, and a Garmin navigation unit with 4.3-inch screen and lifetime maps for $84.99. Hot categories aren’t immune from price busting at Best Buy this holiday season. In stores, the retailer is lopping $20 off the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch (now $79), Samsung’s Infuse 46 phone is free with 2-year activation and Best Buy is offering the 8GB iPod Touch for $194 with a $50 Best Buy gift card thrown in.

FredMeyer stores open at 5 a.m. on Black Friday but shoppers will have to get on line early to snatch up limited-allocation doorbuster items. The retailer is advertising an Acer 10-inch netbook for $199, $50 off the list price, with just 10 allocated per store and one per customer. A $99 LG Blu-ray player is on sale for $49, with 20 per store and one per customer, according to company ads.

Amazon is countering advertised post-Thanksgiving store deals with “early Black Friday deals” and is encouraging customers to sign up for e-mails announcing daily promotions beginning Monday for Black Friday Week. On Thursday, Amazon electronics deals included an LG 32-inch 720p 60Hz LED LCD TV for $308.99, a Haier 32-inch 720p LCD TV cut 42 percent to $199, a Panasonic 14-megapixel digital camera with 16x zoom discounted 24 percent to $189.95 and Sennheiser headphones chopped 67 percent to $19.95. The company also is offering $10 off a future buy on $100 purchases made with a MasterCard.