Kmart Is Getting Stuffed for Opening on Thanksgiving Morning, and Its Tweets Aren’t Helping

Kmart really, really wants you to know that it plans to staff its stores on Thanksgiving with seasonal employees who want to make some extra money this holiday. How do I know? Because they've tweeted the same message more than 150 times in the past 48 hours.

After announcing that it would open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day this year, creating a calendar-blurring 41 hours of Black Friday shopping, Kmart was forced into full damage-control mode on its social-media channels—after its Facebook and Twitter accounts were flooded with complaints that it was forcing employees to miss family time for the holiday.

The brand's official response, posted in a few subtly different variations over the past two days, is: "We staff with seasonal associates where possible, giving the opportunity to make some additional money this season." The point being, most of the employees working that day will be there voluntarily.

Despite the company's clear belief that this response is universally calming, it's hard to find an example of a critic who is actually appeased by it. Instead, it usually goes down like this:

@Kmart thanks for the canned response. So, am I to assume your holiday help doesn't have a family to spend time with?

— Nat J (@Nat_Nat_Natalie) November 6, 2013

Kmart isn't alone. Its sister brand, Sears, is opening its locations at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving and has received its own share of criticism. The Sears response in social has been identical to Kmart's, likely because the same team is handling all the responses—as you can tell by awkward moments like the one below, when Kmart accidentally looked like it was trying to deflect anger onto Sears.