Nasir and Matt recap how some shopping mallsrequired stores to be open on Thanksgiving.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. We are starting an hour later than we originally scheduled, but you don’t know that.
MATT: And, really, neither did I until I looked at the clock.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, and my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I guess we’re technically starting earlier.
NASIR: Because of the holidays, that’s true.
MATT: Yeah, we’re a day early – a day and an hour early. We won’t reveal what day or time we normally record.
NASIR: That’s a secret.
MATT: I think it’s pretty obvious we’re recording dead middle of Thanksgiving Day.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Sitting in a table, surrounded by thirty people.
NASIR: I have actually turkey in my mouth right now.
MATT: Well, I guess, by the time this comes out, it’ll be past Thanksgiving.
NASIR: I’m sure, like, at this time, all the local news channels will be doing the stories of all the chaos from last Friday and people running each other over, et cetera. But we’re not going to do that.
MATT: Yeah, and you won’t be there, obviously, because you opted outside.
NASIR: By the time this came out, I definitely opted outside. Hopefully, I hashtagged #optoutside in something or other. It may rain that day but, either way, I’ll be outside.
MATT: Yeah, you can still be outside when it’s raining. That’s fine.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, we’ll be hiking – you know, West Texas. Don’t stalk me there.
MATT: So, what we’re going to talk about, it’s pretty interesting and, you know, I never really thought about this being the possibility before but, I don’t know, to me, malls – shopping malls – are kind of going out of style, almost, it seems like.
NASIR: I think the traditional one is. But then, again, I mean, I have Galleria Mall right next to, you know, I’m right in the middle of the Galleria and it’s a pretty famous mall – at least in Houston – and it’s a very traditional indoor mall but it’s just huge and it has a bunch of stores. But I agree with you; that kind of style does seem to be kind of old or out of fashion.
MATT: Yeah, and the reason I said “the typical shopping mall,” it’s different from obviously like a strip mall or even the open air – is it called “open air malls”? Is that what those are called?
NASIR: Yeah, like in Fashion Valley Mall or Mission Valley Mall.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: What’s the one downtown? Horton Plaza.
MATT: Yeah, but that’s the point. You know, for those, every store has its own entrance into the store – well, I guess it’s the same case for shopping malls. In shopping malls, you have to go through some sort of department store, usually, in order to get to the actual other stores, right?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: That’s the way you get in most of the time. I guess, sometimes, there are other ways. But, anyways, this is in Concord, California – the Sun Valley Shopping Center. I guess the department stores which they’re referring to as kind of the anchors of the shopping mall were going to be open on Thanksgiving Day so the mall is making these other stores that are not the main anchors of the shopping mall also be open on Thanksgiving Day. I believe, in this example, they are required to be open from 6:00 p.m. until at least midnight on Thanksgiving Day with the option of remaining open until 5:00 a.m. the next morning. This wasn’t a “Hey, this is a suggestion because there’s going to be a lot of foot traffic, et cetera.” This is the owner saying all these stores are required to be open from 6:00 p.m. to midnight whether you like it or not which I have a few questions about but, from a reasonableness standpoint, this can’t go over too well with a lot of these stores, I would think.
NASIR: Yeah, for some of them, it may be a surprise. Let’s just give some benefit of the doubt that they can legally do this, but how can a landlord make you stay open and,
