Be Safe Cooking For Thanksgiving

Cooking is the leading cause of home fires throughout the United States, and Thanksgiving sees more such fires than any other day of the year.

According to statistics provided by the National Fire Protection Association, there were 1,550 home fires across the country on Thanksgiving in 2013, a full 230 percent above normal.

We’re sharing the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York (FASNY) cooking tips and guidance in order to ensure a safe and happy holiday.

The most common factors in home cooking fires and ways to avoid them:

• Unattended Cooking – the leading cause of fires in the kitchen. 

• Stay in the kitchen while you are frying, grilling, or broiling food. If you leave the kitchen for even a short time, turn off the stove. If you are simmering, baking, roasting, or boiling food, check it regularly. Remain in the home while food is cooking, and use a timer to remind yourself that you are cooking, as guests, phones, children, pets and other activity can easily distract a cook.

• Objects near the cooking catching fire: Clothing ignitions lead to approximately 16% of home cooking fire deaths. It is important to wear short, close-fitting, or tightly rolled sleeves as loose clothing can dangle onto stove burners or gas flames and catch fire. Keep the cooking area clean and combustible materials away from your stove top: built-up grease as well as oven mitts, food packaging, wooden utensils, towels, curtains and other materials on or near the stove can catch fire.
Cooking equipment unintentionally turned on or not turned off. Be on alert! If you are sleepy or have consumed alcohol don’t use the stove or stovetop.

• Deep-frying turkeys: Turkey fryers that immerse the turkey in cooking oil at high temperatures pose a significant danger of hot oil being released or spilled during cooking, leading to devastating burns, other injuries and property destruction.

• Hot cooking oil exposed to water or outdoor elements: If rain or snow strikes hot cooking oil in propane-fired turkey fryers designed for outdoor use, the result can be a splattering of the hot oil or a conversion of the precipitation to steam, which can lead to burns. Frozen and defrosting turkeys also create the risk of contact between water and hot cooking oil, which can cause severe scalding or other serious injury.
Never fry a frozen turkey.

If you do have a cooking fire: Just get out and stay out! 

- When you leave, close the door behind you to help contain the fire.
- Call 911.
- For an oven fire, turn off the heat and keep the door closed.
- Do not use water to put out a grease fire.

We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you enjoy the holiday, friends and family while remaining safe.

Happy Thanksgiving

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

This is the time of year when we all give thanks “out loud”. Other times, we may just think it and not say anything at all, but still feel it toward our family and friends. Thanksgiving gives us a reason to be vociferous about it.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, some of these same family and friends are critical of businesses who remain open either on Thanksgiving Day or the day after, feeling sorry for the workers. Many of those friends and family who are complaining voted in this last election. Some exhibited a certain glee when their candidates won.

Were they re-elected or newly elected? If re-elected, they are the ones for the most part that have slowly been increasing taxes, fees, penalties, fines, insurance requirements, maternity and paternity rights and other regulations on businesses to mention a few, that all cost these same businesses a lot of money whether they remain open or closed. In effect, these policies are forcing them to remain open so they can pay all of the above (and others surely missed) because all a store can do to make money is to be open and hope shoppers come in and spend their money. Besides, on non-holiday days, these same “victims” are making $15/hour because of newly passed laws by politicians who should not try to force businesses to do or not do something such as regulate pay. The employees are probably now being paid time and a half or double-time by law for working holidays.

If a store like Walmart remains open, they are branded as the big, bad, greedy conglomerate beating up their employees. Or are they? Most get a holiday rate of pay to work on a holiday as well as benefits for even part-time employees. Granted, not all do, but again, politicians have passed laws requiring them to pay out the wazoo. And what of the person who works there simply because they need the money? It has to be a two way street requiring a little give and take. Having spoken to Walmart employees in Cortland, Oneonta and other locations and asked if working there was as terrible as the media likes to project, the answer has always been, "No."

While these same family and friends like to knock Walmart or any other big store for being open, I wonder if they have worked in a retail store environment to see what it is like? Probably not. But that's okay, you're still entitled to your opinion and can protest by not going shopping at Walmart on Thanksgiving Day or Black Friday or any other day.

Just remember, there are a lot of other people working on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and other holidays besides the Walmart staff. And, like the retail staff such as those at a Walmart or Macy's or Home Depot, they rely on their jobs by having shoppers come and spend their money there. How is it that these same people and politicians have no issue when retailers are open on Labor Day, Memorial Day or any other holiday?

In that respect, there are other workers beyond the obvious retail stores working on the holidays too. People like correction officers, dispatchers, firefighters - including volunteers, police officers, emergency medical personnel, hospital workers, military and more. Should they get the day off also? Our guess is most if not all would say, “No.” Hypocritical? You decide.

So while the headlines might grab your attention by bashing Walmart, and others, because it's easy, remember that their employees are our friends and neighbors and you may be affecting their livelihoods with your protest. Then, when Walmart closes shop such as recently happened in White Plains because it cost too much to be there with theft, parking and traffic, lack of profits, taxes, regulations, etc., it's a little too late to lament when and why they pulled out of the neighborhood. People complained when they were moving in and then they complained when they announced they were leaving. You can't have it both ways. So, instead of getting on your “high horse” and condemning retailers for staying open, realize that many are just trying to stay in business and this time of year can be a make-or-break time for them. Support your local retailers, big and small and instead of demanding they close for the day. Let them run their business. Don't like that? Then don't shop there on that day. They'll get your message.

We need to support our businesses as much as we ask them to support us through donations we ask of them. Just like our businesses are approached almost daily to support our Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, our Little Leagues, School Sports leagues, the Drama Club, the Chess Club, the fire department, police department and so on. The list of groups and organizations seeking donations from local businesses large and small can be staggering. And if they say, “No!” what then? Do you stop patronizing them? We hope not. We hope that you understand the bind they are in. Again, we need to support them as much as they do us. It's the only way to get A Better Greenburgh.

Happy Thanksgiving 2017

Where’s The Deal?

Amazon makes it easy. You don’t have to deal with under-aged, grumpy, sleep deprived sales zombies who have gotten into work at some ungodly hour to earn time-and-a-half just because it’s there. The retailers have fallen into a trap to compete against, or ride the wave of their competitors. Many smaller, mom and pop style businesses respected their employees and stayed closed on Thanksgiving. Two larger retailers that come to mind are electronics and appliance heavyweight PC Richards, who boisterously advertises the fact that they revere their employees and will be closed all day on Thanksgiving. Another employee-centric retailer that also remains closed on Thanksgiving but doesn’t advertise that fact is the storage and organization leader, The Container Store. Interestingly, The Container Stores does not offer any special Black Friday sales but is nevertheless packed with customers.

Department stores are struggling to survive more and more. Local and state governments are increasingly taxing brick and mortar businesses as well as their residents to finance their pandering mentality to special interests. Many times when a business or service company stumbles upon a great idea to stimulate their business, they look to capitalize on it even more. It doesn’t matter what they sell or the service they provide. They simply want to use that formula again and again. Once they begin doing that, they eventually kill the goose that laid their golden egg. It’s akin to telling the same joke over and over again; eventually people stop paying attention.

Unless you live in a cave, everyone knows this past Friday was the infamous Black Friday. It is reverently discussed in retailing circles and media as the Holy Grail of retail. Black Friday is the venerated indicator to most retailers that their impending holiday sales will provide, or not provide, a rewarding final quarter. It’s also the last chance for many retailers to wind up in the black after struggling through the economic doldrums we are presented with during every news report regarding the economy. But by all reports being proffered by the media, Black Friday sales were a bust!

Statistics show retail sales at brick and mortar stores were down 7% this year. 44% of shoppers made their purchases online. The brick and mortar businesses have been pushing online purchasing to compete against online retailers without a physical sales location. At the same time, we wonder if they might be shooting themselves in the foot? Several retailers offered in-store only specials to encourage shoppers to visit their brick and mortar location. Smart move. One store manager we spoke with at JCrew at the Shops At Nanuet, stated that they opened early, had good crowds but not much in the way of sales. The store was offering 30% off everything in the store. JCrew is a bit more of an upscale store, where discounts may not be as important to their customer as it might to a Walmart consumer.

In perusing the sale circulars in the Thursday edition of the Journal News, which was infinitely beefier than the newspaper itself, the sales for Black Friday seemed to be the usual faire for weekend circulars. There was nothing unique with the pricing, there were no tiered discounts based on time of arrival or any real reason to shop in their particular store. In the early days of Black Friday, the ads were about the same as they are now.

One of the differences between then and now, was the surprise savings you might receive by visiting a particular store at an early hour. Unadvertised and exceptional savings were your reward for visiting early. There were also tiered discounts that lessened as the clock ticked forward. So, if you shopped between 4 and 5AM, you might receive 75% off of certain items; 5 and 6AM might see 50% off and so on. Times got pushed from a one or two hour early opening to 3 and 4AM starts, staying open later – then around the clock! Once the idea caught on, retailers were quick to duplicate the fruits of this creativity and success. As time passed, the retailers changed personnel, marketing personnel and so on with younger, “book smart” employees arrogantly clutching their MBAs. These companies discarded the retailing pros of yesterday. These young executives collectively believed, as they usually do, that they know better and know more and will run these stores better and more profitably than those before them. You have to love youth. Maybe they needed to pay more attention at their Junior Achievement meetings, and maybe someone should inform them that they were just wrong.

Another misstep that has helped to choke the goose from laying another golden egg is the decision to open on Thanksgiving Day. ABG has previously written about being open on holidays, but it bears repeating. We believe as our government run school system applies political correctness to every aspect of these young student’s lives, and our public schools water down the importance of our remembrances and celebrations for our history, they diminish the importance of them. As such, it transcends toward everything else we do. Our Memorial Day parades are less about remembering those who sacrificed for us and our way of life, but about shopping, a day off from work, going to a barbecue or the beach or all of these. This cultivated learning can and should be just as easily turned around. But will it and how much longer will it continue?

Black Friday for all intents and purposes was trumped this year by itself and exacerbated by Gray Thursday and Cyber Monday as well as weekly sales by retailers struggling to get by. Earlier Black Fridays had been successful because most of us had the day off on Thursday to cool our “spending jets” and get together with family and friends. Most us had a big, albeit traditional, meal with the entire family getting together. Now, however, that’s gone and we may never get it back unless more businesses such as PC Richards and The Container Store fight back and stand up for their employees, who in reality are you and I. Or, we can just wait to see what our young marketing geniuses come up with at their next Junior Achievement meeting.