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People walk past a Wal-Mart store with a banner reading "Low prices, every day, in everything" in Mexico City April 21, 2012.

A deli manager at Wal-Mart doesn’t like how the company is being run and is calling for a change in leadership at the retail giant, but she’s not just moaning about her employer around a water cooler.

Venanzi Luna of South Gate, Calif., has taken her battle to the Web, creating an online petition that already has more than 5,500 signatures as of late Monday.

“It is time for things to change. Wal-Mart needs to take responsibility for its actions and change its leadership,” she wrote on the petition on Change.org, pointing to recent reports that the company bribed Mexican officials.

It’s unclear whether Venanzi Luna will get her wish, but her cyber tactic points to a potentially strong tool for workers to turn the heat up in corner offices across the country.

Social media and online petitions, effectively used by consumers to pressure companies to rethink rate hikes and reassess labor practices overseas, could put power in employees’ hands, said labor experts.

“All of these Internet forces are all of a sudden part of the communications currency in the world, especially in America,” said Lee Howard Adler, who teaches employment law and public sector collective bargaining and labor law at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School. “Even the most powerful see some need to address these.”

Having workers use the Internet to get their voices heard, he said, “could have an impact if there’s a large enough response from employees, consumers and citizens.”

Alder stopped short of saying Luna’s petition is the beginning of a movement, but he’s encouraged that “this courageous deli manager is willing to give it a try.”

Indeed, employees may need a lot of courage to talk so publicly about the top executives at the companies that employs them, especially if they’re not union members.

Wal-Mart is well known for having kept unions out of its U.S. operations, and its unclear how Luna’s petition will impact her career. Wal-Mart would not comment on the petition or Luna's future at the company, but in an earlier statement about the bribery scandal, David Tovar, a spokesman for the retailers said: “We are confident we are conducting a comprehensive investigation and if violations of our policies occurred here, we will take appropriate action."

Luna could not immediately be reached for comment.

Casie Yoder, a spokeswoman for the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Making Change at Wal-Mart coalition, said the organization was approached by Luna to help her write the petition.

“Wal-Mart could fire Venanzi for her petition but that wouldn't seem to me like a smart decision on the company's part,” she said.

Calling for the ouster of top executives is not totally unusual for labor, said John Revitte, a labor professor at Michigan State University. In the last decade, he said, there have been some unions that have had employee members purchase stock so they can complain at board meetings. “But for people unconnected to unions, complaining about your employer is more rare.”

That doesn’t mean, however, a discontented rank and file that isn’t unionized has no sway when it comes to decisions made about top executives, said Kristi Hedges. Hedges, who's with leadership consulting firm The Hedges Company, has been brought in by corporate boards to repair damage or coach CEOs when there’s widespread dissatisfaction with leadership.

Companies that have leaders who don’t have the trust or respect of the rank and file often end up with low retention rates or dissension at all levels, she explained, and boards will move to address that.

“If the pattern over time is an inability to lead, it’s difficult for senior leaders to be successful,” she said.

The Internet, she added, has created a new way for workers to raise their concerns and boards aren’t going to be happy with such public displays of anger toward the top executives, potentially pressuring them to stand up and take notice.

Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute, isn’t sure such employees' Internet tactics will lead to real change in Corporate America.

“We live in a culture where shareholders are king and often shareholders can’t even dislodge CEOs,” he said. “Since employees are even lower in the pecking order I have a hard time imagining they can.”

Anna Staab gets her ticket at Walmart for a $199 Xbox with Kinect and a $50 gift certificate.

By Eve Tahmincioglu

Extended Black Friday hours may have angered those store employees who had to work before their turkey dinners were digested, but many shoppers were happy with this year's earlier store opening times because they found fewer raucous crowds and shorter lines as a result.

“This was the absolute calmest Black Friday I have ever experienced,” said Nathan Luna, 24, who began his shopping trek at 12:08 a.m. this morning and headed to Best Buy in Wheaton, Md.

While things may have been more relaxed, projections for the number of consumers heading out on the biggest shopping day of the year are up.

According to data compiled for the National Retail Federation by BIGresearch, up to 152 million people plan to shop over the Black Friday weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), that's higher than the 138 million people who planned to do so last year. According to the survey, 74 million people say they will definitely hit the stores and another 77 million are waiting to see if the bargains are worth braving the cold and the crowds.

Overall, electronics and clothing were among the biggest scores for many consumers, especially video game players and high-end fashions. And many shoppers said they found the sales items they wanted, unlike past Black Fridays that offered slim pickings; and lots of sales people to help them navigate the stores.

Here are some first-hand accounts of the day and deals from Black Friday aficionados:

“The crowds were very well-behaved,” said Brad Williams, 39, an analyst for Duke University who headed out at 9:15 p.m. last night with his wife Wendy. “The line at Target, as I said, was enormous, but my wife said that the people there were jovial and pretty Zen about the wait. No pushing or shoving whatsoever.”

The couple has two young kids, but grandparents take the kids after Thanksgiving dinner to their house so Brad and his wife can shop unfettered.

"The crowds seemed to be bigger this year at Target and Kohl's, but smaller elsewhere," Williams added. "I think that has to do with when we arrived. We were in the teeth of the initial rush at those two places, but by the time we got to Crabtree, about 3 a.m., that had subsided and the second rush, when non-crazy people are getting up, hadn't yet begun."

Brad Williams

Orderly crowds at the Tanger Outlets in Mebane, N.C.

The deals overall were good, he said, but his “best bargains” were “a pair of Lucky Brand jeans for my wife, which were $18 (original outlet price was $69.50, they were on clearance for $30, and 40 percent off that), and a Brooks Brothers sports shirt, which was $29.90.”

Wendy Novicenskie

Brad Williams shows off his Black Friday loot.

Anna Staab, 51, Metamora, Il., hit the stores around 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving and found lots of merchandise available at Walmart and Menards, a regional department store chain. “After seeing plenty of merchandise left at Walmart at this hour we wondered if it had something to do with the economy or if people were just avoiding it due to the earlier hours,” she surmised.

Staab, a retired Post Master who has seven kids living with her, some foster, some adopted and some biological, said she needed to be out early to get the big bargains and ended up with quite a few.

Her biggest complaint was where Walmart placed the sales items.

“Big box items, i.e. trampoline, ping pong table, power ride on toys, were all at the back of the store. Customers had to fight the crowds with the huge boxes,” she explained. “They need a better system for those.”

Nathan Luna

Nathan Luna grabbed an iPad for $454.

And Staab didn't like that many retailers staggered sales throughout the night.

"Certain things went on sale at 10 p.m. Thursday, then midnight, then 8 a.m.," she noted.

Besides a few annoyances, she was able to get the one thing she really wanted. She's most proud of the Xbox with Kinect she got at Walmart for $199 and a $50 Walmart card included, about half the price it was last year.

The iPad 2 was the only thing Nathan Luna was looking for.

He arrived at the Best Buy in Wheaton, Md., at 12:20 a.m. and found the parking log jammed and a line of more than 700 people.

“Less-experienced Black Friday shoppers would have probably turned around in horror, but I pressed on,” said Luna, a TV photographer who has been Black Friday shopping since he was a kid when he shopped with his mom and grandmother.

Nathan Luna

Lines formed at the Best Buy in Wheaton, Md., and police were on hand to keep things moving smoothly.

Despite the crowds, he said, a group of police officers helped shuffle shoppers into the store and the line within 20 minutes after the store opened.

Nathan Luna

There were big crowds at the Best Buy in Wheaton, Md., but lines moved quickly, according to one shopper.

“I was greeted by a wall of Dynex 32-inch TVs and thousands of people jamming up the aisles,” he described. “I asked the greeter where the iPads were, and he directed me to the back of the store. I had to bump a few elbows to get back there, but when I did, I noticed something new.”

Instead of a line snaking around the entire store, he said, there were check-out lines scattered throughout the store near key items.

“When I got in the iPad line, I literally had eleven people in front of me,” he said, adding that it took about a half hour to check out, compared to the hours it has taken during past Black Fridays.

He eventually got his iPad for $454.

Erin Mellini was happy she paid $10 for VIP parking through Livingsocial for the Rockaway Townsquare Mall in Rockaway, N.J., because she ended up with a prime parking spot.

“The VIP parking was nice and close, and it gave me peace of mind my car was in good hands because the mall security was in charge of it,” she said.

Erin Mellini

Erin Mellini with the hard drive for $30 she was able to snag.

Mellini, 25, a zookeeper and educator from Randolph, N.J., found the mall relatively quiet when she got there at 5 am.

“The stores were not really picked clean,” she added, but “any deep discount item, which you needed a ticket for, was gone.

For example a $199, 42-inch HDTV from Best Buy was gone, but I got an external Toshiba hard drive that I was intending to buy and didn’t have to deal with the mad rush at midnight. I got it for $30 which is a very good price.”

The best deal, she noted, was a $40 WiFi streaming media player from Walmart.

“I was happiest to get that, which was a door-buster deal,” she explained, adding that most of the stores had a great supply of advertised merchandise.

Mellini acknowledged that she and her friend Erica, who joined her on the shopping excursion, didn’t have the same "adrenaline rush" they had on previous Black Fridays because the crowds seemed to be so spread out given the extended hours.

“We still had a great time and intend to maybe go out at midnight next year if that is going to become the norm for stores,” she added.

Related stories:

Black Friday turns ugly: Two shot, 15 pepper-sprayed

Why Black Friday shopping is crucial for retailers

Michael Nagle / Getty Images file

Shoppers look for bargains at Toys "R" Us last year. The big-box chain is opening at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving this year.

Call it Black Friday fatigue.

With stores racing to open ever earlier on Thanksgiving (Wal-Mart’s doors will open at 10 p.m.!), a backlash is growing, with some retailers and analysts questioning the madness.

“The lunacy of opening at 12 midnight or even earlier on Thanksgiving evening shows that this whole Black Friday thing has run out of legs,” said IDC Retail Insights program director Greg Girard. “Black Friday is a race to the bottom, and it’s just become another ad avenue.”

Other analysts think this year's extended hours are meant to distract shoppers from a lack of exciting inventory.

“If you build it, they will come,” said NPD Group chief industry analyst Marshal Cohen, “but they won’t come in the dead of night. To me, you’re not going to sell more product just because you’re open more hours. It’s more of a smoke screen than it is a solution to the issue.”

This year, some stores are choosing not to take extreme measures to lure in bargain-hungry customers as they kick off a season that is expected to bring in about $465.6 billion in sales, a modest 2.8 percent increase over last year.

Sears, for one, has decided to pass on the trend for midnight openings set by big-box retailers including Best Buy, Kohls and Target. Toys 'R' Us is opening at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving night, an hour ahead of Wal-Mart.

Last year, Sears chose to keep its doors open on Thanksgiving from 7 a.m. until noon, with the idea that shoppers would come in early to rack up a few deals and then head home to their families for a midday meal.

But while the company did have good numbers that day, “The customer feedback was very clear,” said Sears spokesman Tom Aiello. “The customers liked the deals, but they didn’t like the idea of Thanksgiving shorted as a holiday.”

So the chain will revert to its original plan to open at 4 a.m. on Friday. “I think there’s a group of customers that don’t aspire to get up in the middle of the night,” Aiello said.

Retail chain JC Penneyalso decided to stick with a 4 a.m. opening time this year so employees can spend Thanksgiving with friends and family, according to a company spokesman.

Employees at Target and Best Buy have launched petition drives on the website change.org protesting the early openings. “A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day,” wrote petition creator Anthony Hardwick, who identifies himself as a Target employee.

Some local retailers are still undecided on their Black Friday hours and will make last-minute decisions, according to Cohen.

Others are resisting the bonanza that is Black Friday altogether—or at least, they engage in more subtlety. Seattle-based retail chain Nordstrom has avoided opening its doors on Thanksgiving throughout the company’s history and in recent years has posted signs in its stores that read, “One holiday at a time.”

Nordstrom waits until the morning of Black Friday to unveil its Christmas decorations, though it will open doors early that morning in some locations.

“It’s not as in your face,” said Forrester vice president and senior analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, “but there’s a reason that Thanksgiving weekend that people work longer hours and [the stores] pull out all the stops as far as offering sales and promotions—because that’s the nature of that weekend.”

Analyst Greg Girard of IDC said Black Friday is virtually absent from the websites of brand-oriented stores like Gap, Nordstrom and Lord & Taylor.

"And they’re doing something much more surgical in that they’re moving towards direct communications, like text messaging to consumers," he said. "They’re getting to consumers with whom they have a longer lifetime relationship."

Nordstrom, like many higher-end stores, doesn’t rely as heavily on Black Friday to make or break its sales year. Black Friday “is among our most high volume days. But it isn’t our largest sales day of the year, unlike many retailers,” said Nordstrom spokesman Colin Johnson.