Tis the Season

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with Christmas. I've worked in retail for twenty something years. Christmas is the holy grail for retail. The company I worked for before did about 80% of their total yearly sales in two months, November and Decemeber. So that was a lot of business in just sixty days. Where I work now is a little more spread out over the year as far as sales go. Of course a higher percent is done from Thanksgiving to the 25th of Decemeber.

If you work retail Christmas means long hours, little sleep, lots of work, customers that treat you like crap and no time for much else. I don't mean all customers, some customers are wonderful. I waited on a little old lady this week, she was eighty years old she told me, and she was a joy. Starting the day after Thanksgiving I've been wearing one of those Santa hats at work. So this little old lady called me Santa Claus (it couldn't have anything to do with my expanding waistline, could it?) when she asked for help. I found what she wanted and went on my business. About twenty minutes later someone else was trying to help her for something else and they didn't know if we had the item. We did and I went and got it for her and carried it out to her car. She said of course Santa Clause would be able to help her. She was a fun customer and helped me to remember the joy in the season.

Than there is the customer like one today who called to complain because she couldn't get her car out of the parking lot. There were too many cars and no one would let her out. What were we going to do? Jeez, maybe it's Christmas time so anyone who is doing their shopping with only three days left is bound to run into a little traffic.

The problem with certain customers this time of year is that they want everything and they want it yesterday. Some customers don't understand how we could not have something in stock. I had one customer come in with an ad and ask for a certain item, when I told him we didn't carry it he started having a fit and pushing the ad in my face and wanting to know how we could advertise something if we didn't have it. I calmly told him that it wasn't our ad. You think he apologized? Yeah, right.

Christmas Eve I used to go over to my parent's house and spend the night, so we could all get up early to open presents. I would stumble out of bed, open presents than go back to bed to be awaken for Dinner and than back to sleep until I woke up in time to go home. That was how tired I would be for Christmas. But that was when I was working 80-90 hours a week. Where I work now is nowhere near that bad. We put in a lot of time, but nowhere near that amount.

I don't put up a Christmas tree or any decorations at my house. I love buying presents for friends and family. I love trying to figure out what they would like. I don't like to just buy a generic present, I want something that fits their pesonality. I love going over my parent's and having a big Christmas meal. My parents are like little kids at Christmas now and it's fun watching them enjoy themselves.

So part of me really likes Christmas, but another part will be very glad when it's over.