A Retail Worker's Reflections On The Holiday Season...

I usually experience mixed feelings of joy and melancholy during the holidays, and alternately sing along with the relentlessly cheerful Christmas music and tear up over the lone string of twinkle lights and the two little sock snowmen on my mantle. For an artistic person such as myself, it’s a pitiful display of non-creativity, but after years in retail, it’s the best I can do. Because by the time I get home in the evening, I’m just over it.

To all of you non-retail people, I know that’s hard to understand. “But I LOVE Christmas!” you say. “I adore the crowds…the gaiety…the decorations…the glitter…the piped in Christmas music at the mall.“ Yeah…spoken like a true civilian.

But if you had to deal with the manic crowds, the people who walk in thirty seconds before closing with a long shopping list, the forced gaiety, the glitter in your hair, socks, and eventually even your underwear, and 900 truly dreadful versions of “The Twelve Days of Christmas“…ten hours a day…seven days a week…beginning the day after Halloween until the end of the year….

For every power shopper out there in a tacky “HO HO HO” sweater covered with bells and ribbons, there’s a guy working at a bookstore with a deadpan expression, being forced to wear felt reindeer antlers, looking like a deer in the headlights.

You know how Bing Crosby’s rendition of “White Christmas” makes you want to cry? Well that’s a great warm and fuzzy moment…three or four times in a Christmas season…but three or four times a day for two whole months can be really depressing.

After years of saying “Merry Christmas,“ retail workers are now expected to change to the more p.c. “Happy Holidays.” I am a liberal, open-minded person. I freely appreciate and acknowledge the holidays and customs of all cultures. But I grew up in the fifties and sixties when people said “Merry Christmas.” I don’t say it with any sense of exclusion or bias…it’s simply the way I grew up. I’m a Christian…I celebrate Christmas…sometimes I slip up and say “Merry Christmas.” So, sue me…

And then…a few questions…

Why do people just assume that if they saw something in a store last year, or two months ago…it’s still there? It’s a store…stores sell merchandise…other people actually buy things too…it’s not a museum…

Why do people with children think that retail workers are obligated to baby sit their kids while they shop? Are they REALLY unaware that their children are racing through the store, screaming at the top of their lungs and climbing shelves full of heavy, breakable objects? I don’t want to spank the kids. I want to make their parents stand in the corner with their noses in a bulls eye for a time out, to re-think their parenting skills…

Why do people look at store hours posted on the door…see that the store has just closed…and then rattle the door and mouth…”are you closed?” YES! YES, if the sign says they close at six…and it’s two minutes after six…they are, in fact, closed. And here’s another surprise…they have a life. They make plans for after work…just like you do. So while you’re poking around after the store has closed…picking up every item on the shelf…asking if it’s on sale…they’re another minute late for dinner with their family and friends…

But at the end of the day…

It’s cold outside. I’m sitting by the fire…wrapped in a blanket, admiring my Christmas decorations on the mantle. I’m watching “White Christmas,” with a cup of hot tea, a bowl of homemade vegetable soup, and a box of Kleenex. I’m experiencing mixed feelings of joy and melancholy…singing along with Bing and Rosemary, and Danny and Vera…

I love Christmas…! C