My Trick to Surviving the Holidays

For the first time in five years, I feel like I'll make it through the holiday retail season without arriving at the grandparents ready for the holidays to be over with and ready to go retail on the next person who asks me for a gift receipt. My secret? I have a lot of vacation time that I need to use up before the end of the year. Hooray! That will be my savior.

I can already feel the Holiday spirit being sucked out of me by ungrateful people. It's taken all my strength to be nice to customers and to hold back my sassiness. I just hate how commerical the Holidays are and how people get bent out of shape over trivial things like not having a sweater for grandma in her size or a gift box that doesn't fit the socks for sister. As a nation, we've lost sight of what is important. One of my first retail seasons, I recall this middle aged woman yelling at me because she could only get instore credit for grandma's gift. Poor, poor grandma had taken the time to get nice socks, underwear and a pair of jeans for her grandson. The middle -aged woman didn't see this. She just saw how out of touch grandma was because she didn't know that they didn't shop at JCP. WOW. How ungrateful can you be? I envisioned a nice, sweet little old lady going to JCP to buy her grandson something he could use. She put lots of thought into this gift. Plus, there are kids out there that need these basic items. I unleashed my attitude on the middle-aged woman and told her that all I could do was give her instore credit and maybe she needs to tell grandma that they don't like JCP. I also challenged the woman that there has to be something in the store that she would like/use. She left in huff and went to find my manager.

I just don't get it. I hate how greedy people are. That is why I am glad I have vacation to use. It will save my sanity. And it gives me six days of working on my screenplay. I am hoping to have a super, super rough draft of "the Fashion Void 2.0." Did I mention I can do some reading for fun? That's on the agenda as well.