'Twas the day before Christmas...

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

and nothing really noteworthy happened. Other than me getting stuck on the way to work--freakin' snowplows! Good thing I bought a shovel for my car last weekend.

Oh, and I got a sarcastic "Thanks for helping!" from a co-worker when Numbnuts 2.0 went on his break and didn't tell anybody. My crystal ball is in the shop.

Thus ends the hellish part of the year. The next few months will kinda suck in terms of hours but the work will be easier and we'll get to tackle some of our backroom projects we've been putting off through the year.

So overall, how was the work and how were the customers this Christmas?

[Iris Kojiro]

Work was pretty busy and nothing bad happened with any customers on both counts. I have today and tomorrow off to rest up, and I need it as I've worked 31 hours in the last two days, with only 2 1/2 hours of sleep the night between.

I did see a customer wearing a cute Christmas hairtie that I immediately wanted to get for myself. ^_^x I'll have to go to the 24 hour pharmacy to get it, though...and I'm just feeling lazy at the moment. Working back to back doubles tends to make one about as productive as Numbnuts/knockers the next day.

I also got stuck in the snow. It didn't help that I overslept a bit in my post-day job nap. I ended up being five minutes late when it was all said and done.

Slightly OT: GROSS is right! I'm going to have a mental image of people doing what Numbnuts did when it comes to company banquets from now on. On a side note, if that kid is still skinny, I wish I had his metabolism.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

At least I didn't have to help close today. Closing on Christmas Eve is the absolute pits because:

• you've got all the last-second stragglers in the store still trying to buy last-second gifts, or wrapping paper or tape or some such thing, and thus there are still customers in the store 15 minutes or later after close.
• there's an ad that has to be taken down, but that has to wait until 5 or so, and you have last-second stragglers to deal with.
• management generally gets more picky about straightening because the corporate suits, when visiting stores on the 26th, pay more attention to it.

Any other day of the year you can get out very shortly after closing, but on Christmas Eve you can be stuck in the store for up to a half hour or more after the last closing announcement goes over the PA.

I was hoping to buy more Sprecher Puma Kola for drinks, but it slipped my mind. It'll have to wait until tomorrow at the earliest since I refuse to inflict myself on any more store employees.

[Teysa]

At least your corporate suits are waiting until the 26th. It seems like ours have been in the store everyday since around Thanksgiving. They're really not all that bad as far as corporate types go, but they all tend to huddle together and nearly always where I need to hang tags. The turkeys even walked the store today.

As far as business went, the store seemed pretty slow for Christmas Eve. It may have picked up after I left though. At least my job isn't dependent on the number of customers. The ad still has to be set no matter what.

[calulu]

All day today people screaming and crying because the delivery charge jumped to first 16 and later 17 bucks per order. Now I did have to point out to the idiots that if you order flowers a mere few hours before deliveries stop you have no right to complain about delivery fees.

Lots of sucky complainy people. Fortunately I had to deal with very few because management decided to let the temps get yelled at for the customer service screw ups and let the experienced people either strictly sell or deal with the florists. I saw 19 year olds crying...

[bean]

Any other day of the year you can get out very shortly after closing, but on Christmas Eve you can be stuck in the store for up to a half hour or more after the last closing announcement goes over the PA.

We didn't even have the last customer out of the store until nearly 40 minutes after the last announcement tonight. Not because they were taking their time, but because we just had so many people in the store and not enough cashiers to handle them.

I was helping in another department when "Any available employees please come to the front to help bag" went out over the PA and I wandered back up to help - and saw lines 8 people deep. Never, ever seen lines like that before, not even the day before Thanksgiving.

I didn't leave until an hour after close, and only because I had plans and couldn't stay any later. I don't think the closing baggers left until an hour and a half after close, just guessing by the amount of work left.

We blew our Thanksgiving sales so far out of the water that we'll never make Christmas comp sales again.

For some reason, I actually enjoyed today. My boss told me I was "fucking crazy" when I told him I was looking forward to today. I enjoyed it because it was so busy that the day just flew by.