I Think My Christmas Spirit Broke Today...

[MiddleofNowhere]

Blargh... today, it finally hit. I've been enjoying this holiday season, as much as one can in retail, but today was just such a suckfest of ignorant, whining, demanding EWs, I felt my Christmas Spirit break and scurry off to a corner to suck it's thumb until mid-January...

Well, It Is the Week Before Christmas...

All day today, I had customers whining the same refrain...

What do you meeeeaaaannnnn, you're out of *Insert Insanely Popular Item Here*? What am I supposed to dooooooooooo?

Listen up you slack jawed, Looney Toons Christmas T-shirt wearing moron... it's less than a week before Christmas. Retail stores, although they might seem like cavernous black holes of Christmas goodness, have a limit on what they carry this time of year. It's 7 days before Christmas. And unfortunately, due to all of the economic hijinx over the last year, a lot of our suppliers had less to offer. So all those barracudas that were out for Christmas gifts before you got them. Sorry, you'll get no sympathy here. A failure to shop early on your part, does not constitute an emergency on mine. I have lots of similar items, this is the time of year to be flexible.

She Tried to Pull a Jedi Mind Trick on Me...

Customer: Hello, I'm looking for 'Insanely Popular Jacket' in Black, size Medium
MoN (that's me): Oh gosh, Ma'am. I'm sorry, I've sold out of that color, but I have 'Insanely Popular Jacket' in that size in White, Purple or Pink. Will one of those work?
Customer: Well... that's impossible. You must have more...
MoN: I'm sorry, Ma'am. We sold out last weekend. Would another color work?
Customer: I just don't believe that. I think you might have some more...
MoN: Ma'am, I'm the manager of this shop. I know exactly what I do have in stock. We ran out last weekend. Is there another style jacket you'd like to look at?
Customer: I think you should go check your storage or something. You must have more.
MoN: (thinking WTF?): Ma'am... really, I am positive we don't have more. I'm sorry, but it's just that time of year.
Customer just wanders off muttering about how she's sure I should have more. I admit to having to bite the inside of my cheek to not laugh when she kept saying, "I think you might have some more". In my mind, Obi Wan was saying, "These aren't the jackets (droids) your looking for"...

Yes, I Do Know the Difference

Customer walks up to myself and a co-worker...
Customer: Where's your Elevator?
MoN: On the opposite side of the store, next to the restrooms.
Customer: (supersnotty tone) The EL-E-VA-TOR, not the escalator...
MoN: (WTF x 2) Yes ma'am. The elevator is on the opposite side of the store. The ES-CA-LA-TOR is in the middle of the store, right by the big Christmas tree...
Customer: oh...
CW cracked up and teased me the rest of the day.

Save The Earth...

I see a mom with a stroller rolling through my shop. One thing about my store to know is that in the actual 'shop' areas, we have carpet. In the aisleways, we have nice 12x12 tile. Next thing I know, I hear glass shattering. Odd, because I have no glass items in my shop. I trot over to see what happened and the Stroller Mom is looking at the remains of a shattered baby bottle that apparently her baby has thrown from the stroller. Now, I hadn't seen a glass baby bottle in YEARS! And my mouth got away from me.
MoN: Wow, I didn't know they made glass baby bottles. I'll get this cleaned up right away. Are you and your baby okay?
StrollerMom: Well, Glass bottles are better for the environment!

And with that, she stomped off, leaving a giant mess of broken glass and formula all over the tile at the edge of my shop. Nice. But as I understand your need to protect your baby and the world, I don't see that GLASS bottles are a great Idea outside your CARPETED HOME! That's going to get more expensive with every shopping trip you take would be my guess. The polar bears won't cry if you use the new and improved plastic ones when you step outside your yurt...

Kids Are Not Luggage...

Moms, please. Let's use some brain cells here.

LEAVE the Megastrollers at home, especially those two-wide joggers with the fixed front wheel. Store are packed with merchandise and customers. With your SUV of a stroller, you are just compounding the problem. Those things don't maneuver worth a crap and they don't fit.

KIDS have a bit of an 'expiration date' if you take my meaning. Please don't bring them to our midnight Day after Thanksgiving sale. Please don't drag them along all day (a fact I can verify by security cameras) to 'finish your shopping'. They get bored, tired and cranky after just a bit of this holiday hoopla. Do it in shifts and take them home after a bit or for the love of Santa, hire a sitter. Please don't bring them in sick and snotty and let them run all through our racks, dragging their snotty noses all through very expensive clothes and outerwear.

DO NOT leave your kids to entertain themselves on our escalators. We've had this discussion before. Escalators are NOT amusement rides. They are a means of conveyance. We actually had a little girl die from a fall from an escalator in our town last year because mom let her child play alone on an escalator while she shopped. It is absolutely sinful you think that's okay.

That's all for now. Going to have some eggnog to perk up my spirits.

[Ironclad Alibi]

StrollerMom: Well, Glass bottles are better for the environment! ... That's going to get more expensive with every shopping trip you take would be my guess.

From what I can tell, more expensive is good for the environment. Less expensive is bad for the environment, but good for the personal bank account balance.

[Magpie]

From what I can tell, more expensive is good for the environment. Less expensive is bad for the environment, but good for the personal bank account balance.

I'm going with either the fact that they're not oil-based, which is more sustainable (although not really environment as a concern, just peak oil). Not being particularly familar with bottles, I don't know if they wear out and need to be recycled, which is normally why glass is preferred, since it can be recycled with very little loss of quality. I think you might have hit the nail on the head. Either that or she had the glass > plastic drilled into her, and took it to an extreme.

[mikoyan29]

Our elevators unlike hers go to the top floor...

Glass is better for the environment? Hmmm....Just wonder how true that statement is. Yes, you can recycle glass. But you can recycle plastic. Glass is a pretty heat intensive process. So is plastic. Glass may be better for you though.

[Magpie]

Glass is better for the environment? Hmmm....Just wonder how true that statement is. Yes, you can recycle glass. But you can recycle plastic. Glass is a pretty heat intensive process. So is plastic. Glass may be better for you though.

I was specifically speaking to being able to recycle it without degradation. People in the polymers field tell me that they're working on catalytic recycling, which will basically mean that they can make the plastic again, using the old plastic as raw materials, but currently they just melt it, which shortens the chains.

And yeah, recycling glass is bad, but so is recycling in general. It's why you're not supposed to recycling the resuable bottles. If you buy milk in glass bottles around here, the deposit is about the same price as that of the milk. Beer, on the other hand, is still a ten-cent deposit, like it's been for the last thirty years . The reusuable/refillable items around here are generally glass, so those particular applications are the ones that give rise to the idea that glass in general is better.

[jjllbb]

KIDS have a bit of an 'expiration date' if you take my meaning. Please don't bring them to our midnight Day after Thanksgiving sale. Please don't drag them along all day (a fact I can verify by security cameras) to 'finish your shopping'.

I had a guy and his 5/6? year old daughter shopping in my store until past 1AM on Wednesday night.

awesome job, dad!

[Kristev]

I'm sorry they sucked your Christmas spirit out. They exorcised mine four years ago.

[TheSHAD0W]

Customer: I think you should go check your storage or something. You must have more.
MoN: (thinking WTF?): Ma'am... really, I am positive we don't have more. I'm sorry, but it's just that time of year.

See, you didn't handle that properly. The correct procedure is to tell her, "yes, I'll go and check", walk into the stock room, walk out the back door, have a cigarette or just enjoy the outside air for 5 minutes, then return and say "sorry, I couldn't find anything".

[Imogene]

Glass is better for the environment? Hmmm....Just wonder how true that statement is.

Having lived with what I shall term an insane person... (not sure if she was, she was just extremely controlling...) she refused to leave her cereal in the plastic bag they came in... she transferred her cereal to a glass msaon jar after looking for months to find one. One day, I was with her while she shopped, and I blurted, "So, you're worried about the plastic breaking down and putting chemicals in your cereal?" just out of the blue. "Yup." Damn, now I understand her...
So, maybe, baby mama there is worried about the chemicals that might leach into baby's formula...?

[QASlave]

There is a company in a small town near here that creates plastic food containers using either corn or soybeans. (I forget which.) It is completely petroleum free and in tests, completely biodegrades in less than two years with no harmful by products left behind. Of course, it's slightly more expensive so it hasn't caught on. Yet.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Bah, I was raised on formula given to me out of a plastic bottle and I lived. -.- Also, babies and toddlers have a habit of throwing stuff out their prams and buggies, so surely a plastic bottle is better outside the home? Oh yeah, and I believe the mother is worried about BPA. There are alternatives to using glass bottles, which regarding my earlier point, are probably far more dangerous to small children than plastic bottles could ever be. What happens next time, if the child drops the bottle and gets hit by flying glass shards?

[LadyAndreca]

There is a company in a small town near here that creates plastic food containers using either corn or soybeans. (I forget which.) It is completely petroleum free and in tests, completely biodegrades in less than two years with no harmful by products left behind. Of course, it's slightly more expensive so it hasn't caught on. Yet.

I've seen it start to creep into packaging here and there. And Target was experimenting with using it for their gift cards when I used to work there. I've found it tends to be more brittle than regular plastic--if it's too thin it can shatter if you drop it--but certainly useable.

[lordlundar]

Our elevators unlike hers go to the top floor...

Glass is better for the environment? Hmmm....Just wonder how true that statement is. Yes, you can recycle glass. But you can recycle plastic. Glass is a pretty heat intensive process. So is plastic. Glass may be better for you though.

Glass is actually better for the environment. It's made from easily acquired resources (silica sand as the base, so it doesn't destroy resources in vast quantities to get), easy to make (as for the heat, it's actually relatively low, which can come from environmentally renewable sources) and can be recycled god only knows how many times with little to no degredation in quality (something no other packaging material can claim). In addition, it's actually less expensive to make than other materials as well.

So why is plastic preferred? Durability (glass breaks easily, while plastic is tougher to break with less material) and weight (plastic is a lot lighter than glass in equal amounts, and glass usually has to be thicker)

[Chris K.]

Am I the only one that thought of Brodie's speech from Mallrats about kids and escalators while reading the last part of the post?

[AtDIelement]

Am I the only one that thought of Brodie's speech from Mallrats about kids and escalators while reading the last part of the post?

That kid is BACK on the escalator again!!!!!