WARNING: this post is a very candid battle plan for Christmas shopping at a particular retailer. It may be offensive at times, and it is completely honest. Read at your own risk.
OK. The big-box retailer where I work normally hires a small army of seasonal help to staff the store for the holidays, but not this year. We only hired five seasonal employees, and of those five, only one is a cashier. So. You know what that means. We are shortstaffed for the holidays. There aren't any noticeable additional cashiers. And regular employees are working very few hours. I'm at fifteen hours per week right now, and I'm cool with that because my scar tissue, which is swirled throughout my abdominal cavity, hurts when it snows. I'm OK with only working a few hours per week because I hurt, but lots of other employees are feeling the pinch.
The store is what we call "light." It helps amp up profits by keeping the overhead low. Keeping the overhead low by not paying very many employees for very many hours allows the store to keep rolling back prices and being one of the cheapest places in town. What this means for the customer is that, if they want those low prices, they're going to have to put up with some hassle. And the employees on staff, as stressed-out as they are, are not going to be forthcoming with a whole bunch of sympathy toward nasty people. The store is staffed with members of the Cache Valley community, for one thing, and Cache Valley people don't like whiners. For another thing, the empoyees there are working at 100% capacity, and they don't have any extra energy for sympathy. It won't help anybody's case to moan about all the empty registers. The only day of the year that we use them all is Black Friday. We don't even open them all the day after Christmas. Either shop there or don't. Your choice. If you choose to shop there, you'll have to pay with some extra patience.
There are, however, things you can do to alleviate your hassle.
1) The best solution is to shop in the morning. I know how hard is is to get up early (believe me. I know.) but it's the best way to avoid crowds. When I get to work at 10am, the cashiers are all standing around, bored. By 11am, they are hard at work. So if you get there in the morning, you have a good chance of checking out without a problem. Whatever you do, avoid shopping in the afternoon. You'll have to fight your way to the register, even with me directing traffic.
2) If you can't get out there in the morning, the middle of the night is a good plan. 3am is a good time to shop. But only one cash register is open during the night, and it's the one right in the middle. So plan to walk to the middle register, and get a scooter cart of you can't walk it. Just kidding. We all know you can walk it. I walk that stretch of concrete hundreds of times during my workday. It's fifty feet of smooth floor, so quit whining and just get it done.
3) If you're up to it, shop on Sunday. It's the slowest day of the week. If that's not your bag, at least avoid shopping on Saturday and Monday. Those are the busiest days. Shop in the middle of the week, in the morning, and you should have an easier time.
4) Somehow or another, the cash registers are subject to a rush at any time of day. The place will be dead, and then all the customers will show up as if someone blew a whistle and called them all to the front. For most of the year, I would recommend dilly-dallying for a few minutes, check out the jewelry display case, do a little dance, and in a few minutes the lines will die down. But this is Christmas, so normal rules don't always apply. My best advice for this situation: bring a book, or headphones. Plan to wait. Know that it will happen, and make it playtime. Sing along to your favorite song. You're not any weirder than anyone there.
5) Choose to be nice. You'll get better service that way. My job is to direct people to the shortest lines, but I literally walk away from nasty people. I apologize for the inconvenience with my voice, and then I go help someone else. I get paid minimum wage, and it's not enough to charge the beast. I run away. And I don't care that people judge me about that, because here's the thing: my job is to help people, not to take abuse from them. I'll bend over backwards and walk all over that store to help nice people, but as soon as they start to be abusive I stop caring about their problem. So the most efficient way to interact with me and get your needs met is to just be nice.
6) Shop somewhere else. Go to DI and get everyone books for Christmas. Make the kids a homemade coloring book with simple drawings and make copies of it. They don't know the difference between good and bad artwork anyway. Give goodie plates instead of presents. Last year I made a huge batch of soap for everyone, and it was easy. I don't know if anybody really liked it or if they were just faking, but it filled the gift obligation. Get gifts online during the year instead of waiting for the Christmas shopping season. Give the "five hands": handmade, second hand, a helping hand, time hand in hand, and hand me down. Your loved ones, for the most part, already have too much stuff. They have cupboards, closets, garages, backyard sheds, and storage units bursting with stuff they never use. They don't need or want more cheap crap that was made in China. They're not going to like the smell of that bath products set, or the colors in that cosmetics set, and it's just going to sit there and get all gross until they throw it away. UNLESS! you're one of those lucky bastards who can afford to give high-end electronics for Christmas. Everybody likes TVs. And cars. And boats. If you can afford it, you can buy people's love with that stuff.
So. My point is, you don't even really have to do very much shopping. If you must go do Christmas shopping at the retailer where I work, try to schedule it for a morning or late at night, and bring a book in your purse. Wear comfortable shoes, because you will most likely walk several city blocks' worth of distance inside the store, and another couple blocks in the parking lot going in and out. If you are unable to walk on your own (in all seriousness, I know that some people can't) plan to bring your own mobility solutions from home, because the more people there are in the store, the more competition there is for the scooter carts. Plan to find things on your own for the most part, because the store is light. And try to look at the positive and summon as much Christmas cheer as you can, because store employees will give top priority to nice customers.
All right. Go forth and celebrate.
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