Merry Christmas Everybody!

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Great, because nothing says Merry Christmas like a bead of sweat rolling down your spine when it is 110 degreess outside.

I am pretty sure the sight of tinsel in the garden center at Lowe's actually raises the heat index.

I CHALLENGE any of you to find a bathing suit or a kiddie wading pool in another couple of weeks.

[Android Kaeli]

Christmas season doesn't officially start until all peons start sneezing, peeing, and pooping glitter.

At least at my store it doesn't and we're going to be getting some Christmas stuff in sometime next week. Along with some Halloween stuff. It's going to start looking like something out of The Nightmare Before Christmas soon. o.o.

[Dreamstalker]

I couldn't even find any water toys during the heat wave a few weeks ago. Aisles were being flipped for BTS (I felt so sorry for the kid on July 4th who wanted a Slip N Slide, only to see backpacks and notebooks where the summer toys were...).

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So...you got the Xmas merchandise..

PLEASE TELL ME IT WONT BE DISPLAYED TIL AT LEAST OCTOBER?!

I can assure you the first half of our Christmas stuff will be set no later than mid-September.

The rest of it goes up after Halloween.

[lobo94]

And now, for something lighter and ludicrous...

Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg. The Batmobile broke a wheel and the Joker got away-hey!

[fireheart]

Great, because nothing says Merry Christmas like a bead of sweat rolling down your spine when it is 110 degreess outside.

I am pretty sure the sight of tinsel in the garden center at Lowe's actually raises the heat index.

I CHALLENGE any of you to find a bathing suit or a kiddie wading pool in another couple of weeks.

You are pretty much describing my Christmas (although most of the time it's between 26-30C)

Christmas season doesn't officially start until all peons start sneezing, peeing, and pooping glitter.

At least at my store it doesn't and we're going to be getting some Christmas stuff in sometime next week. Along with some Halloween stuff. It's going to start looking like something out of The Nightmare Before Christmas soon. o.o.

We won't be getting any of our Christmas stuff in until September thankfully.

[Mytical]

I feel sorry for those who work in retail..the songs..oh the songs. Every year, earlier and earlier, we get assaulted by Christmas songs. The same ones, over and over, but WE get to go home (eventually). The poor retail people have to put up with those same songs, dozens of times a day...over and over. Made of tougher stuff then me. I worked in retail for years, and every time I hear one of those songs, I still wince.

Since I am a big kid at heart, Halloween for me is my favorite holiday, and in stores it seems to disappear super fast. We know Christmas is a big deal for the stores, but at least wait till AFTER Halloween guys..especially for the songs. *wince*

[Dreamstalker]

I was shopping somewhere and I heard a Christmas song...in June

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I was shopping somewhere and I heard a Christmas song...in June

"Oh it's Christmas at Ground Zero and there's panic in the crowd..."

[fireheart]

I feel sorry for those who work in retail..the songs..oh the songs. Every year, earlier and earlier, we get assaulted by Christmas songs. The same ones, over and over, but WE get to go home (eventually). The poor retail people have to put up with those same songs, dozens of times a day...over and over. Made of tougher stuff then me. I worked in retail for years, and every time I hear one of those songs, I still wince.

We have this one version of "Twelve Days of Christmas" that drives me completely batshit insane if I'm working a long shift. Why? Because it repeats about every 20 minutes. There are some semi-decent songs and I love singing to "O Come All Ye Faithful" but the rest are just.....

"Oh it's Christmas at Ground Zero and there's panic in the crowd..."

attack of the Grinch?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

attack of the Grinch?

Nope. Weird Al Yankovic.

[Dreamstalker]

"Oh it's Christmas at Ground Zero and there's panic in the crowd..."

Unfortunately it was a real Christmas song...at the time it was about 96 degrees out with 80% humidity, so maybe the owner thought it would keep people cool in a mind-over-matter kind of way?

[draftermatt]

Haven't seen any Christmas Decor at hardware store o' blue (I was moved to unloading from lumber) but we've been getting 10+ fireplace inserts a day for over a week.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Actually, and I know I will get piled on for saying this but I don't care, I so wish we were past BTS and into Christmas. Because BTS is when this monumental idiocy of planning payroll based on sales hits you right in the face.

At the swamp, foot traffic is way up. We're doing anywhere from 200-300 more transactions in a day than we would most other times of the year. And we still can't hit our sales goals. This is because people are just buying school supplies, which are heavily discounted and often sold below cost. You can literally have a customer come through your checkout with 50 items in their cart, and the total cost is something like $20 because it's all 19-cent folders, notebooks, packs of crayons, pencils, 50-cent packs of looseleaf paper, and so on.

A person buying a piece of furniture can spend just as much as 10 people buying school supplies. And that piece of furniture will not download into autopull and need to be pulled and filled the next day, unlike the school supplies.

Thus because sales are low, payroll stays low. Straightening doesn't get done, returns don't get done, autopull doesn't get done, trucks don't get done. Plus, as I've told you many times already, we're even more shorthanded because corporate demanded we give up a bunch of people to remodel a store so it can be ready for its Labor Day Weekend grand opening.

At least at Christmastime we don't have the problem of sales not keeping up with traffic.

[Sheldonrs]

I just received my first call of the year regarding our Christmas cards. Yay.