As you may know

I work in retail. It's Christmastime. Retail is busy...super busy. Yes, the economy is in the toilet, but people still have to buy Christmas gifts so they are still shopping. They're just shopping smarter. Finally, everyone is shopping like I do...not buying anything that isn't on sale, a big sale. Our store chain is known for its sales and crazy good coupons so we have gotten really busy this week, except for the day the White Death came. Yesterday was particularly busy.

I'm here to tell you that generally most people are still behaving nicely--wishing me a Merry Christmas when I check them out, still cracking jokes, making small talk about getting their shopping done. Maybe they're still in a good mood because they're getting such great deals at our store. I'm not sure, but I'm glad they're not hateful. Most of them. Most of the time.

The ones who are hateful make for good gripe stories. A couple of days ago I think we had all the hateful people come in at once. I guess that's good so we get it over with, but still, it's an exercise of extreme self control for me not to tell them off when they are so rude to us. We are under a lot of pressure, too. We are trying to give good customer service (guide poor, helpless men to the best products to score big points for their wife, girlfriends, mothers) plus ring people out as fast as we can so they don't have to stand in line forever and therefore, call corporate andcomplain about how long they had to wait. On top of all this, we have to try to keep the shelves stocked because people are buying stuff like there's going to be a prohibition on lotion in the near future. So how do people who work retail deal with the stress they are under after a particularly stressful day at work? We drink. A lot.