OK, Where’s Santa?

Ok, it’s 3am on Christmas morning. Where’s Santa? I checked under my tree and there’s no presents but someone ate the damn cookies. Oh wait, that was me. Unfortunately I don’t get a whole lot of things anymore which is fine as far as I’m concerned. Usually if I want something I just go and buy it myself. I think I actually bought myself more stuff while I was shopping for everyone that I got. All I got for Christmas was a new razor, a sweatshirt and a wallet with $100 in it. While I was doing my Christmas shopping I bought myself a new phone, the movie Dodgeball and a few other items. Dollar wise I probably spent less than what I got and I’m sure I spent more on everyone that what I bought myself so I’m good to go.

I left work early yesterday (surprise, surprise). I had to help the guy that was stuck working the service counter/movie counter yesterday around noon and let me tell you, it was nuts. I went over to give him a lunch at about noon and he was buried with people. There was a line at the service counter wanting gift certificates and then a line at the movie counter wanting movies. Then there was a stack of movies that needed to be batched in for returns so they could go back on the shelf, I’d say about 30 of them. Well I get over there to give him his lunch and he’s stuck filling out about 10 gift certificates for someone because our stupid corporate can’t get with the times and get those gift cards like the rest of the free world has. So he’s doing that and I decide to tackle the movie side of the counter. Mistake! The most annoying woman I’ve ever encountered since starting at the store is waiting at the counter. We’ve had quite a few of our rental DVD’s ripped off from the store so now we have all of the rentals behind our counter in sight of the customers and we put the empty boxes out on the shelf for the customers to bring up to us to get their movies. Well apparently this woman didn’t understand the concept. At least six times she brought an empty VHS box up and asked if we had the movie on DVD. Then she spots the return pile. Well do you have Bourne Supremacy on DVD in that pile? Do you have I, Robot in that pile? Do you have 50 First Dates in that pile? Then she’d see the ones behind the counter and go, well you have it right there. Honestly I had to explain to her on more than one occasion that those were empty boxes and the movies were rented out. I can’t tell you how many times she came up and asked this question; and it’s not like I didn’t have other customers that were checking out movies that I was helping. She apparently thought she had some sort of customer seniority to just monopolize my time with her problems. Then apparently the other customers around her got this bright idea that I had all of the “good movies” in the return piles and soon everyone was asking me if I had this or that in the pile. Then they had the nerve to ask me to see if the movie was coming back today and one customer actually had the nerve to ask if we’d be calling the people to make sure they bring back the movies. It’s like get a grip lady, I’m sure Christmas won’t be ruined if you don’t get to see Collateral.

Well about 12:30 the service counter guy finally gets to take his lunch, which is a half hour late. During the half hour he’s gone I got two of the movies batched in for returns. I also had to deal with all of the movie renters asking me to dig through the return piles. I was about to say well if you’ll all shut up and let me batch in the returns then you’ll know what I’ve got. So then a half hour later when he gets back from lunch I let him take over most of the duties and I finally get all of the movies batched in and put back on the shelf. Then it’s time for my lunch. I check out the change drawer that we have at the service counter and realize that we’re out. Either that or we are handing out $50’s and $100’s for change. So I replenish that and then I go on lunch roughly an hour later than scheduled. By the time I get back from lunch it’s calmed down considerably. Thankfully the Vikings and the Packers were playing football and between that and church the customer count dwindled severely. When I got back I was able to finish my bookkeeping duties. About 2:30 I was done with everything in the office so I decided to head back over to the service counter and help out with anything he was behind on. Well when I get back over there another pile of returns had accumulated. I would assume that he was probably on his 600th dollar of gift certificates that he was writing out since that’s the only place you can purchase them in the store. Well I batched in most of the movies and put them back and every time I’d come back from putting them back on the shelf I’d have about 10 more in the box. This went on until around 4 and then the fun phone calls started. About two weeks ago we put the signs on all of the doors and cash registers stating that on Christmas Eve we’d be closing at 6pm and we’d be closed all day on Christmas Day. Well I guess about half the town just wanted to confirm that because aside from one phone call that I took that was the main question I got asked.

“Um, I was just calling to see what time you closed tonight.”
“Well we close at 6”
“Oh, ok, I see. What time are you open tomorrow?”
“We aren’t, we are closed tomorrow and we will open up again Sunday”
“Oh, ok”
“Well I have to go; some other idiot is calling on another line and probably is going to ask me the same stupid question.”

So was my day. Luckily after four it died in there. It went from there hardly being a parking spot in the place to there being about five cars in the lot at 4:30. That’s when I told the only remaining management that I thought I should get going since I’d been there since the store opened. She agreed and I split. I guess that was my Christmas bonus. Bah Humbug.