Almost everybody in America experiences Christmas as a consumer. But not all of us make our living on the other side of the counter in a retail establishment. For those of you who don't, or have only been employed in the industry on a seasonal basis to pick up a few bucks, I've been asked to share a few observations, secrets, and little-known facts about what goes on behind the scenes at a store on Christmas.
I've received this assignment because I'm the Thornton Institute's resident expert on retail (translated: I'm the only Institute member with retail experience). In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't worked in the retail field for well over a decade. When I did, though, my resume included grocery stores, a furniture store, a drug store, a music store, and a "big box" retailer that sells everything (and I mean everything... after seeing a delivery of rhino chow, I avoided the exotic pet aisle). If you're wondering why the Institute didn't commission this report with someone who has a more current grasp of the industry, I can only tell you that the Institute adheres to a strict policy of YW3YG (You Work With What You Got).
Besides, at age 57, I've achieved my Old Coot credentials, which mandate that I share the benefits of my experience with a new generation, no matter how outdated or irrelevant that experience may be. So here's a few things to keep in mind when you make the inevitable visit to a store this Christmas season.
-Christmas is not a holiday for retail folks. Instead, it's the busiest time of the year, translating into long work hours, massive preparation, intense customer service pressure, intimidating sales goals, and a general environment that the American Heart Association has deemed the #1 cause of hearts that are two sizes too small. On a store's calendar, it's a big black circle, casting a shadow like the Eye of Mordor over the months leading up to it and the week or so after. When I was a retail manager, six-day work weeks and 12 to 14 hour days were mandatory during the Christmas season.
The more pragmatic of non-retail folks think this situation can be somewhat alleviated by a time-shift. Sure, they say, for retailers, there's no quality Christmas time to be had; that's the nature of the job. But they can shift their holiday celebration to the day or days immediately following Christmas, during the post-holiday breather. Which brings us to the next point:
-There is no post-holiday breather. A store that ordinarily stays open till 9 pm might shut down a little early on Christmas Eve... say at 6 or 7. It's up to an hour later before all the last-minute shoppers are cleared out. After that, the receipts are accounted for; the cash is shoveled into the safe; and the manager has fielded the calls from his regional manager, who's at home reviewing his kid's college fund and wants to know the sales figures for the day. So Christmas Eve with the family doesn't really get started till the visions of sugar plums are well under way. Of course, there's always Christmas day... unless the store's actually open on Christmas (mine was). Open or not, the work day after Christmas starts very early, like at 3 or 4 am, because the post-Christmas clean-up has to be addressed promptly. Decorations taken down; debris swept; after-Christmas sale material posted; bodies removed from the aisles; the return-counter liquor cabinet restocked; in short, a retailer has to hit the ground running after Christmas day. A week later, Valentine's Day material and merchandise comes out. So for a retailer during the Christmas season, family-time-management is the Kobayashi-Maru of scheduling. Most managers check in with their families in the early spring to see if any of the kids have hit puberty.
-For retail employees, the workplace challenges can make it difficult to maintain the optimum level of Christmas cheer. Customer expectations aren't geared to this reality; they want the store personnel to exhibit the same increase in holiday spirit and good will toward men that they're feeling... actually, sometimes they expect more from the personnel, who, after all, are at least getting paid to be there instead of being forced to fight crowds and traffic to get a gift for your husband's boss that you don't even like. Stores are aware of this dynamic; that sticker on the cash register with the acronym BNEIIKY is there to remind the checkout person to Be Nice Even If It Kills You. So in the final days before Christmas, if you start to think that the smiles you see at stores look a little less than genuine and a little more like rigor mortis is setting in, keep in mind that they've been plastered on for a few weeks (and in some cases, botox-assisted), and it's going to take rigorous post-Christmas massage therapy to regain a full range of expression.
This is why retailers have their own reminder-acronym-stickers plastered on their dashboards and refrigerators: YKTJWDWYTI (You Knew The Job Was Dangerous When You Took It)... words of wisdom from Super-Chicken.
-As you've no doubt heard, for many stores it's the Christmas season that makes them profitable. That's why stores would just as soon start the Christmas shopping season as early as possible. Right after the Fourth of July would be nice. And that probably would be the custom if the Christmas trees sold during that time didn't spontaneously combust by the time December rolled around.
-There is no "in the back". All of you have inevitably experienced this Christmas shopping scenario: You look in vain on the shelves for some item that's advertised or is on your shopping list, so you trip a sales associate who's sprinting by (and who's smiling!) and ask him if he'd check to see if there are any more of the items "in the back". He smiles, and says sure, and disappears for a few minutes before coming back empty-handed and apologizing, promising that there'll be some more arriving right after Christmas.
Of course, it's all for appearances; it's Christmas time, for goodness' sake... there's nothing in the back. The only way the clerk is going to come across what you're looking for is if a delivery truck rolls up as he walks into the storeroom and the truck driver tosses one out and hits him in the head. Barring that, the clerk is going to go to the back, spend a plausible amount of time bouncing a few echoes off the walls, then walk back to the sales floor with the bad news.
Why the charade, you ask? Because if the clerk just said, "Sorry, if it's not on the shelf, we don't have it," the customer would probably ask that he check anyway. Even if the customer is aware that there's a better chance that the clerk will bring back a unicorn than the desired item, (s)he's going to make the request anyway... such is the desperation of Christmas shopping.
-All merchandise is Christmas-related. Retailers want as little inventory as possible after Christmas. We're not just talking Christmas items like ornaments, lights, Chia Pets and the Clapper. In the retailer's perfect world, all shelves would be empty the day after Christmas, and he could afford to burn the store down and erect a new one every year. It's an impossible dream, of course, but it's still something to shoot for. Consequently, almost every item in the store gets a Christmas tie-in.
I used to work for what is commonly referred to as a drug store, but which was really a general merchandise store that contained a pharmacy. We sold liquor (for medicinal purposes only, of course), toys, film, cleaning products, groceries, make-up, seasonal merchandise, and probably a partridge in a pear tree. We made sure everything in the store was presented as Christmas-related. In the gift-wrap section, there were displays of adhesive tape, ball-point pens (for filling out the gift tags), boxes of thank-you cards, and trash bags (for disposing of the paper after the unwrapping frenzy). What to do with some slow-moving cans of sardines or tuna? Stick them with the cat toys as an extra-special Tabby stocking stuffer. Aspirin or Pepto-Bismol accompanied every liquor display. We once had some holiday cheese logs that looked especially binding, so we tied them in with some laxative, toilet paper, and Drano. The stuff flew off the shelves and we won the district award for most tasteless display.
-The public is ambivalent about the sanctity of Christmas. Ask your average man-on-the-street if he thinks a store should be open on Christmas, and he'll sincerely say that Christmas is a time for family, and employees should have the day off. But, as I mentioned, I worked for a store that was open on Christmas from 9 am to 7 pm, and that same man was pressing his nose up against our front window at 8:30, begging to be let in to purchase film for his camera, batteries for his kids' new toys, and perfume to replace the Thighmaster he had wrapped up for his wife. We were always extremely busy on Christmas, and everyone going through the checkout line said a) what a shame it was that we had to work on Christmas; and b) how glad they were we were working on Christmas. The cognitive dissonance was so dizzying that all the employees wore Dramamine patches.
-Working in retail can make one cynical about Christmas. Justified or not, I have to admit that my years in retail made me somewhat jaded about Christmas, and even now I'm not entirely over it. I'm sure that, on an individual basis, the folks that ran the corporation loved Christmas and family and singing carols and building bicycles in the middle of the night. But the corporate culture was clear: Christmas was the opportunity to move goods and make money, and that opportunity was not to be missed. The Christmas card from the company to its managers always included a gift certificate for a holiday turkey with a 12/26 effective date.
And on the other side of the counter, customers seemed to be stressed rather than joyful. It was as if Christmas brought obligations to buy gifts; to see family; to entertain friends; to cook big meals... rather than the opportunity to do all those things. I wanted to post a sticker at each checkout stand that read, simply, RELAX. But I was afraid my employees might take it to heart instead of the customers.
I wasn't exactly Charlie Brown, waiting for Linus to say "Lights,
please" and tell him that the true meaning of Christmas is the arrival
of Christ on Earth, and the reason He came here (my Bible and my church
had clued me in before Charles M. Schulz). But I seemed surrounded by a
culture that either:
-saw the holiday as a way to take commercial advantage of the Christmas
trappings; or
-saw the holiday as a time of year celebrated by more "Christian"
behavior... it was as if the general populace temporarily shifted to a
better mood, or, at worst, felt pressured to act as if they were in a
better mood.
So a degree of cynicism set in. If the true meaning of Christmas is really the true meaning of the nature of our very existence... then I felt that the tendency to compartmentalize and sentimentalize the holiday was a disservice to the Lord whose birthday we were recognizing. And consequently, I resisted the sentiment and, as much as possible, downplayed the idea of Christmas as a truly special time of year.
-Working in retail doesn't have to make one cynical about Christmas. I'll probably never shake my Christmas cynicism completely... there's too much "good" behavior that seems to start and stop with the season... but I've come to see that in my own way I succumbed to the holiday pressure as much as the folks I observed. I won't say that I threw the baby out with the bath water; that would be an unfortunate expression considering it's Christmas we're talking about. But in spite of all the shallowness on display, as long as we keep spelling Christmas with the same five letters at the beginning, the opportunity to focus on its true meaning will always be there. For a variety of self-absorbed and self-righteous reasons, I was concentrating on the negative; looking down on Christmas as defined by our culture instead of finding a way to celebrate Christmas as defined by the word itself.
Of course, this is easy for me to say now that I'm safely nestled years away from my retail career. And easier yet, when all the profound things about Christmas have already been said long before I waxed philosophical here. Still....
-An old ex-retailer can carefully lower himself off his soapbox and sincerely say Merry Christmas.
For a message from my church about the true meaning of Christmas, click here.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton