As the holiday season approaches, you start to notice that Target’s Bullseye Christmas section is up, along with the holiday lights lining the streets of Minneapolis. A sense of joy and festive anticipation quickly fill your heart with excitement and adrenaline. The best holidays and winter break are fast approaching and a drool-worthy amount of food is in your near future.
Now, while many feel joy and happiness, others feel differently about the holiday season. And by "others," I mean any retail worker ever. Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the holiday season and everything that comes along with it (mostly,) but there are definitely some aspects of it that make my life a little more stressful and hectic and make me want to rip my hair out.
It’s safe to say that working a retail job for two years is enough experience to be able to speak to the hell that is working during the holiday season. The most pivotal moment of working retail during holiday season is when you actually realize that Christmas is coming. That moment when you come into work, tired but ready for the day and notice that it’s a bit busier than usual. There's a look of confusion on your face, but it quickly transforms into complete dread. That two-hour, non-stop line that seemed abnormal two minutes ago is just a small reminder that holiday season is here and in full swing. That will be the usual of every shift you work through the New Year. Yay.
Another thing about retail during holiday season are the overwhelmingly long lines at Guest and Customer Service promptly after Christmas. People waste no time in exchanging their unwanted gifts or wrong-size items to get something better or merchandise credit in return. You want to return things you’re never going you use, right? This is completely normal. What's frustrating are the people that try to return things that clearly weren’t purchased during the holiday season and who try to pass it off as new or unworn even though that greasy pizza isn't fooling anyone. These people definitely don’t make returns fun and are the primary reason that those lines you stand in never seem to move.
And, the mess. A constant stream of people means a constant, if not huge mess. We get it, it’s the holidays, but that doesn’t mean you can throw items around like you’re in your own home. Yes, it is our job to keep our stores clean and orderly, but that doesn’t give you the right to wreck our displays. Or maybe it does. I’m just tired of staying at work past midnight fixing everything only for it to end up the same way in a few hours.
These are only a few of the frustrations that retail workers face during the crazy holiday season. As retail workers, we know that this is our job and this is what we signed up for, but we--like everyone else--just need to complain about work every once and a while. But, no matter how crazy it gets, if you work with the right people, you just might survive to see January 1.
