This is as festive as I get
Christmas is about to hit me in the face like a festive baseball bat with nails of good tiding and great joy driven through it. Despite the massive penetration that Christmas has into day-to-day life, I've been fairly well insulated from the holiday season so far. I have not decorated my home, the office is bare of all Christmas cheer, and I avoid any and all Christmas music like vampires avoid sunlight. However, I am about to fly home where I go from the green lawns of Ottawa and my Noel-proof environment to three feet of snow and high levels of holiday spirit. I will likely have an aneurysm from the shock of it.
Before I'm labeled as a Scrooge/Grinch hybrid monster that can hate Christmas with twice the efficiency of a sociopathic German atheist I want to set the record straight on this. For the first 18 years of my life I spent every winter being bombarded with holiday cheer starting in mid-October and running all the way into late January. My mother played Christmas music 24/7 in our house, there were wreaths on every door and flocking in places that I never thought one could flock. Preparation for Christmas was an all-consuming event. Getting out of the house offered no reprieve; high school is an institutionalized festive machine, because amping up the kids about the holidays means not teaching, which everyone can get behind. All my friends has similarly festive parents, so there was no relief there either. However, what cultivated my hatred for the holiday season was working in a grocery store.
The grocery store is a place where all the general hustle, bustle, stress, anxiety, and pressure of the holiday season that generally weighs on people is concentrated, condensed, and focused into a hard, sharp, festive-tipped spear and rammed between your ribs. First, it's a hellish time to sell food. Everyone goes nuts cooking elaborate and senselessly massive meals for family, friends, and strangers, meaning that they need to buy an inordinate amount of food. That means we're ridiculously busy. Of course, we also have to do stupid things like sell Mandarin oranges during this time of the year. This is problematic. I can tell you from personal experience that an otherwise intelligent person's IQ will drop at least 40 points upon entering a grocery store. If they encounter Mandarin oranges, it drops directly to zero. Nothing on the face of the earth makes people more stupid than Mandarin oranges. People become totally incapable of understanding basic concepts when they are set around Mandarin oranges. Let me illustrate:
Customer - "How much are the oranges?"
Me - "$5.99 a case for the Japanese, $3.99 for the Chinese."
Customer - "Which is which?"
Me - "The ones that say 'Japanese' are Japanese and the ones that say 'Chinese' are Chinese."
Customer - "What's the difference?"
Me - "One is from Japan and one is from China."
Customer - "Why are they different prices?"
Me - "Because people say the Japanese oranges are better."
Customer - "Can I get the Japanese for the same price as the Chinese?"
Me - "No."
Customer - "Why not?"
Me - "Because it undermines the entire capitalist system."
Customer - "But they're both oranges."
Me - "Sir, you come in here every day and purchase things for the posted price without complaint. Yet, upon seeing these oranges something inside your brain has told you that the laws governing grocery stores that apply every other day to every other product do not function here. I would like to remind you that there are signs placed on the product. These signs indicate the price of said product, and often give more information about it, like where the product is from. Sir, I assure you that if you just pretend that it is not Christmas and these are not Mandarin oranges that you will be able to purchase them and everything will be alright, but you need to trust me on this."
Customer - "So how much are these again?"
What I discovered after years of research is that Mandarin oranges give off waves of paranoia and greed that people who do not wear protective green staff aprons have no defense against. Humans are totally incapable of approaching a box of mandarin oranges and trusting anything about it. They do not trust the price and will attempt to haggle:
"No, you do not get a deal if you buy six boxes. Yes, I do understand that is a lot of oranges and frankly I fear for your health. No, asking me again will not change my mind. Sir, you have now asked me for a fourth time and if I am inclined to do anything it is raise the price as a form of punishment."
They do not trust the quality of the oranges and will dig through the boxes with their dirty, claw-like hands:
"Ma'am, I have personally inspected every one of those boxes. It took hours. I had to do it in our cooler and I was very cold. It was perhaps the most horrible experience of my life. You opening the box is not only forbidden by the store, it is rude and spreads whatever infections I am sure that you carry. What you are doing not only invalidates my job, it creates more work for me cleaning up after you. I quite sincerely wish to murder you."
And they will regularly try to stuff their boxes, often with oranges of the more expensive variety, which they somehow feel is not theft:
"Sir, put down the box and run. I am about to hunt you for sport as if you were an animal. You have no one to blame for this but yourself."
Combine the horrid state of humanity that I had to interact with on a daily basis, combined with the God-awful country-music Christmas carols that were played on the store radio all day and I hope you can begin to understand why I grew to fear and loathe the holiday season. I have been so over-exposed to the holiday season, and so embittered humanity being at its worst during the most wonderful time of the year, that I've needed the last four years to purge the pent-up holiday angst. I may yet need a few more.
And I just found out that my contract isn't being renewed for the new year so come January I am officially unemployed.
Happy Holidays everyone!!
Before I'm labeled as a Scrooge/Grinch hybrid monster that can hate Christmas with twice the efficiency of a sociopathic German atheist I want to set the record straight on this. For the first 18 years of my life I spent every winter being bombarded with holiday cheer starting in mid-October and running all the way into late January. My mother played Christmas music 24/7 in our house, there were wreaths on every door and flocking in places that I never thought one could flock. Preparation for Christmas was an all-consuming event. Getting out of the house offered no reprieve; high school is an institutionalized festive machine, because amping up the kids about the holidays means not teaching, which everyone can get behind. All my friends has similarly festive parents, so there was no relief there either. However, what cultivated my hatred for the holiday season was working in a grocery store.
The grocery store is a place where all the general hustle, bustle, stress, anxiety, and pressure of the holiday season that generally weighs on people is concentrated, condensed, and focused into a hard, sharp, festive-tipped spear and rammed between your ribs. First, it's a hellish time to sell food. Everyone goes nuts cooking elaborate and senselessly massive meals for family, friends, and strangers, meaning that they need to buy an inordinate amount of food. That means we're ridiculously busy. Of course, we also have to do stupid things like sell Mandarin oranges during this time of the year. This is problematic. I can tell you from personal experience that an otherwise intelligent person's IQ will drop at least 40 points upon entering a grocery store. If they encounter Mandarin oranges, it drops directly to zero. Nothing on the face of the earth makes people more stupid than Mandarin oranges. People become totally incapable of understanding basic concepts when they are set around Mandarin oranges. Let me illustrate:
Customer - "How much are the oranges?"
Me - "$5.99 a case for the Japanese, $3.99 for the Chinese."
Customer - "Which is which?"
Me - "The ones that say 'Japanese' are Japanese and the ones that say 'Chinese' are Chinese."
Customer - "What's the difference?"
Me - "One is from Japan and one is from China."
Customer - "Why are they different prices?"
Me - "Because people say the Japanese oranges are better."
Customer - "Can I get the Japanese for the same price as the Chinese?"
Me - "No."
Customer - "Why not?"
Me - "Because it undermines the entire capitalist system."
Customer - "But they're both oranges."
Me - "Sir, you come in here every day and purchase things for the posted price without complaint. Yet, upon seeing these oranges something inside your brain has told you that the laws governing grocery stores that apply every other day to every other product do not function here. I would like to remind you that there are signs placed on the product. These signs indicate the price of said product, and often give more information about it, like where the product is from. Sir, I assure you that if you just pretend that it is not Christmas and these are not Mandarin oranges that you will be able to purchase them and everything will be alright, but you need to trust me on this."
Customer - "So how much are these again?"
What I discovered after years of research is that Mandarin oranges give off waves of paranoia and greed that people who do not wear protective green staff aprons have no defense against. Humans are totally incapable of approaching a box of mandarin oranges and trusting anything about it. They do not trust the price and will attempt to haggle:
"No, you do not get a deal if you buy six boxes. Yes, I do understand that is a lot of oranges and frankly I fear for your health. No, asking me again will not change my mind. Sir, you have now asked me for a fourth time and if I am inclined to do anything it is raise the price as a form of punishment."
They do not trust the quality of the oranges and will dig through the boxes with their dirty, claw-like hands:
"Ma'am, I have personally inspected every one of those boxes. It took hours. I had to do it in our cooler and I was very cold. It was perhaps the most horrible experience of my life. You opening the box is not only forbidden by the store, it is rude and spreads whatever infections I am sure that you carry. What you are doing not only invalidates my job, it creates more work for me cleaning up after you. I quite sincerely wish to murder you."
And they will regularly try to stuff their boxes, often with oranges of the more expensive variety, which they somehow feel is not theft:
"Sir, put down the box and run. I am about to hunt you for sport as if you were an animal. You have no one to blame for this but yourself."
Combine the horrid state of humanity that I had to interact with on a daily basis, combined with the God-awful country-music Christmas carols that were played on the store radio all day and I hope you can begin to understand why I grew to fear and loathe the holiday season. I have been so over-exposed to the holiday season, and so embittered humanity being at its worst during the most wonderful time of the year, that I've needed the last four years to purge the pent-up holiday angst. I may yet need a few more.
And I just found out that my contract isn't being renewed for the new year so come January I am officially unemployed.
Happy Holidays everyone!!
posted by B-Boy Nothing at 9:39 AM
2 Comments:
And this is a perfect illustration of why I will forever avoid a job involving customer service/interaction of any description.
Let's hear it for the warehouse!
When did you work at a grocery store? Like 6 years ago?
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