December 26, 2014

One Door Closes, Another Door Opens. One Door Closes, Another Door Opens. One Door Closes, Another Door Opens.
(Me, Eating My Way Through a Chocolate Advent Calendar)

It was finally time to enjoy holiday music.

Nothing like working retail to give you a real love/hate relationship with holidays. I love the money we pull in at the store—but the wall to wall music everywhere you shop is enough to make you nuts. (Seriously. If I hear "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" one more time, I'm going to lose it.)

W-E-C-H starts their holiday music way too early in my opinion. Every year they trumpet a special "grant" from Mid-Atlantic Electrical. They thank MAE every other song, so I know that "grant" falls under the advertising budget. They start at 6am on Thanksgiving: top of the hour, every hour, they play Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant." Rock and roll (plus news, weather, and sports) fills out the other 40 minutes.

Black Friday, 6AM: 24/7 holiday music, 99% Christmas, 1% "other"—non-stop until midnight December 24/25. Then back to rock and roll. So…by the time I want to hear it, they shut up. Thanks. (Good thing I have CDs.)

At the store we stick with NPR and classical music, except for Christmas Eve and the day after. Beyond that, if you want to listen to holiday music, plug in your earbuds, bud.

We do close for a few holidays—Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, because, frankly, they are big food holidays. Hello! Plus when we were open on those days, the number of customers never went above 6. Employees get a slew of paid floating holidays—you want Labor Day or Groundhog Day off, you're welcome to it so long as you get your name on the calendar early enough. Over the years I've gotten occasional requests for assorted religious holidays, but most of the other days get shrugged off. People would rather lump them with their two weeks or more vacation time. Plus we have elastic hours, closing early or opening late if need be, so it pays to call first or check the website.

The day after Christmas is one such day. We open at 1PM because there a lot of early sales out there that I don't want to miss! We have a one week special through New Years, too—you can trade unwanted gift cards for the same amount of trade credit. They were then offered to employees as freebie bonuses.

The whole family trucked in, including Suzy. (She had a Victoria's Secret card she wanted to trade.) Within an hour, we had a dozen employees and customers were starting to trickle in.

Ducky had been in the far end of the store, hunting (in vain) for a particular book of international fables illustrated by Arthur Rackham. He smiled at the crowd, most of whom he knew well. "Happy Boxing Day!" he sang out.

There was a sea of blank looks, plus a few nods. "Boxing Day?" Marci asked. As the youngest member of the staff, I wasn't surprised she didn't recognize the term.

"Boxing Day is the day after Christmas," Ducky explained. "Gifts are 'boxed up' for the poor—or, in more affluent households, gifts are given to servants and employees."

Chanda laughed roundly. "You might call the day after Christmas 'Boxing Day,' but the day after Christmas is the same as the day after Easter, the day after Valentine's Day, and the day after Halloween."

Ducky looked baffled. "I've never heard of the day after all of those holidays as another specific holiday. What is it?"

From around him came a raucous chorus: "HALF PRICE CHOCLATE DAY!"