I shouldn’t have to hate Christmas.
Not one day after writing about how I would take the Christmas season in stride, I was reminded that my place of work gives us absolutely no hours to fairly balance workload and accommodate the making of sales that are so important to their world. (We’ve only made $3000 so far this week? Goodness, me! I am so selfish, making a teensy fraction of that!) There should be some kind of mandatory free access to mental health help that goes along with working with the public. I enjoy my job most of the time, enough to not run screaming from it at least. This time of year, people are rude, messy, obnoxious, and nobody wants help, yet they are perfectly okay with destroying all the work my coworkers and I have dedicated 8 hours to in the span of about 80 seconds.
I’m not exaggerating.
I realize everyone is stressed. It’s the holidays, and what ever will you purchase for your loved ones to outshine last year’s performance?! I get it. In a commercial world, people expect expensive gifts. (Well, you don’t have to give them, for one, but that’s a theory for another day.) I realize that you’re going into debt for a smile on someone’s face that they could just as easily have shown you if you had an astute sense of humour. We’re not all clever though. So, GIFTS GIFTS GIFTS! I know, we’re all in trouble this time of year.
So why are so many of us so OK with making the holidays miserable for everyone else?
This year, let’s all just get along. Because once upon a time, that’s what the holidays were about; coming together as a family of people, even those who aren’t part of your actual family, and uniting for peace on earth. That’s what I’m told, anyway, because I am hard-pressed to remember a time when the entire season reeked of anything other than advertisements and credit card bills. Let’s make this holiday season one to remember. Be a NICE PERSON. At my job, I have to be nice no matter how mean you are to me, so the very least you can do is have a bit of respect for those like me who have to deal with about 1000 Christmas-stressed people per day. I have mega-bills too. And family. And strife; LORD, the strife! Let’s all help each other out this year and BE NICE.
We will all be better for it.
