Holiday Retail Rant

*This story was rejected by Vocal on the basis that it made assertions of personal beliefs. I can attest that there are a few personal beliefs involved, but this is a matter of fact, not fiction.

Many years of my life were spent working as a manager in retail stores. Much of that was in outdoor retail for a once well known chain.

I was drawn to outdoor retail because I love the outdoors. My first experience visiting one of the stores in this chain was simply amazing. It appeared that the staff had forgotten more than most people will ever know about the outdoors.

Even though they had superior knowledge and experience, they weren't full of themselves as most experts with specific, advanced skill sets become. Not only were they humble, but their passion and their desire to prepare people for safe, responsible and rewarding outdoor adventure drove them to share their passion.

I could see that by doing so, they were making a significant contribution. The more of an active, outdoor lifestyle that one leads, the happier and healthier they tend to be. In the process, people begin to understand the value of our natural world and the precious natural resources we must all share. I thought to myself that this is a great way for me to make my contribution.

I don’t remember when I began thinking this, but I felt that most people spend their lives using and consuming natural resources and give little if anything back. While we are here, this is something that we must find opportunities to do. You don’t need to change the world or save the planet, just find something you can do that makes life a little better for the people in your community and our world.

In the twenty or so years I’ve spent in the outdoor industry, I’ve introduced thousands of people to safe and responsible outdoor recreation and in doing so, helped improve the quality of their lives. It was never about the latest gadget or the lightest weight gear. The most important product was always the outdoor experience itself.

As noble as that all sounds, nothing could prepare me for working retail during the holidays, especially in the [United States]. In brackets because the states don't appear to be all that united these days. A lot of people seem to be in it for themselves and that’s reflected with clarity in the way many people conduct themselves around the holidays.

We’ve all heard people talk about mass consumerism and how that impacts the holiday season. According to several retail organizations, holiday sales can account for 25% or more of yearly revenue in several industries and there's no wonder why many manufacturers launch products at this time.

There’s an actual website called Black Friday Death Count which keeps a tally of people who were injured or died during the holiday madness. You might have seen security camera video on the news of a gate coming up, barely holding back a flood of insane people who end up trampling and killing some poor soul on the way into a store.

I’m here to tell you that it’s an actual thing. It happens every year and I never would have believed it until I was looking down the barrel of that shotgun myself.

One year, the company I was with decided that they would invest in Uggs. I’m sure you know what those are. Those shearling booties that were all the rage. Each of our stores were supplied with two full size runs in three different styles and we were instructed to stack them up on the sales floor for open-sell. Being an outdoor professional, I’m not sure how Uggs could be considered essential outdoor equipment but I imagine that the margin was too good to pass up.

I watched the undulating hordes at the gate, ready to storm the castle. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I barely finished digesting the Thanksgiving meal I had an hour ago. Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub, gotta go open a retail store on Thanksgiving?! What the hell was I thinking?

It takes a [special] kind of person to willingly put themself in harm's way and deal with throngs of holiday zombie shoppers. The word special in brackets because their decision to deal with the holiday madness brings their own sanity into question. I'm one of those people and one of my responsibilities as a retail manager was to find more of them.

Over the holiday meetings, you try your best to prepare the uninitiated for the chaos they were about to experience while the holiday retail veterans quietly wonder why they’re putting themselves through this all over again.

I would tell them that if they need to go to the bathroom, close the door and scream at the top of their lungs, no one would blame them. I told them that if they’re dealing with a particularly rude zombie, to pass them off to me. “That’s what I get paid the big bucks for.” Right.

The shifts that me and my supervisors worked were insane. Eight hours on, one hour sleeping on the office floor and then another six. I went out of my way to have a table in back with pizza, sandwiches and soda.

Thankfully, no one was injured in the Ugg Riot. Five pair were stolen though. One box had been concealed in a baby stroller and a few boxes had the shoes in them that the perpetrators wore into the store. There was simply no way to keep an eye on everyone. It was bad enough dealing with the holiday zombies, but we had to deal with the thieves as well and they impaired our ability to serve our actual customers.

The other offending product were North Face jackets. The North Face started out as a legit manufacturer of high quality mountain gear, but somewhere in the early 90’s… a well known performer wore North Face gear on stage and it became all the rage. I spent more time trying to thwart the theft of these jackets than I wanted to.

I remember standing in the men’s outerwear department asking a 'customer' who I'd witnessed trying to conceal merchandise in the past if he needed any help with anything. He said no. I remained there. He said “I said I didn’t need any help!”. My response was something like, well this is the department I’m scheduled to be in right now, so I’ll be right here if you have any questions.

I had to educate the local police on what the meth heads were doing. They would steal jackets from another one of our stores and try to return them to mine. Our return policy was such that if you didn’t have a receipt, you could get store credit providing you had a valid driver's license. If you go on Craigslist around the holidays, you will find people offering to buy store credit receipts for cash from specific stores.

They usually say that they’ll be on such and such a street corner between this and that hour on a specific day. They don’t mention this, but they pay pennies on the dollar. A one hundred dollar fleece North Face jacket will get you at least twenty dollars cash. Enough to get you your next fix. How do I know this, because I went into downtown Wilmington, Delaware and found one of these credit buyers.

Almost everything these thieves tried to return smelled like burnt popcorn. If you didn’t know, that’s what the residue of meth that you smoke out of a pipe leaves on everything in close proximity.

The garments they were trying to return reeked. After a while, I began telling people that I would not honor a return because our policy stated that items must be returned in the condition they were purchased unless they were defective. When they would argue with me, I’d tell them that those jackets certainly didn’t smell like that when they were purchased.

There are good people and bad people in this world and that’s all there is to it. There may be extenuating circumstances that led you to a life of crime, but what you decide to do is more often than not a conscious decision. I caught an old blue haired grandma concealing four packages of lithium AA batteries in her coat. When she realized that I was looking at her in disbelief, she handed them back and in a creaky old voice said, “Don’t be so surprised young man”. I escorted her out of the store.

One Black Friday, I was going a bit nuts trying to serve the needs of four customers simultaneously. It was crazy busy and I was just barely keeping my shit together. At the very moment I was explaining something to one of them, another person stepped in between us, cut off the other customer and began demanding that I go look for a jacket like this one, but in a larger size and a different color.

I told her as calmly as I could: “I don’t know if you noticed, but I was in the middle of helping another customer and…” She cut me off with “Do you know who I am?!”

Of course I recognized her, she was an anchor woman on the news at a local TV station.

I replied loudly, “Yes, I know who you are but I couldn’t care less. If you can find a little patience, you’ll receive the same high level of customer service that I try to give all my customers when I’m done with the ones I’m serving right now!”

All the customers around within earshot turned and clapped.

Every holiday, customers would ask my employees questions about products and refuse to believe their thoughtful, and accurate answers. Especially if that associate was female.

The customer would end up at the counter asking the same questions they asked my associate. Invariably, when they received much the same answer, they would say “Okay, I need to speak with your manager then.” Much to the chagrin of my superiors, I never wore a name tag that identified me as a manager for this very satisfying reason. A maneuver that I call the ‘Back Wrap Flip’.

I would tell the customer to wait a moment and I’ll go get him.

I’d spin around with my back to them for a moment, then I’d turn back to them and say “Hi, I’m Jaime the General Manager, how can I help?”

I thanked my customers for their patronage this time of year with a warm “Happy Holidays to you and your family”. Many of them would correct me by saying “NO, Merry Christmas!” I never understood how one might believe that their religion is the only one that celebrates around this time.

Recently, I made the acquaintance of a guy from India. He is working in the US with a company in my town on a short term assignment. He procured a bicycle and gets around town on it, but he needed to go to a clinic because he has asthma and ran out of inhalers. I was happy to drive him to the clinic and then to a CVS Pharmacy to get his prescription filled.

We sat in a Starbucks inside a Target while waiting for the CVS which was also inside the Target store to fill the script. All around us were those holiday zombies, rushing about in the frenzied way they do. My friend shared that the holidays in India don’t look anything like this and I shared with him how glad I was that I no longer work the holiday retail season.

The moral of the story is to have patience and treat the folks who work the retail holiday season with some respect. Dealing with that many people and doing the best they can to serve their needs can be incredibly stressful.