Holiday Shopping

I got my hair cut on Friday.  I am in a growing out phase so I just had her trip the split ends off and then lengthen the layers.  I talked with her about going back to wearing bangs but I don’t know.  She told me to bring in photos of examples of bangs I like.  The only thing is, I have thick wavy hair with a mind of its own and the bangs I tend to like in photos are stick straight and wispy.  So, I don’t know.  I like the haircut though.

Last night was our work holiday party.  It was held at a swanky restaurant on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.  There wasn’t a presentation or any fanfare of any kind.  It was just drinks and appetizers followed by a nice meal and a dessert of crème brule.  It was nice.  The big bosses were in town and I actually got to converse with my boss’s boss for quite a while.  I learned a lot about her and found her to be a nice conversationalist.  We have a much smaller group and the tone was a bit on the somber side because we were missing my boss due to the death of her mother in law.  However, it’s always nice to get out with the co-workers in a neutral space and talk about stuff other than work.

Seven of us are leaving at 11 today to go to my boss’s mother-in-law’s memorial service.  It is just so sad.  She died with little health insurance and no life insurance.  We are chipping in for a memorial for the family.  It is just going to be very sad.

As part of the Holidailies writing exercise:  "Tell us your favorite shopping-mall horror story."  I don’t have a horror story that involves me shopping for the holidays.  However, I worked in retail long enough to have several horror stories of people doing the shopping.  They all pretty much have the same theme; customer comes in looking for something particular (usually just days or minutes before Christmas), we don’t have it or we don’t have enough of it, customer gets angry and blames us for ruining their Christmas.  This happened at the country furnishings store when a woman was looking for chair pads for her dining room chairs.  We had less than the amount she needed in one particular pattern and could order the rst but it was the day before Christmas Eve and the new ones would not arrive before Christmas.  She was livid.  You would think we were clubbing baby seals right in front of her by the way she was ranting about injustice and inconvenience. 

Then there was the mother who brought her children in for Christmas portraits at the department store portrait studio where I was a photographer.  Again, it was just 2 or 3 days before Christmas and she expected to get her photos back and into cards prior to Christmas and was angry and upset when we informed her the day her portraits would arrive was 2 days AFTER Christmas. 

The worst stories came from when I worked as a customer service rep for American Girl.  This is a popular catalog company specializing in dolls and toys for girls between the ages of 7 and 12.  At the time I worked there, there were no physical stores at all so the only way to get any products was to order them from our catalog.  It wasn’t unusual for extremely popular items to sell out before December 1^st and be backordered until after Christmas.  I remember one mother who called the week before Christmas.  Almost every item on her list was out of stock and backordered.  She became irate and verbally abusive.  She blamed me personally for ruining her daughter’s Christmas.  She got to a point where she accused me of lying to her about the items being out of stock just to spite her.  I ended up transferring her to my supervisor.  That was the worst of it.  What’s you worst holiday shopping story?