Exhausted. Working on Christmas Eve is absolutely crazy. Thanksgiving Eve had nothing on what happened today. Long lines, bad attitudes, shoplifters and giant orders is the theme of this work day.
Even with every checkstand open, the lines were contorting to wherever there was space on the floor. Mostly going towards the aisles and the end checkstands such as #1 and #6 were wrapping around the water display and magazine racks. No one was leaving, regardless of how long the lines were.
Many customers were irritated with the long lines. There wasn’t much we could have done because every checkstand was open. One guy who was annoy of line fiasco, took his aggression out on me as I was checking out another customer, “You guys need more checkers!” “Sir, all the checkstands are open.” I said hoping to diffuse the situation. “Then you need more checkstands!” Yeah… give us a second while we put some cardboard together and get that going.
With the busy day, shoplifters were lurking. If people were buying shopping cart full of stuff then shoplifters are stealing shopping carts full of stuff. We saw a cart by itself loaded with laundry detergent, diapers, steaks, turkeys, padded with bags of chips on top. We waiting til the owner of the cart came back because we wasn’t sure if they were shoplifters. Well this couple pushed this cart towards the door and we stopped them and asked them if they paid for it. “Uhh yeah.” “Oh do you have the receipt?” I asked, sarcastically. They panicky checked their pockets as I’m slowing pulling their cart away. “Don’t have it.” The man says while looking down. “Aww.. no receipt, no diapers.” I sarcastically said again.
I’m astonish with why shoppers still do things at the last minute. I understand if its a few things that are needed to be picked up but a whole shopping cart of stuff? It was mad, large orders of $100 dollars or more were coming in one after another. The largest total I had for the day was $620 dollars! That’s 3 shopping carts full of stuff! Don’t get me wrong, I happy that people are coming to our store but this is crazy, it happens every year. We close at 7 PM but we ended up closing at 7:40 PM. I made several announcements counting down the minutes and even with the closing one, people ignored it and continued shopping. I made another closing announcement and one said, “Can we get out still? I thought he was joking but he looked serious as he was waiting for an answer. I pointed toward the double doors and he ran out. He ran. With the door closed, people outside were trying to sneak through the doors.
Closing up, I walked out to parking lot towards my safe haven, the lone car in lot. As I was warming up my car. I see a van pull up in front of the store with a girl running at the door and put her face against the windows looking to see if anyone would let her in. Traumatized by Christmas Eve, I took a deep breath and drove home.
