Holiday Horrors

This entry explains why the retail world drives the proverbial nail in the Christmahaunakwanzaka coffin.

Or rather: why the retail world drives the proverbial nail in my Christmahaunakwanzaka coffin.





CURRENT MUSIC:
Jason Hayes - "Elwynn Forest"
World of Warcraft Soundtrack

Ahh, Elywnn Forest... a lot of fond, in-game memories here. Exploring the immediate lands outside Stormwind City as a young Human Rogue just learning the ways of Azeroth - where having one piece of gold made you think you were super-rich and having two bags was a blessing. It was nice, serene, and bountiful with life. (Then again, not many people have these memories because they play for the other side... y'know, because unless you were Tauren, there was nothing but deserts, decrepit cities and recently-marred lands.)

What's funny is that if you're decently knowledgeable in pop culture (South Park specifically in this case), you've already seen the lush forests of Elwynn without actually knowing it. The opening and closing scenes of "Make Love, Not Warcraft" take place in a town called Goldshire, the primary crossroads center of Elwynn Forest.

I have this track going because as it's my day off, I wanted something relaxing to help start me off. As I began playing my "Easy Listening" playlist, this track popped up. Shame it had to be cloudy (and raining) today - this would've been nice to hear while strolling through the woods.


Bear McCreary - "Apocalypse, Part I"
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan & Razor Original Soundtrack

Now that I'm relaxed and ready to type a bunch of things out, it's time to get the gears grinding at a work pace. That means it's time for something ethnic, heavy, and aurally damning. By that last part, I mean "music that says '(Humanity:) you're frakked' and 'taking care of business' all at once" - and unless you've done work related to television or movie scores, that's kind of hard to pull off.

Enter "Apocalypse, Part I," a musical piece from Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Bear McCreary combines a heavy-driven rock guitar riff and the wailing harmonics of an electric violin with the ethnic sounds of pulsing taiko and a singing duduk. All-around apocalyptic ambiance fills the air as this track plays throughout its six-and-a-half minutes of music. Just imagine the entire Cylon fleet suddenly jumping into orbit over each of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, nuking each of them (with the more populated areas receiving multiple warheads), and then landing ground forces to systematically exterminate any survivors.

Can you picture the swath of destruction and radiation the toasters are leaving behind? Yes? Good. Now have "Apocalypse, Part I" in the background as you picture that whole scene. Genocide never rocked out so well.





Hello, everyone. Josh here with a pretty nice update for y'all, because on a (second) day off, just about anything is possible. Well, except for impossible dreams like world peace... or something even more far-fetched like owning a Farfetch'd. Or, to be more in tune with current events: me enjoying Christmas.

Retail © Norm Feuti

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of Christmas. My hatred for the holiday is so well-known and versed with those I hang out with and/or work with that I'm the resident Grinch. It all stems from a lot of things:

• not giving a flying frak about the meaning (original or contrived) of Christmas
• not getting along with my family all that well because I was/am different
• not receiving enough presents during the holidays while my relatives around me got a metric crapton by comparison

Granted, all of those reasons sounded way too materialistic and heartless, but I'm like that. When you live through my life, it's not at all surprising, but to those uneducated about my past, this may seem to be just... black-hearted. Now I'm not saying that I blame my upbringing for how I am, nor am I saying that I had absolutely zero control and all of these events just "happened" to me. I chose to live my life how I wanted (at least after I learned what mental freedom was).

Regardless of how I spent my Christmases, those awful experiences would give way to a new form of "Christmas Hell" - a form known to the retail world as "fourth quarter."

"Hell is other people."
Jean-Paul Sartre (No Exit)

For those of you who have worked in retail for a significant amount of time - either in the (not-so-)distant past or the ever-hounding present - you know this term all too well. For those of you who don't (or just don't pay attention to virtually anything): imagine the average 52 weeks of a year. Corporations and governments (basically anyone trying to make money) pick a starting month and then proceed to divide the 52 weeks into quarters at 13 each.

Now, for a good portion of American retailers, January is the starting month (as it's the most sensible option to start at), meaning for those businesses, a breakdown of the fiscal year would roughly look like the following:

• January - March: First Quarter
• April - June: Second Quarter
• July - September: Third Quarter
• October - December: Fourth Quarter

(Author's Note: As mentioned before, other companies and systems here and elsewhere operate under different fiscal year systems. As such, for the sake of brevity, the rest of this entry will operate on the assumption that October, November, and December are the months that constitute the fourth quarter. )

Using this mindset, it's easy to figure out where sales will be most likely no matter the business. For example, people who work at gym-related companies will probably notice a large chunk of sales during the first quarter due to many people slapping "lose weight" onto their newly-made New Year's resolutions. Pool and spa businesses can expect a rise in profits during the second quarter as people prepare for a leisurely summer. Office and school suppliers get a spike in sales during the third quarter because every kid across the nation is preparing for school and absolutely "needs" a(n) [insert current fad] backpack and matching notebook.

That leaves the fourth quarter without an example, but I don't need one to show you the distraught chaos of it. Since a grand portion of America practices some kind of Christmahaunakwanzaka holiday at the end of the year, they're going to need (awesome) gifts to throw at other people at the tail end of December. Just visit any general merchandise reseller and you will get to experience the consumer side of the fourth quarter.

If you're one of the few who closed Black Friday, there's a brief moment in time after the store closes that you realize that you were virtually on autopilot the entire evening. You can tell because out of nowhere, all the things you need to do in a short amount of time suddenly become visible.

Now at this point of the spiel some of you are probably wondering if I went off on a tangent. I did, but at the same time, I brought us full circle and back to my (petty) hatred of the winter holidays. Fourth quarter is the reason why so many retail workers (myself included) hate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and/or any other winter holiday commonly associated with gift-giving.

People just looooove to leave messes. Last I checked, my store position was written down as "Electronics Team Trainer," not "Person Who Cleans Up After Messy Frakkers."
(Getting déjà vu from this photo?)

It seems that people have this urge to rip the store apart and rearrange the merchandise to their liking. Target culture has us refer to our customers as "guests" in an effort to make them feel more comfortable and relaxed about shopping in our store (which supposedly leads to better profits... somehow). However, the "guests" have taken the term to mean "you can treat this place like your own house." That doesn't bode well for us.

"Ew. This tastes nasty. I'm just going to leave it here."

Since the guests believe that they can just relax and treat the store like home, the worst of the messy people decide to take that to the next level. While seeing giant messes like what I've pictured above is one thing, this part is so grotesque that it deserves its own section.

"After an hour's worth of searching, I'm just going to go ahead and put the 600+ gift bags I don't want all over the place after I find the one I wanted that was sitting in plain sight."

You know what I want to say after seeing an aisle like this?

Tumblr has been quite resourceful in venting my stress lately. The latest stress-reducer I found?
"Fuck Yeah Retail Robin"

THIS. So frakking true.

Also, the intelligence of some guests we run into are at levels so low they make vegetables look smart. No, I'm not talking about people who have unfortunately been reduced to a vegetative state. I'm talking about vegetables. Y'know... corn, carrots, peas - and to those people who were misinformed: pizza.

I mean, come on!

You know: those kinds of people. The ones who stare quizzically at me for about thirty seconds and then ask me the dreaded "Do you work here?" The ones who can't seem to comprehend the math formula "sale + popular item = exceedingly high chance that said item is sold out." The ones who can take any bright and sunny day and mutate it into a black and icy one. The ones I'm writing a bloody manifesto for.

Now while it can easily be said that all of the above stress factors are encountered on a daily basis, said stress factors actually increase ten-fold (at the very least) during the fourth quarter. This factor actually changes to about fifty-fold if the person in question has never experienced fourth quarter working in the retail world. After living through my first winter holiday in retail (back in the ancient time of 2008), I swore that I wouldn't like Christmas again. Sure enough, I still don't - it's number four on my (infamous) hate list.





But enough of me ranting. You probably want something happy to elevate your emotions after reading that negativity-filled spiel, so here: a Nyan Cat wallpaper.

No idea where I got this, but hey - it's awesome.

So, until the 'morrow, everyone! Take care, and enjoy the holidays - you know I won't!