Starting the day right after Thanksgiving, everybody's mind is set on one thing: Shopping. People young and old wake up early in the morning to start their holiday shopping. Everyone is looking for the perfect gift for their family and friends. But nobody cares to think of what the employees at their favorite stores think and feel. Shoppers just come inside and turn the store upside down.
As an employee at a popular retail store, I feel that the holiday shopping outside the home should be stopped. I have noticed that everyone's attitude changes for the worse and not the better during this season. For example, this past month I saw a neighbor of mine fighting with another woman over a $10 'NERF' football. This football happened to be the last one left. On any other Saturday, one of the two women would give up the football and try to find something else.
Valued Customer
A Shoppers Drug Mart store on Dupont Street in Tor...
English: I, Myke Waddy took this photo, Sussex, Ne...But during this season all they want to do is rip each others head off for the ball.
For the holidays, mostly every store changes their store hours. Instead of opening at a decent time in the morning, 10am, throughout the week most stores open as early at 6am and close at 11pm. Even on Sunday "the day of rest," most stores change their hours. Employers have to wake up even earlier and stay even later, to try to clean up the mess that was left behind. You would think on the weekend people would like to sleep in late because they wake up early during the week to go to their job, but instead they wake up early and head out the door.
Once the first shopper sets foot into the store, the place becomes a mess. Not thinking of the hard effort put into cleaning the night before to get every shirt folded and every other item back on the shelf neatly, the customer, as if they are a little kid touches every single thing. Shirts are tossed into one big pile on each table, and everything seems to be found on the floor once again. Also in the fitting rooms, shoppers try on every item they know they aren't going to fit into, and don't bother to put anything back where they found it. When the workers start to pick up the mess and hang what was left behind, for some odd reason there are always at least 5shirts without any hangers.
During this season, when the lines seem to never end, so does the complaining. Workers try to help every customer to get what they want to make their shopping experience at the store easier. The politeness from the worker is never returned by the customer. The customer doesn't realize that they may not find what they are looking for the day before Christmas. They argue with the employees that there should be a larger variety of sizes, colors and more in stock. Shoppers also argue with the price of each item. When they see the "50% off" sign on the clearance rack labeled "CLEARANCE," they think the entire store is 50%off.
the only possible solution to all of these problems, for not only the employee but also the shopper, is to shop on the internet. Not only can a customer sleep late on the weekend, but they can also stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning to finish their shopping. There will be no lines to wait on and no mess to scurry through. Every shopper will be able to find what they are looking for while sitting in the comfort of their home.
But by the time other people will start seeing the same views as I do, I will probably not be working in retail anymore and complaining about every shopper that walks through the door. Instead I will be the shopper waking up early the day before Christmas because I forgot to get my mother a gift.
Shopper
English: "A Xmas Shopper" (postcard)
English: A shopper in a Duane Reade aisle.