November 26, 2011

Decorating for the holidays (and bonus video)

After years of my wife politely asking me, I finally succumbed and put up some Christmas lights on the house.  This time of year I tend to get pretty "bah humbug" about decorating for the holidays.  The few years I spent working in Fred Meyer did that to me.

When I was at Freddy's, the "fun" started right around Thanksgiving when we got our load of Christmas trees.  We'd be told when the truck should arrive, but it never came when it was scheduled.  I'm not talking off by a few hours, but on the wrong day.  Once it arrived at 2 PM on Thanksgiving....when the store closes at 4:30 PM.  Trying to unload the truck in a hurry, invariably while wearing inappropriate clothing (ie, nothing worthwhile for the cold and dirty job), tends to put one in a bad mood.

Then there were the artificial trees.  We had to assemble one of each tree, fluff it, and set it up.  The trees would get moved around a bit, and more than once some idiot would sell the display tree instead of the boxed tree, which meant I had to set up a new tree.  Fluffing the trees were the worst because it just tore up your dry skin.  Usually the cashiers had to do thew initial set of trees, and they had a decent amount of time to do it, so that part wasn't so bad.

During the holiday sales season, which realistically ran from just before Thanksgiving to just after Christmas, we all had to work  six days a week and my normal 1:30 PM to 11:30 PM shift had me there until 2 or 3 AM.  The overtime was pretty good, so I'm not complaining about the work, but to come home and do some of the same things was not my cup of eggnog.

I'll freely admit that this made me a bit of a dick at home.  I had no problems with the majority of Christmas, I just didn't want to have anything to do with decorating.

Time heals all wounds.  I wonder if I'll put up the fake tree tomorrow or wait until next week.

As a bonus: I had to share this YouTube video of one of the favorite shows I'm not watching (no cable TV or HD antenna set up): Community.  I have seen some shows and cannot wait to see it on Netflix.  The writing is smart and they like to put in Easter Eggs here and there.  Someone much quicker than I am noticed one and put it online.  It is a short video of less than 20 seconds.  Enjoy.


1 comment:

Dan said...

I love that show!!! I noticed him walk by, and missed the joke, but I knew something witty happened. Did you see the dice throw episode, with the six different timelines? SO AWESOME.