<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">Hee!Hee!Hee! This is why I start buying gifts in August and am finished by the end of November.</font>

http://www.canoe.ca/LifewiseHolidayF...yhell-sun.html

Hell hath no fury like a driver scorned. Take mall parking lots, for example. Last week I witnessed two mothers screaming profanities at one another over a prized parking spot. Tempers flared, taunts flew and finger pointing followed -- as their young children looked on bewildered and frightened.

Aaahhh, the season of comfort and joy has arrived -- along with festering anger and impatience, escalating stress, elevated blood pressure, racing heart rates and flaring ulcers.

[ 12-16-2003, 11:22 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

Believe me the worst is yet to come
and having a part-time job in retail i truly know fear
although we tend to have more staff on at one time and there are many more customers and it is usually chaos so it is easier to get away with things.

I used to work Loss Prevention in retail. I feel your pain. :(

Yep, everyone gets caught up in the Griswald mentality (see National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to see what I am talking about). They have to fight each other over the few meager resources, so that they can get all of the stuff they want so that their holiday can be "perfect". Maybe if they spent half of time fighting each other for the limited resources and spent that extra time with their families, they would realize that they don't need all of that extra stuff. I actually had to break up a physical catfight between two mothers (with their kids sitting their screaming and crying) over a Tickle Me Elmo. And while they were fighting over the damn thing, someone just snuck up and grabbed it. So neither of them got it. It's also the biggest crime season (they know the staff is overtaxed with all of the extra people, so they make sure to come in and clean out as much as they can take).

I don't drive myself crazy getting gifts. I usually end up getting gift certificates (less special, but they can get whatever they want after the craziness dies down).

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">On the topic of Holiday Hell, tiss also the season for increased sucicides.

I have to take a train (LRT) home everyday but today I was severly delayed as someone decided decide to jump off a platform in front of the train. People get depressed during the holiday season as it is usually also a time that companies lay people off as well as having feelings of lonelyness being away from family. Many companies lay people off as it is close to year end and they didn't do as well as they would have liked so time for slashes. When they do this just before the holiday it is like, "Merry Christmas and by the way your fired, hava a nice day". </font>

I used to work for a company that has what I refer to as the annual Christmas layoffs.

For the last four years, they've laid people off in December as they realize the year isn't going to turn out as nicely as they had hoped. I won the prize two years ago... one of the best things that ever happened to me. I've been much better off since.

'Course, it took me a day to figure out I was laid off... [img]smile.gif[/img]