Hot Chocolate and Cookies, Yum

I am done with aiding Christmas shoppers in their frantic state of manic "holy moly I haven't even bought a single gift and only have TWO shopping days left!" gift grabbing. I luckily am not on the work schedule until 6pm on the 26th so I have relocated myself to B-town for Merry Ho-Ho festivities. In fact, I've been here for about an hour and am half way watching White Christmas with Dad. It's great, I walked in the door and had hot chocolate waiting for me! I should totally come home more often.

My drive down was a breeze, though without any breeze as far as I could tell. I took my newly found short-cut to the 166 (saves me about 8 miles by not driving east to the 99) and I barely saw anyone until I got to 101. But even on the 101 there wasn't as much traffic as I expected. Maybe everyone was over at the mall and Best Buy shopping center stressing out and driving store employees batty with their silly questions. "Do you have more of the big gift baskets with all the cool Bath & Body Works stuff in it?" "Why yes we do have more of the really cool gift baskets but decided to hide them in the back since empty displays look so nice and we thought it'd be fun to see you stress out..." I understand why they ask but when half the tables of the special items and gift baskets in the store are very bare, you gotta assume that it's for a reason. We have at least ten people working and only five registers so whoever isn't working the registers is filling displays as quickly as possible, if we have the product left. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind answering customer's questions and helping them find something that suits their needs but there are only so many times that I can say "yes, all the items on the table that says 50% Off are in fact, 50% off."

Yesterday when I was working the sales floor (I've mainly been at the register) I had a lady asking me if we had any gift bags for sale. I pointed out our large selection of bags and boxes which were 50% off and she turned to me, winked, and said "you can give these to me for free?" Uh, sorry miss fancy designer (non-knock-off) purse, you can't afford a bag that is not on sale for 50 cents!? Even I can spring for a fifty cent bag! Then she asks if we have tissue paper and I told her that we did (we use it to wrap breakables) and could give her a few sheets if she needed it. I ended up helping at the register when she came up to pay and she proceeded to ask again if I would give her the gift boxes for free, the equivalent of three packs of tissue for free, a roll or our ribbon (we use it when we gift wrap items in cellophane) for free, and the expensive item that's barcode isn't scanning for free. Each time she winks at me (not like a kidding wink, but a I won't tell if you hook me up wink) when asking and leans in a little bit in anticipation of my answer. Which of course, was a (very forced) polite 'no' each time. I mean, if she'd just joked once that the item that won't scan is free I'd have laughed and joked back, but the persistent attempting to score free merchandise really irked me.

I'm glad that I finished my Christmas shopping early. Though I still had to give myself an extra 15-20 minutes just to find a parking space when going to work. It took me 10 minutes one day to get from the road the mall is on into the parking lot. I was at the point where I'd be yelling out my window to people asking them if they were leaving and slowing following people as they walk down the parking lanes. I just got so tired of circling and getting the spot I was driving towards or waiting for poached by soccer moms. And there's a limited area in which employees park, especially when working evenings, so those rare spaces were like gold. We all try to park in a certain range so that we can all walk out together at night and aren't too far from the hallway we exit from.

Ok, I have to end this especially derailed train of thought entry because Rascal keeps scolding me. He is ready to go to sleep now and I need to get into bed so he can sleep on me.
Loves.