Holiday Seasons
Nov. 28th, 2013 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jon_chaissonFirst off: yes, I am thankful! I give thanks to all my friends and family, for various and sundry reasons: for putting up with me, for making me laugh, for making me think, for inspiring me, for inspiring my writing, for the music suggestions, for the anchor through all the crazy times, and everything else. :)
Sure, there's the ongoing frustration that the holiday season seems to start earlier and earlier--I started seeing Christmas-themed things sometime in September this year, come to think of it--but I'll be honest, it's never really bothered me that much. If a store wants you to have some holiday fun earlier than usual, I'm down with that. It's all in how you process it yourself, to be honest. I can say this, having worked at various retail outlets and warehouses during fourth quarter season, so I'm used to it. [Don't get me wrong...I totally understand the annoyance that comes with watching people go apeshit on Black Friday, but that's just one day out of the entire season.]
Anyway...Thanksgiving for me has always been the time where the year finally starts coming to a close. It's the final climax of the story, so to speak, in which we're rushing to finish all our plot lines before it all culminates on Christmas (the last six days of the year being the denouement, of course). I'm sure that came to me due to the school vacations--the half-week on Thanksgiving, officially kicked off with my mom starting the turkay and the Athol-Orange high school football rivalry game playing on the radio--followed by the rush of a few weeks' worth of last-minute learning before the semester finals in December. Even after leaving college in 1993, I still feel that rush of last-minute preparation come late November.
That bled over to my working years in the 90s...at the Harvard Coop, at the theater, at the record store. I was fine with working after the holiday, for multiple reasons: first and foremost, I got paid for it (especially if I got paid 1.5 OT), and more often than not, the customers I encountered really were nice people. Maybe frustrated and tired, but caught up in the happiness of the season and letting their frustrations slide. Sure, I had the occasional Scrooge now and again, but they were few and far between, and most often rightfully mocked behind their backs by my coworkers and I after they'd left. My frustration was in the volume, not the people...but that was a small price to pay.
A different kind of holiday rush came during my Yankee Candle years. That would kick in right around September with the official start of Q4, in which all the YC stores and wholesalers would start ordering in bulk, and our shipping floor would become one giant mess of pallets stacked sky-high with boxes. Especially in 2002, when YC scored a deal with Bed Bath & Beyond and had a major roll-out during the Christmas season. We worked mandatory overtime (Saturdays, as well as an extra hour added at the start of shift), and tempers often wore thin with all the volume, but we also had our moments of fun and silliness. We knew this volume and this schedule was temporary, we just had to slog through it.
Years later, and I'm pretty much chained to the desk job, so I'm not dealing with a large volume of product, only of queries and issues. Same frustrations and annoyances, but at the end of the day it doesn't really detract from the season for me. I keep my work life separate from the rest of my life, so I'm able to enjoy the cheer and the thankfulness and the food and the music and everything else that comes with it. In this way, I've been able to continue enjoying the end-of-year holiday season just as I always have. There's no other true reason for doing so, other than that it simply makes me happy.
So yes...in short, life may be frustrating at times, but I'm still thankful that I'm still an active part of it. :)
Sure, there's the ongoing frustration that the holiday season seems to start earlier and earlier--I started seeing Christmas-themed things sometime in September this year, come to think of it--but I'll be honest, it's never really bothered me that much. If a store wants you to have some holiday fun earlier than usual, I'm down with that. It's all in how you process it yourself, to be honest. I can say this, having worked at various retail outlets and warehouses during fourth quarter season, so I'm used to it. [Don't get me wrong...I totally understand the annoyance that comes with watching people go apeshit on Black Friday, but that's just one day out of the entire season.]
Anyway...Thanksgiving for me has always been the time where the year finally starts coming to a close. It's the final climax of the story, so to speak, in which we're rushing to finish all our plot lines before it all culminates on Christmas (the last six days of the year being the denouement, of course). I'm sure that came to me due to the school vacations--the half-week on Thanksgiving, officially kicked off with my mom starting the turkay and the Athol-Orange high school football rivalry game playing on the radio--followed by the rush of a few weeks' worth of last-minute learning before the semester finals in December. Even after leaving college in 1993, I still feel that rush of last-minute preparation come late November.
That bled over to my working years in the 90s...at the Harvard Coop, at the theater, at the record store. I was fine with working after the holiday, for multiple reasons: first and foremost, I got paid for it (especially if I got paid 1.5 OT), and more often than not, the customers I encountered really were nice people. Maybe frustrated and tired, but caught up in the happiness of the season and letting their frustrations slide. Sure, I had the occasional Scrooge now and again, but they were few and far between, and most often rightfully mocked behind their backs by my coworkers and I after they'd left. My frustration was in the volume, not the people...but that was a small price to pay.
A different kind of holiday rush came during my Yankee Candle years. That would kick in right around September with the official start of Q4, in which all the YC stores and wholesalers would start ordering in bulk, and our shipping floor would become one giant mess of pallets stacked sky-high with boxes. Especially in 2002, when YC scored a deal with Bed Bath & Beyond and had a major roll-out during the Christmas season. We worked mandatory overtime (Saturdays, as well as an extra hour added at the start of shift), and tempers often wore thin with all the volume, but we also had our moments of fun and silliness. We knew this volume and this schedule was temporary, we just had to slog through it.
Years later, and I'm pretty much chained to the desk job, so I'm not dealing with a large volume of product, only of queries and issues. Same frustrations and annoyances, but at the end of the day it doesn't really detract from the season for me. I keep my work life separate from the rest of my life, so I'm able to enjoy the cheer and the thankfulness and the food and the music and everything else that comes with it. In this way, I've been able to continue enjoying the end-of-year holiday season just as I always have. There's no other true reason for doing so, other than that it simply makes me happy.
So yes...in short, life may be frustrating at times, but I'm still thankful that I'm still an active part of it. :)
