December 26, 2008

• What will the new year bring?

  
  

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  Remember that song… the 12 Days of Christmas? In some traditions, this is the first of the twelve days of Yule or Christmas. For people in retail, there’ll be another week of Christmas misery at least. I am not looking forward to going to work today, though I am grateful that I did not have to be there at 5AM (like some of my coworkers). That’s what time I had to be into work on Wednesday, and I was pretty much falling down exhausted by 2 when I left. That is not exactly a safe state to drive home in, especially given the amount of traffic I had to wade through (and crazy drivers). My accident earlier this month has made me hyper paranoid of my fellow drivers, and I won’t even begin to feel safe driving near the mall until spring. People are crazy… put crazy people in a machine weighing a couple tons and allow for inertia… I don’t think so. If I had my way, I wouldn’t leave the house for the next month. Safer that way.
  
  The amount of work they (the big corporations) expect of their front line employees is just ridiculous, especially given the fact that our hours were severely truncated. This Christmas can’t end too soon for me, though it is a relief for the exact day to be past. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind helping people. I just don’t like being around rude, belligerent, self-centered people who believe as a retail worker I am the next best thing to a slave. I don’t mind recommending things to people, but if I offer a half dozen or more ideas and they shoot every one of them down, I really don’t think they should expect me to continue on their heels as they wander the store looking for the perfect gift. People you are now entering Giftcard city. I am not a personal shopper…. personal shoppers get paid a lot better than me. As anyone who reads my blog will know, I have a wide variety of tastes. Recommending is part of my job at the bookstore, and I do it as well or better than most of my coworkers. But obviously there are just some customers who are too demanding. I don’t know their tastes, nor the tastes of the people they’re buying for. I can only ask questions and recommend based on the answers, so if the customer can’t help me out with even that much… well I wash my hands of them.
  
  Borders is supposedly doing well… according to the employee newsletter they expect us to read on a daily basis. But certain things I’ve noticed make me stick to my initial assessment that the days of Borders are numbered. Well first of all, there were all those people they laid off several months ago, and then the perks they took from us. Then there’s the fact that hours allotted for December were at least 200-300 fewer than last year, not to mention there were fewer employees at our location to deal with an increased workload. And the way they’ve been forcing us to push product and the extreme nature of the sales they’ve had this month (40% off, $5 off a purchase of $5 or more) … it feels like close out to me. It feels like it’s only a matter of time before they begin closing stores. And given that we’ve rarely been able to make plan this year (Wednesday they wanted us to do over $50,000!) and our woefully understocked shelves (books are flopping all over despite creative straightening) and the fact that we’ve had to order stock for the stores instead of awaiting replacement as we would normal have done in past years. Well…. connect the dots! I would not be surprised if they sent word in the next few months that our store was closing (the fiscal year ends in February). The building is over 8 years old, and we have leaks and cracking paint all over the place. They’ve been saying they were going to remodel for as long as I’ve been working there. What they’ve actually done is reduce stock all over the store, and we’ve been taking shelves off the floor for most of the year! My manager can say I’m negative all she wants, but I think she just doesn’t want to face the truth.
  
  Speaking of my manager, would you like to know what she got me as a Christmas present? I was regifted a melted (formerly) lobster-shaped lollipop (I couldn’t figure out what it was, my mom guessed) and a much aged gift-sized jar of honey (both from Canada and both of which I think came from my former micromanaging villainous manager who’s been gone over a year), a handful of pens, and a $15 Subway card (the only thing I might actually use). Not that she had to get me anything, but it was kind of insulting. I got her a $30 card to Boston Market because she doesn’t eat right and constantly complains about her weight. At least my gift was thoughtful…. I mean, lottery tickets would have been more considerate than the gifts she gave me. I guess it was better than last year when she gave everyone a bottle of sparkling fruit juice that made me sick when I tried a cupful.
  
  Anyway… enough of my whining. Either way, I don’t want to be at Borders another year. If the store happens to close, then I might actually be better off. Apparently there is a business program that allows unemployed people to collect their unemployment and get assistance to open their own business. But no matter what, I need to find some way out of my situation. I feel impending doom weighing heavily on my shoulders.

  In other news, yesterday I took a nap and dreamed about mobsters, time travel, superheroes, pixies, aliens, and alternate timelines… Essentially I was the daughter of a bank owner and these mobsters were trying to extort money from him. I stole a time machine from aliens and dressed as a superhero to combat the mobsters, but in the meantime, while I was time travelling, a pixie took over my life and started changing things. I have a very weird subconscious.

  
  

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  December 26th
  

  
  

  The Medieval Feast of Fools ran from today until the 28th. Wren hunting was once practiced on this day. And though it “hardly provides a mouthful to a cat,” it was protected at all other times during the year.
  
  

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  This is the traditional time in Italy of Columbine and Pantomime. Performances were enacted in mime by traveling companies. There represented ancient symbolic figures. Columbine was traditionally dressed in white with black pompoms and is believed to have symbolized the moon. Columbine or Columbina was the sweetheart of Harlequin, and, like him, supposed to be invisible to mortal eyes. Columbina is a pet-name for a lady-love in Italian, meaning ‘little dove.’
  
  

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  Christmas plays were common at this time following in an ancient tradition handed down from the Greeks and Romans. In Greco-Roman times, Andromeda, Ariadne, Ceres, and the Nymphs were honored with plays. Orpheus was shown with the beasts. Perseus and Andromeda were depicted. Ceres was drawn by dragons, and Bacchus and Ariadne by panthers, and finally the education of Achilles was enacted. A ballet of the famous lovers of ancient times was performed, followed by a troop of Nymphs. During the Christian era, plays about the Greek and Roman gods gave way to morality plays adapted from the Bible.
  
  

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  This is the 11th of Mechir. The Egyptians used a palm branch containing twelve leaves or shoots to symbolize the completion of the year at the Winter Solstice. Sobek was born today, and Sekhmet went forth to Letopolis.
  

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  • 1:14 pm
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