holiday emptiness

As I've previously mentioned, Christmas is my favorite holiday and my favorite time of the year. The (roughly) one month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a magical time, filled with good food, bright lights, family fun and a myriad of opportunities to create memories that will last a lifetime. Regardless of what's been going on in my life, there's never been a time when I didn't look forward to the holidays. Whether life was going well or I was in a pit of despair from which I thought I'd never escape, each holiday season in my life has come and gone with more good than bad to say about it. Considering how many people hate the holidays and find them the most stressful time of the year, I consider myself lucky. Very lucky.

As you are all aware, I work in the retail industry. We take employee satisfaction surveys on a regular basis, and one of the questions we are asked is if the mission/purpose of the company makes us feel that our jobs are important. Since the essence of my job is discovering ways to get people to buy stuff they probably don't need, I always give a "strongly disagree" response to this question. This feeling is never stronger than during the holidays.

This Thanksgiving has been a case in point. With the economy being weak and our sales soft, many people in the office (OK, just about everyone) have been on edge and freaking out about every piece of information that comes their way. Logically, I think we all understand that you get to a point in the holiday season (right about now) where there's not much else you can do. You can't change your advertising; you can't get more product if you need it; you can't give product back to your suppliers if you've got too much. In this economy, however, emotions have taken over. Worries about foot traffic, sales, inventory and every other metric of import in retail will drive everyone insane this holiday. And even though I'm not really worried about things, I, too will be a victim.

In a way, my holiday season began a long time ago. I had commitments for some Black Friday products almost a year ago. Some people may tell you that Black Friday and subsequent holiday ads consist of overstocked, unwanted product. Anyone who tells you this is a fool. It takes many months of planning to pull off holiday advertising, and it takes a lot of effort to ensure that everything goes off without a hitch. This means that I think about the holidays all year long, but I'm not thinking about the aspects of the holidays that I love--I'm thinking about selling more stuff and how profitable we'll be when we do.

I had Thursday and Friday off, and although I took my work computer to my brother's house, I never turned it on. I did, however, check my email on his computer and my phone. I wish I hadn't. There were lots of emails going around about sales on Friday. Some members of my team were providing hourly updates on how our promotional products were doing. The further I got into my email, the more I felt like I was cloaked in holiday manure. I've barely been able to think of anything else since Friday, and it's a horrible feeling. It makes me feel like quitting and getting as far away from retail as I possibly can. It makes me wonder why I'm getting an MBA, rather than pursuing a field I really enjoy, like linguistics, astronomy or music. I do like business, but sometimes the burdens are more than anyone should have to bear. And at the end of the day, a lot of this stuff doesn't even matter. Woo hoo, I sold a zillion digital cameras on Black Friday. Big freakin' deal. And then you hear about people being trampled to death or shooting each other during these sales. That's not important, though--at least a lot of people were able to save $100 on a TV.

We're going to California for Christmas, and I can't wait. The way things are shaping up, however, I'm going to have to take my work computer and work every day while I'm out there. It's like expecting a light at the end of the tunnel, but finding a steaming pile of cow dung when you emerge from the darkness. I can only hope that people will calm down and that things will settle down at work enough for me to have a real vacation. A real Christmas, where I don't hear or even have to care about the average selling price of a USB cable. A true Christmas, where I have my family's traditional danishes and hot chocolate for breakfast, rather than yesterday's sales reports.

I wish I could take the next couple of months off.