Ok, so I know this isn’t at all what I normally post here at FTS but I feel like i needed to let the readers know what’s been going on behind the scenes lately, as well as rant a little bit. First of all, by “blogger” I don’t mean blogger.com I mean it as the person blogging. Just to get that out of the way.
As everyone not living underground is aware, we are currently in full swing of what is known as the holiday shopping season. I find that around this time you will come across two types of people. There are the people that seem quite cheery, decorating anything they get their hands on, blasting Christmas music (plus Adam Sandler’s Hanuka hit for some reason) to everyone regardless of whether or not they actually want to listen to it and over all approaching their daily activities with a smile. My theory is that those people are either a) aliens or more likely b) real people that go home at night after the cheer overload and cry on the couch eating a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream (because it’s still sort of festive) while watching reruns of Dr. Phil/Real Housewives. [Note: I will need comments to confirm this theory.] The second type of people you will encounter are the rest of us that take the small ounce of holiday joy we might possess and trample it by spending all our waking hours working, shopping, and being stuck in holiday traffic. If you haven’t deduced already, I fall into category two.
Work is stressful when you are putting in extra hours to meet deadlines and make extra spending cash. And if you’re stupid like me you take on even more work in the form of a second job. Which I have already quit btw. I couldn’t handle the extra frustration of working for people that never bothered to train employees but expected them to know how to function all of their companies administrative systems. Or would kindly tell you on thing on the phone but then send you a nasty email telling you something completely different. Or require you to call in for “call – in” shifts where you couldn’t plan your day at all, you just had to be “available.” Or schedule you to close and then come in at 6am the next morning. None of that was worth a job I was only doing to help with Christmas shopping.
And apparently when there is traffic, people think that it’s one big free for all, no rules apply. Forget courtesy and obeying obvious traffic laws! No, you absolutely NEED to get to Target NOW to get the last copy of Just Dance and will go Death Race on anyone’s ass that gets in the way by stopping a stop sign or uses a blinker. Those fools! I fucking hate traffic. That’s right, I don’t just have a regular amount of hate for it, I hate it so much I had to type the word “fucking” before it. I just don’t get why we can’t understand that no one person’s time is more important than another. People can be so uncivil and rude.
Speaking of which, please do not get pissy if you have a bad ‘customer service’ experience. I see so many things saying that customer service reps are uncommonly rude around the holidays. I don’t deny that this exists but having worked in a retail environment for many years, I can tell you that every holiday season about 90% of customers are mean as shit. They are busy, frustrated, and tired. So understandably I think a lot of people are inpatient and already anticipating a negative interaction. As a result, employees helping these people develop a tough shell to deflect bullshit. No one deserves to be treated hostile, and it would be beneficial if everyone would keep that in mind. I am still amazed at how mean people can be to complete and total strangers, it boggles my mind.
But I love working on this blog. Even though it really is a lot of work and at times laborious, I get a lot of joy out of it. It’s a passion I hope to somehow incorporate fully into my life in the future. Now is just the starting point, but I take it just as serious as I would any job. That’s why it is so frustrating when I find myself without any time to blog. Between two jobs, shopping for gifts (and making some gifts) and making time to eat, sleep and see movies, blogging is just forced to take the back burner. And finding time to edit podcasts? Forget it. Then add finals and semester projects for all of the other FTS members to the list. So I must apologize for the lack of content and updates lately. I would love to post everyday but I just can’t.
But don’t worry, content will pick up soon. After the holidays are over I will make it a point to make sometime to get things more organized for the site. Thanks for sticking with the blog, everyone at FTS sincerely appreciates it.
I’m not really sure how I found time to type this but I feel much better now.
-Lindsay