My first Christmas season working retail was at a San Antonio mall five-and-dime called TG&Y. I was a petite, pimple-faced 16-year-old with zero social skills and constant, low-grade fear, but I wanted my own money, so I was hired that summer and remained on part-time throughout the school year and into the holiday season. I did everything there: cut keys, cut fabric, straightened baby clothes and novelty T-shirts, and manned the women's and men's dressing rooms. But my greatest feat involved the daily OCD challenge of clocking in and out at the perfect :00 second on the store's old gray time clock.
TG&Y sold everything: Star Wars action figures and bandanas, spark plugs and baby wipes, fabrics and Starburst candies. And because of the variety, the store was packed every day that season. It was my first taste of the holiday shopping rush, and looking back, I know now why people use the word “rush” to describe the frenzy of shopping activity. It’s addicting and panicky, stressful and motivating. Andy Williams sings that the holidays are the “most wonderful time of the year.” He obviously never worked a December at TG&Y.
True, many people are selfless and generous during the holidays, being more mindful and willing to help others in need than the other 11 months of the year. But put a germ-laden-handled shopping cart with shimmying wheels in front of these same people as you announce on a loudspeaker that there’s a sale on chocolate covered cherries on Aisle 4 and a multipurpose wrench set in Automotive and they become possessed by gift-giving demons. They will run you over with that cart to get what they think others want. You will die and they won’t stop to cry over your body as you lay there with greasy wheel marks on your chest and a store flyer smashed into your face.
This was an everyday the scene my first holiday season with TG&Y. Instead of fighting the other shoppers as a shopper, I had switched teams. I was on the service side now, and these people who were once my own now terrified me down to the corpuscles. I had a job to do, though, so I showed up to work, tied on my polyester blue smock, and did my best to smile.
I was still a newbie at running the cash register. These machines didn’t have quick and easy barcode scanners that registers have today. No computer chips. You had to punch in every number hard with your fingers and calculate the tax on a scratch sheet. I was a writer. I avoided math at all costs, so I found this task stressful. I was terrified that I’d miscalculate, make an honest mistake, and give the customer back the wrong change. Then that patron would lunge at my neck with both hands from across the counter.
These were my real fears.
The store manager saw the terror in my wide eyes and the tension in my shoulders, which were now inseparable from my ears, so on the busiest shopping days of the season, he relegated me to bagging duties. This, I thought, I could do. I was a copilot of sorts, taking a lot of stress off the checker by not having merchandise pile up at the end of the counter. I was the cheerful person who made tiny talk with the customer. I was the person who asked if they wanted the receipt in hand or stapled to the bag.
This I could do.
Until Christmas Eve.
A whole new monster emerged that day. I had never seen an Eve from behind the counter. Why did all these people delay in shopping? There were so many of them. It was as if someone had dropped a sandwich on the ground, and overnight, armies of ants swarmed.
Again donned in the store’s trademark blue smock, with not one but two pockets, I tried to be as cheerful as always in my bagging duties. And we seemed to be on a roll. In a zone. The checker and I were in sync, an efficient assembly line that would make Henry Ford smile. We were getting customers through the checkout line with ease. As least that’s what it appeared from the outside. On the inside, I was in a panic. If there were two people in the line, if someone had to stand and wait, I thought they were mad at me. My heart raced and I felt as if I might faint. Occasionally, though, I felt the chi flow of bagging. The tightness in my chest was gone; my shoulders dropped to chin level, and half-calmness enveloped my body—when I was in my body.
Which explains how, when stapling a customer’s bag, I missed the bag completely and stapled my right thumb. I didn’t even realize it. I kept bagging. It was only after the next customer asked why there was blood on the white Peas on Earth T-shirt she was purchasing that I stopped and traced the blood trail to…me. That’s when I saw the thin, half rectangular metal sticking out of the center of my thumbnail.
The sight of anyone’s blood was enough to make me faint. But the fact that it was my blood made it all the more jarring. For a moment, it confirmed my fear of dying at a young age. At 16, I would suffer a painful minimum-wage death and my obituary would read that I expired like a coupon from a single staple wound to the thumb.
How embarrassing.
The customer and my cash register cohort saw my thumb, then my face, and the customer suddenly forgot she was pissed off about the blood on her T-shirt. Like a MASH medic, the customer dug into her purse, pulled out some Klenex, and had my thumb wrapped tighter than Baby Jesus in a manger—with only the shiny staple exposed. My coworker sent me to the customer service office, where the store manager was already waiting for me, wearing his usual white, short-sleeve, single pocket-protector shirt and ugly blue polyester tie with a lunchtime hotdog mustard stain. He was smiling eerily, holding a shiny pair of pliers.
This unsettled me greatly.
“Heard you had a little accident,” he said. “It’s going to be O.K. I’ll get that out and you’re going to be fine. Come with me.”
He guided me upstairs to his office, an oasis of calm from the frenzy shopping energy below. It was a soft, quiet cocoon. From his wall-to-wall office windows, I could see every inch of the store. I could see a customer picking her nose in Fabrics at the back of the store. I could see two of my coworkers kissing in Housewares. I could see the burly man wearing a flannel shirt and Dallas Cowboys cap in Lingerie holding up two pink nightgowns as if they were doggie poop bags, obviously uncomfortable being near that much femininity. I never knew my manager had this view of the store. I was in awe, and that awe was good, because it took my mind off the reality that in a minute, as nice as he was, this man was going to try to yank that staple out of my thumb, and—from the rafters of his office—I was going to squeal like a baby pig. Everyone in the store would hear it. Everyone would look up to the heavens in fear. They’d later recall the story to priests and therapists about the Christmas that they were traumatized by the awful sound of a screaming angel at TG&Y.
The manager sat me down in a chair that sat perpendicular to his desk. He unwrapped the tissue and told me to try to relax.
“Breathe,” he said. “Now, this might hurt. I’m not sure, though, because I’ve never done this before.”
That’s reassuring, I thought.
“Hold still. Breathe,” he said as he held my thumb firmly.
I tried to relax by staring at the mustard stain on his tie. I studied the edges of the stain as it blended into the fabric. I looked hard, beginning to think that the stain resembled the face of the Virgin Mary.
“I’m going to take it out in one, two,” he yanked out the staple with one, strong pull, “three! Got it!”
A Christmas miracle: I didn’t scream. Not even an under-the-breath grunt.
The manager grabbed a clean tissue from the floral-patterned box on his desk and began wiping away the oozing blood. He took another tissue and pressed it against my thumb to stop the bleeding.
“You did great!” he said.
I said nothing, still in shock.
He soaked a cotton ball with hydrogen peroxide and began gently rubbing my thumb. Then he pulled off the strip ends of a Band-Aid and wrapped it around my thumb.
“You O.K.?” he asked.
“I'm fine,” I said, feeling numb.
“You go on to the break room and relax for a few minutes. Don’t worry about coming back to the register just yet. If you’ve had enough for today…”
Here it comes, I thought. I'm about to be sent home. Woo hoo!
“…we’ll find something else for you to do. There’s plenty of work for everyone today. O.K.?”
“That's fine,” I said, disappointed.
He rose from his chair. I followed his lead. We both walked downstairs, returning to the frenzied shopping air.
I spent about 15 minutes alone in the break room. Potluck dishes covered every inch of table space, and strings of red and green lights gave the dimly lit room a holiday glow. I twiddled my one good thumb, hoping someone from the floor would come barreling through the door to nosh, but I remained alone. I finally got so bored that I willingly—voluntarily—reenlisted for another tour of the holiday war.
The rest of the day is a blur. I know I came home after the store booted out the last patron because my mom took a glassy-eyed photo of me (still in my blue smock) in front of the Christmas tree, but I don’t remember it.
Since then, I’ve never looked at the holiday shopping season the same. I now have great respect for all those retail employees who must endure the madness and stress because, every other 11 months of the year, they really like working where they do. It’s not easy. If you’ve never been on the other side of the counter, you should try it sometime. It’s quite the eye-opener. And if you’re lucky, you too could staple your thumb in front of hoards of shoppers—and live to tell about it.
