Working retail before and after the holidays. Brace yourself, here there be rants.

No, not everything festive is on clearance.

No, the stickers ARE accurate.

No, the manager didn't give you this price last time.

No, I'm not wasting his time bringing him here.

No, the other stores don't have more.

No, we never had "that exact thing earlier".

No, the coupon won't combine with clearance items.

No, it's not 50%, it's UP TO 50%.

No, the 90% off coupon you found online isn't legitimate.

Karen, listen, if you can't part with a $4 20ft string of LED lights for the full $4 then you probably shouldn't be spending that money on the yearly festive pissing contest.

And No, we don't have more "in the back".

'The back' isn't this mystical land where product overflows from pools of merchandise and consumer goods. We don't keep endless bounds of supply back there. Do you know what's back there? Items too big to keep the entire store inventory on the main floor like fridges and washing machines and grills. 'The back' is a moderate size room where we keep the heavy equipment and our reserves of dust and filth to distribute to the product on the back of the shelves after corporate has done their latest walk. It's also where the mice and rats like to hang out because exterminators can't be bothered to scale the mountain of unorganized pallets and boxes. There's a few snakes too, I named one 'Jim'.

And No, I don't have an opinion on that one thing. I don't care for it. The consumerist machine has dulled my appeal for small trinkets and festivities because it's all a mad cash grab and you fell for it. You fell for it, Karen. Drive off into the sunset in that 2019 Tahoe and complain about the price of gasoline on facebook with your trunk full of plastic that's going into the crawlspace for 364 days on the year and will become its own nation in the great pacific garbage patch one day in the near future.

In case you haven't guessed, my current job is to peddle what is soon to be garbage to people soon to be broke. I can't begin to explain how often I need to break down to an atomic level that the signs are not an excuse to bust my balls over the cost of frivolities that will see the light of day for one month out of the year before winding up in the garbage before the next. I have had a person nearly BREAK OUT IN TEARS over the unavailability of a lighted wireframe dog with a scarf and santa hat for "the third consecutive year". This one to be specific https://i.imgur.com/jOP5oVy.jpg . I know I have no right to judge people but grow the hell up. The holidays have become a consumerist pissing contest with the billion corners of the industry laughing all the way to the bank at just how easy that stretch of social engineering was. The injection molded plastic penguin with a singular incandescent bulb illuminating it you just bought for a steal at $29 cost the store roughly $8 to acquire. No, really, that's not an exaggeration.

Do your local retail slaves a favor and cut them a break. We don't control the inventory, we don't control the prices, we don't destroy the boxes, we're stuck here because it pays. I've lived a long life and learned a great many things. The culmination of my travels and experiences doesn't HAVE to be explaining that the inflatable mickey mouse lawn ornament is not coming back into stock this year, but that's what people make of it. I've got one more day of work before christmas and I know for a fact I'm going to have listened to "let it snow" sixteen more times in that 10 hour shift. There's a war for my sanity taking place with every hour I sell to that company. I'm losing it, send help, or guinea pigs.