It’s been kind of a slow weekend here at the house but too darned busy at work. We are all gearing up for Christmas at work, which means lots of extra preparation to get ready for next week. I get asked all the time why we stay open for Christmas. This is normally by people who assume that nobody goes out to eat on Christmas day. That’s about as far from the truth as you can get. Christmas is by far the busiest day of the year for us out of the entire year. Some stores aren’t that much busier than a normal weekend but in the case of my three my business literally doubles. My slowest store will do about ten times the normal business, which is insane. On a normal Tuesday that store grosses about $500. Christmas Day last year it did $5000. We don’t really make that much more money because we spend so much more money on payroll. Not only that but since it’s busier, the margin of error for pricing mistakes and register errors goes up as well.
The managers are supposed to be starting their thaw and extra prep work today and I have to make sure to go around over the next week and verify it’s getting done as well as get a couple more people working in some of the empty slots that aren’t filled. Everyone works on Christmas Day with no exceptions, and even with that I have several empty slots in two of my stores simply because I can’t just hire and train five or six more people just to let them go on January 2nd, which starts the slowest time of the year for me and the couple of months where I will be really cutting back on expenses.
It looks like we will be doing our Christmas on the 24th after all this year. As a store manager I would typically get two days off the week prior and Santa would visit the kids then but this year Carroll County is starting their Christmas break four days prior to Christmas and I just won’t have any time off. Not only that but my brother won’t be in town until around the 23rd. I think that most of the family is going to be here for it, which will be nice.
Once the holidays are over I need to get back down in the basement again and get some cleaning done. It is getting full and unorganized again and the perfect time to do some straightening up will be when we go to store the Christmas lights. I at least wouldn’t mind organizing the back room. All of the Marine’s stuff is stored in there as well as old furniture and decorations. I would kind of like to move some of my computer equipment out of the garage and into the back room, such as my wireless router and cable modem as well as my home automation equipment.
I am going to try and get out of the stores by four this afternoon. While I was just off on Thursday I spent seven hours in meetings and am tired. I want to spend some time at home with the girls, even if it’s just watching them play and fooling around on the computer. It all depends on my staffing. I guess it’s just that time of the year but I have had about eight people call out in my district over the last two days. Part of that is because the manager’s put up with it.
It’s time to start getting ready for work now, I will hopefully be back later this afternoon.
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