A Seattle Christmas

Christmas time, and a jazzy 'Santa Baby' creates combustion between two fifty-eight year olds in a fashionably faux hardware store. I am slightly bemused; the woman's eyes squint in delight then purses her lips when she sees me, is this spontaneity of holiday ecstasy permissible next to a $4000 cherry oak bed? I excuse myself and escape through a locked door. Lips chapped and cracked, a sore ankle and my back hurts after carrying six 25lb casino games through Seattle’s vigorous hoity-toity and hoi polloi.

I came out of the mall after midnight with songs stuck in my head and the rain poured hard. I didn't bring my umbrella because an internet weather website said 20% chance of rain. I ran up and down the city hills to get out of the pelting welts of wind and ice water to find the pensioner's hotel.

2

I listen to the man cough in the room next door. He sounds old. It is the first time in five months I've heard life on the other side of the thin walls. My fingers hurt. Little cuts, jammed thumbs, my back is tight. Christmas, December 11. I see the snow capped mountains today across Puget Sound. The sun is brilliant, pockets of blue skies and gusty cold winds remind me quickly I don’t have enough warm clothes on. A year ago I was on a beach on the south coast of Sri Lanka, and 10,000km further south with no land in between, Antarctica. I drank a beer and let the tide tickle my feet in the late warm evening. I look at photos of children I took pictures of almost a year after the tsunami wiped the village out.

Every night I leave the mall I wonder if a mean cold rain waits.

3

Her beautiful eyes captivate me, leaving a pit in the stomach which translates to silence. Sita. We are at least 14 years apart. But it was those eyes. She seduced me with her presence though I knew where I stood in the scheme of things. I never worked with her directly, I was stock and ran around because I didn’t know where I was going. She’s in the cash wrap. She stands in place for hours. Sometimes we share three-minute conversations in the tiny break room, sometimes on the floor. Every time I hear her voice and see her smile, I think of the warm waters of a beautiful island far away.

And then I wonder no more. She left, took a job more suitable for her demeanor and countenance. She picked up her last check and left a card wishing everyone a happy holiday. She gave a day’s notice.

Without being told and remembering the words of management that creativity and initiative for the company was good for the company I brought out interesting books that were in the main stock room and placed them on a coffee table in front of a very cozy sofa in the cleaning room: “How to be President”, “A hundred stories you’ve never heard”, books on surviving in the wild and interviews with people who survived from drowning and other natural disasters. And the books stayed…for a few hours. They were replaced with huge emergency tool kits. Oh well. In the stocking stuffer table, curious adults examine an assortment of childhood mini-memories. I put a stack of tiny books of “A Night before Christmas” and “the Nutcracker” in vacant slots, between red boxes of coal shaped like lumps of candy. I also put out ten copies of a small book called the History of Flying in another room and by the end of the day all the books had been removed by management. Ok, we’re not a bookstore and I don’t know why they’re in stock. 

I have never been comfortable selling anything and having to convince the person they really need this product if I can’t afford it myself or I can’t see myself purchasing. A good product sells itself I figured. I still buy Levis because they always fit me the way I want them to fit.

In the front of the store I feverishly attempt to keep foot and lap duvets of three colors and different sizes organized and in stock on long folding tables. The mobs of nice people gobble them up as fast as I can bring them out. In the back I rip off pre-wrap paper of red and green footies and make a dozen trips with stacks of eight or ten slippery plastic boxes navigating around little screaming kids, slow overweight people, tottering senior citizens, handsome wealthy couples, and through narrow passageways between scented candles and car-size strollers I am constantly distracted by the wealthiest women wondering how hard it must be to spend all the wealth.

I thought I did a pretty credible job with the duvets, though it wasn’t completely tidy and sharp. I learned later from Alexis, the young woman in charge of the visual concept of the store who wore tiny pink shoes that made her feet look like sausages in natural casing, the pre-wrapped boxes and their unwrapped counterparts weren’t with each other. In other words, if a customer picked up an unwrapped box of large khaki foot duvets, but wanted to buy a pre-wrapped box of the same, he or she would be digging and placing boxes all around, causing confusion, chaos, and leaving a disorganized mess. This would of course make the organized mess I worked on even worse.

The young woman from Astoria informed me of this little advertising mishap in the back room. I stood in front of the hundreds of boxed frames, studying the geometry of such order when she came back to share her own frustration; management told her the duvet job was a bad job. I felt her frustration and empathized but I had no problem with my effort since I hadn’t been aware of the geo in this display. It can’t be easy for management to work with seasonal hires who are good workers but sometimes walk around like they are looking for a pint of milk in draperies.

I decide enough of the duvets and the frenzy of masses with money and head into the 10,000 sq ft stockroom to look for something else to bring out to the floor. Within a minute I take a stock check. A customer is in the store to pick up something on hold. Problem #1: I don’t understand the name of the customer. I call back for a clarification: “it’s a bedazzzzzz shtabzzzz.” “A what? I didn’t get the name again, and is it unpaid or paid?” I search desperately for a bedazzzzz shtabzzzz. “Any luck there John?” Damn, where the hell is the item I have no idea what it is, and whom does it belong too? Earlier in the day Amalia, a sweet and hardworking gal, who in October was the store’s Hero of the Month, requested on the walkie for me to bring up some dunnage. What the hell is that? My two biggest challenges are discerning distorted English and learning the names of over 60,000 items after one week of work.

The manager finally came back to the stock and said in exasperation “The pedestal table is right here” and behind me it was, a pedestal table.

4

I'll have one sconce please.

Organza. What is Organza? And sconce, any relation to scones? Today a very kind customer asks me to help her buy some pulls. Ok, I’ll bite. What’s a pull? I want six chatham pulls in polished nickel and six in chrome. I see on the wall in the bathroom section the meaning of the word. I love visual learning. This is how my students learn sometimes. What is an apple? I will show you one. But now I note there are no three font size numbers below indicating their classificat0ion in each of the six kinds of pulls. I tell the woman I’d go look and see what we had. I have no idea where these things are. I walk back to the main stockroom, and find Luke, the man who wears an English cap, red keds and listens to punk rock and Foghat; where in the world are the pulls? “Yeah I noticed that too, I‘m not sure.” When full-time employees tell you they don’t know, it’s time to worry. Sensing trouble, a manager intervenes just after I tell the woman there’s a good chance we’ll have to order it. Why, didn’t I learn now where the pulls are kept.

And for the most part that was just fine with me, though I flashback of my father intervening when I struggled to make a soapbox derby car. Well…take it for what it’s worth, right? The managers and I have a tenuous relationship. The two that hired me are the two most difficult men to hear on the walkies. There are a few others who speak with a shhhhhhhh sound enveloping each word. I think it has to do with speed and proximity. The third manager is the easiest one to listen to because his intonation and tone are in a low key. I hear every consonant and vowel in “John, could you see if we have any of the four by ten Madera Madines in the antique bronze? And while you're back there could you get six five inch oil rubbed bronze house numbers 405213?” My pleasure.

The last thing I did one night was wrap two nice dining chairs in the basement stock room. For two weeks I told people on the phone that we didn’t have any fireplace screens. They’re here. My orientation meetings were in this room. I only remembered large pieces of furniture. But in fact the screens were right behind the chair I sat in. The basement is down the steps that takes customers to Seventh Street. In the twenty or so minutes it actually took to wrap this furniture I ran up to the store floor three times. The first time Orlando asked me for organza drapery in silver sage at 96. I found it and gave it to him. Back in the basement bent over trying to wrap a moving object he asked again if this kind of material has stripes and what’s the name of that stripe? An hour ago I burned off the last cookie I’d eaten and when I got to the main stock room to tell him I’d give him the name of the organza with stripes silver sage drapery sized fifty six by ninety here swooped in Bob from Muskegon, manager #2; ”What’s that, Orlando, what kind of stripe are you looking for?” I can do nothing but laugh and turn around.

5

When I hear Vince Guaraldi’s Trio of O Tannebaum in the store everything goes still: no line check calls, no mind-numbing pounding holiday musings but the sound of piano and hopeful serenity. Sometimes a manager turns off the sound system when live music from in the mall’s courtyard finds its way into the store. Every evening at six fake snow falls from the rafters and kids reach up with tongues to catch god knows what.

One evening I take a thirty two inch clock to the valet in the mall and wait for the customer to pick it up. One of the valet attendants is on a walkie similar to mine. I guess he is Ethiopian so I greet him: “ es Salaam alaykum”. His small eyes and smile beam; wa alaykum es salaam. I ask him if he is from Addis Abba, and he smiles again, yes, but “I am not a Muslim.” And then he is off, driving away a candy red Toyota.

6

The food is good in the small break room no bigger than closet, management’s combat against loitering I guess. There is a waist high bench of about eight feet in length and one stool. If two sat in there it was intimate. The trays are the management’s gracious offerings to the staff who are working the busiest day of the calendar year. I am thankful because it is about $7 I save. Fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, and yummy rolled sandwich wraps of turkey or chicken and roast beef with a nice sauce and other vegetables inside.

I sit down and consume, fifty minutes after my scheduled break. I lean on the counter when Robin, the young lady with great aspirations and a real sweet look about her comes in. We talk about Christmas bonuses for seasonal staff. I think we’re eating the Christmas bonus. No problem. I can’t get excited about the potentials for those who have vested interests in the company. I know I will be gone and I will tell them how much I appreciated the food and for them to take me back after I flew home for my father’s funeral after only two weeks of being hired. That to me showed a real bit of class. That said, they must wonder every day if bringing me back was a smart move.

I tell Robin I lost my stock keys.

I volunteered to take an exchange on a couple of nice $200 lamps and shades and meet the couple at the valet, a floor below and fifteen minutes before my scheduled four o’clock break. That wasn’t smart. After I used way too much bubble wrap on the lamps and became somewhat entangled with tape guns I left the crowded place and waited 35 minutes, but not before telling Bob where I was going. “Make sure it is an exact match, make sure it is the same kind of lamps.” If I had a coffee and a chair it may have been a little more interesting to observe the orderly rush with the valet staff comprised of Ethiopians driving cars away more costly than their country’s total GDP.

But I didn’t have a chair or coffee and I was tired. Instead, however, I listened to the workplace above from my radio and it was somewhat entertaining even though I grew restless. “Chris, who’s working with you?” the young, seasonal hire and bespectacled engineer responded; “Marcus is working with Alexis on the stocker stuffing table and John is down in the valet waiting for a customer” About seven seconds of silence passed. “John shouldn’t have taken the walkie talkie out of the store.” That was probably true, I didn’t really need to communicate with anyone up there, though Stephanie asked if I was on-line…”Mrs. Grafton called and said she was stuck in bad traffic and it would be a few more minutes.”

My favorite conversation during the wait was between Scott, the articulate and elder salesman with very clear and professional oratory skills, and Chris:

Scott: I need a stock check, please.

Chris: This is Chris, how can I help?

Scott: I need a box of shhhhhhhh candles brought to cash wrap.

Chris: This is Chris, this is stock, how can I help?

Radio voice: Stock check lines one and two.

Scott: Did someone call my name?

Chris: This is Chris, was there a stock check?

Scott: Chris I need a box of the French candles in the blue box taken to cash wrap.

Radio voice: Is stock on line? Can someone come to cashwrap, we need all size bags and dunnage. We’re out of dunnage.

Scott: We’re out of the French candles?

Radio voice: Stock check line three.

Chris: Ok, I’ll get that, thank you.

When the very apologetic couple arrived I was more than glad to exchange the lamps and get back to the store. I was hungry and I didn’t know if this was going to affect my hour’s lunch with the number of people that worked in stock. Markus came in at four and like me, a seasonal, was equally frustrated with the walkie-talkie part of the job, and Kevin, the other seasonal stock hire who came in at eight. Chris was scheduled to leave at five.

Then I realized my loss.

It was the second time I lost my stock keys at this job. I have never lost my own keys in my life. In the past two weeks I doubled my lifetime loss. The first time I found them in a garbage can. These two keys were on a rubber coil that is worn on the wrist or in some cases higher up, which I do on occasion. I lost them when I was picking up about 30 little boxes and their paper that contained these little white pails of cat treats, and disposed of them quickly. The coil simply slid off. I spent at least 10 minutes fretting and searching, and even mentioned it to Jeff, the store manager. Today my clues were more difficult. I had keys with a little clip and a retractable string that I slipped onto the lip of my right pocket. The last thing I did before my excursion below the mall was wrap the lamps. I asked Don once for his key and let myself in the side stock room and looked without success around the area I wrapped. I returned Don’s key. What was I going to do? I asked Scott for his keys a few minutes later and looked once again in the same area. Then I asked Bob, who was in the middle of the cash wrap, for another key because I lost mine. “you lost your keys?” he asked in an incredulous whisper. “I’m still looking.” I clocked out fifty minutes after four before I looked without avail one more time. I was tired and a bit discouraged. I saw the food and sat down and ate. I couldn’t for the life of me think where they were.

After my confession to the young, attractive woman I decided I needed a coffee and left. I caught Markus on the way out and told him I was going to get a coffee. Chris knew it too, and I wondered how long he was going to stay. Jeff called him the rock star for his hard solitary work and the fact Markus had later delivered purchases to a hotel two blocks away while I was still burning my lunch hour. I took the escalator down to the garage and planned to exit the building on Sixth Ave, where there was a Starbucks two stores away. But first I walked up to the valet cash window and standing in front of the woman counting money was one of the Ethiopian men. I asked if anyone turned in keys. “Yes, yes, I did. I give them to security.”

Karma again saved my neck from a potential calamity. I was more than happy to return the extra keys to Bob. “Awesome”, his low and unexcited tone-deaf nasal inflection was good enough for me. Even if the management has plenty of legitimate reason to say goodbye when it is time, I know I worked my hardest without too much grumble, and that was all anyone could expect.

At the southeast corner of Sixth and Pine, standing in the shadow, a man of about 45 holds a cardboard sign; “out of luck need a buck”. My initial thought: when did his luck run out? I walk home and the fog rolls through the concrete canyons.

7

Yesterday the seasonal staff is reminded that the busiest part of our jobs is over and our hours would be cut back next week, followed by a talk about work after that. At first I felt kind of like I was demoted, but I understand what I was getting into, a short-term relationship in the manual labor department.

Every month management encourages the staff to vote for a hero of the month, someone who demonstrates a duty to the company above and beyond the salaries they earn. Last month I voted for Mary, a young and very sweet woman in stock who was kind, discerning, and hugged me when I first learned of my father’s death.

Anyways, if I vote before I find my way out the door, I would have given my nod to a man named Troy. Troy has convinced me every time I work with him that I’d rather be sleeping than working. In the second day of seasonal training Troy said he hadn’t been getting much sleep because he was a new father. I never saw him actually completely awake, not once, and yet he is still able to perform his job admirably. And the funny thing is his fatigue is an asset in an increasingly and economically volatile workplace. His calm demeanor and slow of speech discourse were always understood in the maddening noise.

I’m not sure if Troy will ever advance in the management ranks of this company, though. Unlike Bob and Jeff, who have the intensity of stockbrokers who thrive on the sheer thrill of making a buck, Troy seems to be more concerned with other things, though what that is I don’t know. We didn’t talk too much, though I gave him my recipe for chocolate cream cheese brownies.

8

A woman asks me if we can gift wrap a lavender soap box kit. I tell her that “those who gift wrap are gone but I’ll do it if you’d like me to”. Oh, thank you very much. When I find the woman I hand her the wrapped box. She covers her mouth but not before a sudden gasp of drawn air and a high octave sound escapes and I can’t help but shrug and know before I handed it to her it was the worst wrapped gift in King County. “Well, I can give you some paper and you can wrap it at home.” I was trying to be helpful and not demeaning. She wasn’t really too polite about it either. She said she was going to get another kind of soap kit and handed me this red paper rectangular box. I thought about her later when I was safely at home with a lager and a bag of shrimp crackers, imagining what she’d say to a friend, “…oh, and I wanted to get this soap kit in lavender but this man who worked there wrapped it as if he was in a straight jacket.”

Two days before Christmas and I am asked to take line two before I have even clocked in on the computer. Within 20 minutes I knock over a big heavy jar in the middle of the madness that no one hears, find 11 of 26 pulls, am asked to finish assembling a model schooner with three masts using the worst directions ever, and I ramble aimlessly with a kind southerly elderly woman on line one and later two who wanted to know if the Bacall Accent Table Lamp, that is “Bacaauull table lamp, the accented one, the Bacaauull one” was on sale. Meanwhile a heavy iron dog fell on Alexis’ head, giving her a bump the size of a big ol nectarine.

A woman on line three asks if there are any of these kitchen wall clocks with a timer attached to it. I apologize after a sloppy run in the back to find none in the space I believed they were in. The woman mourns, pitifully when voices behind me say I think there’s a few of those. From mourning to glory.

It never occurs to me that my lack of attention could have been used to make someone even happier than before. One thing I enjoy about the job is finding something that brings some kind of commercial joy.

9

It is really cold when I leave the mall. I stop and listen to the bagpipe man and the jamming drummer. A woman comes up to the bagpipe man and places a gray neck scarf beside him. She does the same thing for the drummer, and she offers a scarf to a man who was just talking to a man who was going to play something. Her daughter is a few steps behind her in all this, excited to be a part of the drama. I walk down to First, take a left, passing all the bars I have frequented in, but enter none. I stop at the corner store at Sixth and Jackson where the bums hang out in collective misery and buy two gallons of drinking water.

Tomorrow is Christmas. I didn’t watch a single Christmas related movie this year. I listened to Christmas music, sometimes so loudly when I’d leave the store floor, entering any of the stockrooms it was if I was shell-shocked, and I had forgotten what it was I went in to look for. I saw a few seasonal employees experience this same neurological blast of silence.

Christmas has become the most difficult holiday to gauge because it is so many things for so many reasons. I enjoyed being around family at this time but I am equally content, recently, of being alone. Alone that is, in a country that doesn’t promote it as much. Isn’t it better to have someone than to have no one? Well, yes of course. It makes the holiday more meaningful, if, that is, necessary. I watch all the staff who were in today and sense an eagerness for many to get this day’s work over. Numerous people leave hours before they are supposed to clock out and are glad of it. Kevin, a seasonal hire asks me if I want to stay until eight instead of six. I balk and he backs off. Thirty minutes later he tells me Jeff decided to let all but a few of the staff go at closing time. Losing eight dollars and fifty cents so I could return to my empty room and listen to Frank Sinatra ask what ever happened to Christmas was almost worth it.

I am tying my shoes when I hear an officer yell ‘put your hands in the air’. Midnight Mass at the Cathedral.

10

Lisa is a nice lady who I haven’t worked with too much, but she asks me what my plans are for tonight. She says the Baptists have an 11:00 service. Funny, that the Baptists are staying up late on Christmas Eve. “Do you still have to go to church on Sunday if you go on a Saturday?”

On my walk to St. James Cathedral did I then understand why I didn’t give to any one today. I had been waiting to give it to a bigger group of people.

I know the first stanza of Hark the Herald Angels and that is it. While those with programs sing the second and third stanzas I mumble a few words and stop. The Indian man directly behind me doesn’t know the words either, but that doesn’t stop him from filling the air with his own version in a high pitched nasal with a hint of lisp:

Na na na, na na na na na, na na na, na na na na. Na na na na na na na na, na na na, na na na shna.

Na na na, na na na na na.

Na na na, na na na na shna.

Na na na

Na na na na

Na na na na

Na na na na na

Na na na na shna na na,

Na na na na

Na na na na.

I stand in the corner, in the back right, for two hours. I thank God for letting the shna na na man move forward into the masses of parishioners, tourists, and general one day of church a year believers.