It's The Most Crabby Time Of The Year (For Some People...Not Me!)

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love Christmas. As the song goes, ...it's the most wonderful time of the year. For me it is anyway. It's always been a magical time for me, even as a child. Time to celebrate the birth of Christ, time to spread joy to others, quality time spent with family and friends, time to indulge in those once-a-year treats, and so on.

Christmas has never been stressful for me, well except for the years that my mother was sick and hospitalized over Christmas. Other than that, I have never felt burnt out or stressed over the holidays, because I prepare well in advance to the holidays. I start buying gifts months before Christmas and wrap them as soon as I bring them home, I write up my Christmas cards early so I can just drop them in the mail when it's time, I put up my decorations and tree the first weekend of December, so I can sit back and enjoy it all, and so on. To me, these things aren't hard to do and they sure make life easier over the holidays.

The thing that I don't get it is why people leave their Christmas preparations to the last minute. The benefits of starting early far outweigh putting things off to the last minutes and it doesn't require much extra effort. Plus you're not so broke over Christmas because you've spread your spending out.

Given that I work in the customer service industry, I deal with crabby people all friggin' day. It's a stressful job and I look forward the end of my shift each day, so I can get away from people's bitchy-ness. This time of year I deal with more and more crabby people, like every other person I deal with, instead of every 1 in 4 people I deal with. I know it's because it's the holidays and people let themselves get super stressed out. It's amazing just how stressed people let themselves get and then don't realize how much of an a$$hole it makes them be. I know that in the run of a day the number of people I deal with who actually will sit back and say "Wow, I really was an a$$hole to that lady I dealt with on the phone" are slim to none. For example the very first person I spoke to this morning used some extremly vulgar language with me. What a great way to start the day.

Hopefully the joys of the season will spread to these people and they will understand that being short with people who try to help them, makes for a bad day for everyone.