In case you are living in a box under an overpass, it’s now the holiday shopping season.  This means that all the Christmas decorations that went up back in August now fit the season.  But no matter what the weather is outside, the temperature of the hearts of the workers in the stores is ice cold.  It’s a real shame that these people continue to earn a paycheck for such Grinch attitudes.  Honestly, I really don’t owe them anything extra for their lack of service.  Besides, not everyone gets to be president when they grow up – some have to serve me fries and Big Macs^®.

I’m not calling anyone out and picking on any one store, because I don’t shop around enough to say that all stores around here suck, but the lady with the nine-inch nails (her actual fingernails, not the band) that tries to take my credit card every morning (I’m still amazed that she can type, run my card, and work with claws that long) while I ingest my number seven with an orange juice, and her twin who just shoves the bag out the window as if the bag contained Ebola, really need to work on their people skills.  If you really hate your job, then get a better one.  If you can’t, go back to college.  If that doesn’t work, pretty yourself up some and marry someone who will give you money.  But for Pete’s sake, don’t sit there and sulk and take it out on the people that are paying your salary because you decided long ago that that reading, writing, and arithmetic thing was too much trouble for you to learn.  And the sad part is, it’s not the just the crewmembers, but the managers, too.

The same goes for the people that work in the stores that I purchase food from.  The presence of a machine that I can run my card though, to save you the time and effort it takes to be personable, doesn’t mean you can just point at the total and grunt.  I know it’s the weekend and you are in a frock behind a counter, but the big corporate giant isn’t paying you to be lethargic. If you want to be more useless and lethargic, go home and watch TV. 

At least not everyone has that approach for work, and I applaud two places that can make me smile and spend my money without feeling like I’m inconveniencing someone.  Raising Cane’s^® must slip something into the water that it gives its employees, because they happen to be way too chipper to be working fast food.  Not only are they mildly attractive for being barely 18, but they always say hi and chitchat with you through the window.   Just the other day, when we were ordering our daily, big-ass sweet tea, some girl passed by the drive-thru window and waved and said hi!  This resulted in several minutes of “I swear I don’t know who she is” and “I promise you she isn’t an ex-girlfriend” to my girlfriend, and then I had to take her shopping.  Thanks, Raising Cane’s!

Another poor soul that my heart goes out to, who keeps a smile on his face as he works, is the guy at Cyclone Laundry.  See, I’m way too busy (read: really too lazy) to do my own laundry, so I drop it off for others to do for me.  I know I could just tell my mom that my girlfriend is pregnant (she isn’t!!!) and drop off my clothes, and they would be folded, ironed, and starched before the sun came up, but it’s so much easier to dump it on some college kid behind a counter.  The guy, however, knows my name and will ask me if I want to dry-clean my suit pants.  All this from the guy that cleans and folds my underwear, even after wearing them to the LSU-Arkansas game.  Now that is what I call service and a love for a paycheck.

As I get ready to go spend my hard-earned cash that I earn from my cubicle, I never was that depressed person at the drive-thru window.  I tried to look at each job as a building block to the next, better job, not that each subsequent job was any better.  But to look at your job as work and not as an opportunity to better yourself and to have fun at it will make your day and mine longer.  Besides, Santa is watching you as you piss me off, so get ready for that big lump of coal.  Unless, of course, you’re the guy cleaning my pants…again.