Where Is the Love?

Procrastination is my friend. I have promised this entry for a month, so it's time to get it done. Valentine's Day weekend was full of violence. It doesn't seem like it should be that way, but indeed it was.

Valentine's Day is the second busiest holiday in a card store. Right behind Christmas. Mother's Day is a close third, or Valentine's Day and Mother's Day may be flip flopped, I'm not sure. Either way, we get a line to the back of the store, of mostly men who forgot to get their cards despite my reminders since December 26, when we put up the Valentine's Day cards.

This line causes ordinary adult human beings to behave in ways you might expect to see only in the lunchroom line at your local junior high school. Generally, people would form one line towards the back of the store and when a register opened they would move to that cashier and be rung up. Woe to the little old lady who didn't realize there was only one line, and the business executive would let her know in no uncertain terms that the line went that way. When someone bought three cards, the fourth was free. If they came to the register with only three cards, I would suggest getting the fourth and coming back to me. If they chose to do that, and the next person in line didn't hear me say that, near-fights would break out. There were at least two instances when I thought it really was going to come to blows right in front of me and everyone.

One of the stores in our district was told on February 1 that they would be closing on February 25. The store went on sale almost immediately. People always amaze me when they go into a store that's closing and try to get a bigger discount on prices that are already deeply slashed. Couple that with the emotion of the people who are about to lose their jobs, and you can imagine that tensions might be riding high.

One lady came to the register with a photo album that was normally $12.00. Because it was a Valentine's Day item and the store was closing, it was 75% off. 3.00 what a steal! The lady's response to the price was "Why isn't it 90% off?" To be fair, the photo album was not in its normal place, because someone else had been interested in it earlier, and turned it down, so it was on another shelf elsewhere in the store. As I was trying to explain this to the customer, the store manager looked at me and said, "Well, why isn't it free?" The customer became defensive and shot back a retort, and the manager responded. I really thought the manager was going to go over the counter. I stepped in and told the customer that her order would be 80 cents, unless she wanted the photo album, in which case it would be $3.80. The lady turned the photo album down and things began to cool down in the store.

Later that night, as I was coming home on the train, a gentleman who had clearly come from the airport, was arranging his luggage before sitting down. A little old lady said "Hey, watch it," which I think is good advice, if someone is slinging bags around, and nearly hitting someone. This was not the case, though. This guy was simply rearranging his luggage and sat down. Just as he sat down, and the train departed, a lady next to her shouted, "That's my mother! You better apologize!" The gentleman turned around and said, "Oh, did I hit you?" The lady said, "No" and the guy replied, "Then why am I apologizing?" I thought that was a good question, but the lady informed him that he was going to wish there were transit police in that car.

Two days after Valentine's Day, a lady walked into the store and asked if we had any cards left. I was just putting away the last of them, and she explained that she was looking for a specific card. She pulled it out of her purse in eight pieces and told me that she had gotten into a fight and tore this one up. She needed the same card in order to save her relationship. I brought two boxes of cards out for her to sift through and went back to look in one myself. I found it within just a couple of minutes. I went back to her and asked if she had found it. She said no, so I pulled it from behind my back, and she thanked me profusely. I enjoy helping people, but maybe we could think a little more about the consequences before tearing up cards and having to search for it again.

Maybe we need to ban Valentine's Day on account of the anger, strife and violence it creates. Or, we could all take a Valium and sleep through the holiday.