Banes & Notables: Holiday retail havoc settles

January 12, 2009 by Courtney Waldron 

Now that school is back in session, textbook headaches replace yuletide chaos

“I don’t want to go back to school.”

At the end of one winter break in grade school I complained about having to return to teachers and homework.  My father told me in response about the times he spent his college breaks working in the oil fields of Michigan.

“I worked on the oil derricks,” he would proclaim. “They would hoist me 180 feet above the ground while it was negative 40 degrees outside and it was snowing so much you couldn’t see anything and it was really loud from all the machinery and it was Christmas…”

Having no idea what a derrick was (except maybe a kid from my class with thick-rimmed glasses and acne), I pictured something out of “There Will Be Blood” with my young dad swinging from a harness above a lake of oil, the wind thrashing him against a machine that would chop off his limbs and then explode.  

Good pay over peril has always been the college way.  

“It was great money, but I was so happy to go back to school by the end of the break,” my dad told me.  I would prefer the warmth of a classroom over the living version of an Upton Sinclair novel any day. 

While my father had oil derricks in his university off time, I had books.  I spent much of this past winter break working extra hours at the bookstore where I renewed my appreciation for all who endure seasonal work. 

The four weeks were a blur.  I was always walking double pace to make it from one end of the store to the next.  There were holiday coffee blends and gingerbread gift cards and chocolate gift boxes with bows on them.  There were caroling students crooning between Art History and Gardening in order to raise money for their school.  There were gift wrappers sharing the burden of awkward customer requests trying to wrap unusual pentagonal books to win a tip for charity.  

The lines at the register snaked around display tables and out the front door.  Children ran around with Curious George Santa hats on their heads making monkey faces.  One of 15 versions of “The Christmas Song” played overhead in the bustling store every 20 minutes.  

There was one glorious evening I got to watch the sun set on a snow-covered parking lot (followed by one begrudging post work-shift in which I shoveled snow off my icicled car in a short-sleeved shirt).  

There were hundreds on top of hundreds of copies of the “Twilight Saga” sold to oodles of gift givers (and, to my dismay, fewer copies of “Grandma’s Dead: Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals” sold).  There were hopeful customers asking if last-minute book orders would arrive in time for Christmas.  There were shoppers everywhere.

From running up the sales lines and down the book isles and (occasionally) into customers on the way, there were blisters on my toes, bruises on my feet and paper cuts on my fingers — still nothing compared to the possible damage due to oil drills.

And now, the holiday rush is over, the chaos is slowly subsiding and the void of sugarplums is being filled by the reality of the economic year ahead.  We miss the comfort of the holidays every January, but this year the emptiness of a retail store post-Christmas serves as a reminder of the state of our wallets and bank accounts and the stark economy.  

Now it’s back to part-time at the bookstore and overtime at UNLV, and whether it’s holiday chaos or January bleakness I’m saying goodbye to, I realize how glad I am — how lucky I am — to be out of the derrick fields and back at school.

BANES AND NOTABLES is a column about the humble jobs – in this case: bookselling – students work to put themselves through college. It appears every other Monday.