“So, what are you doing for the holidays?”

People who've never worked in retail at any level simply do not realize the horror and depression this innocent question invokes in members of my trade. I have worked as a supermarket meat-cutter for 32 years—that's 32 Christmases, and I can tell you honestly I have not had a peaceful, relaxing, fun holiday since 1984. Christmas is go, go, go time. It's massive over time. It's get your head straight and focus time. It's going to work in the dark. And coming home in the dark. Its dealing with a non-stop barrage of questions, requests, orders complaints, and phone calls. Oh my god, the phone calls. All the while trying to increase your production 100 percent or more.

Everybody thinks I exaggerate. I promise you that I, personally, don't. Now, some out-going, gregarious people-persons can handle all of this a little easier than me: though, I can assure you, even the most out-going, friendly people in the world are starting to twitch by the time January 2^nd rolls around. But myself, being naturally quiet, reserved and introverted, the constant customer interaction takes an even heavier toll. Add to the equation a seasonal attitude depression (I hate the dark and cold) and the extreme physical punishment and it's an introvert's worst nightmare scenario.

Of course some years are worse than others. One of the first holidays I worked we had a 25 cent a pound turkey sale that caused a community feeding frenzy. We ended up running out (the guy who went to flag to pick up another truckload lost his brakes on the grade back down and crashed) and I was the low man on the totem pole. I was sent out front to explain to livid customers that we had no turkeys... Cannon fodder, they called me. That was a fun holiday. Then there was the year I was an inexperienced cutter and they sent me to the busiest store in Phoenix the week before Christmas to help out. And I had the flu. And there was a snowstorm coming home on Christmas Eve. And did I mention I had a new baby having his first Christmas? Good times!

Yes, I've had some rough holidays. Nothing, however, can quite compare to this year. It all started in September when meat manager (who has a background in refrigeration) finally received the transfer to HVAC he'd been fighting for. Brain was an old friend, the only reason I transferred back to the Sedona store, and I think he felt bad about leaving me. A little bad, but he still had a skip in his step when he walked out the door. With all my years of experience I was expected to take over, but if I've learned one thing, I know myself. I am not a type A, take command Alpha male. I hate being in charge. I hate disciplining people. I hate problem-solving other people's personal ****. I knew the job would make me miserable so I turned it down repeatedly and emphatically.

Naturally the job of retail meat manager is so attractive and appealing that no one applied for the job. The job had been posted for months and the only two people that had applied for the position were our two clean-up/meat helpers. By default one of them got the job. The store director made one last appeal to me. “Don't come complain to me when the place starts falling apart.” The comment kind of made me angry. First, I never, ever complain (maybe I grumble a little) but I take whatever they throw at me and deal with it. As lead meat cutter I have to run the shop when the manger's off, sick, on vacation, in a meeting, or otherwise indisposed and I don't get paid one cent extra. And I hate being in charge, But I shut my mouth and do it. And second, isn't it the store director's job to find someone qualified to run his store? Why is it on me?

Anyway, having a complete rookie as my boss was just the beginning. The long time wrapper got an opportunity for a promotion to cutter by transferring to another store. So he left. Our long time counter person (excuse me—service case manager) transferred to another store to be closer to her boyfriend. Suddenly I was the only person in the shop who could cut or wrap. Now, to be fair, the new manager was trying to play catch-up. He was learning to cut and learning to wrap but in the old days he would barely be considered an apprentice in either craft. And as hard as it was on me on the days he was off, I can only imagine how hard it was him to do everything when I was off. He was trying. I was trying----working my ass off-- but the shop was quite understandably beginning to go downhill.

But don't worry. We have a team of top flight supervisors who were incredibly helpful and understanding. They worked tirelessly to get us the experienced and competent help we desperately needed. And if you believe that, I got some beachfront property to sell you in Arizona. No, they came in on their increasing visits and ripped us a new one continually. “The meat department is a train wreck,” they said the day after senior discount day. “The department lacks readiness by 9 am.” No mention was ever made of the under-staffing other than we should get some more people in there and “train them up.”

But they did manage to hire another counter person (67 years old going on 77) and, even better, an experienced meat-cutter. Having another cutter in the shop helped. Suddenly I could get some other stuff done, little details that needed doing. Of course that lasted exactly four weeks. The week before Thanksgiving, one of the supervisors came up for a couple days to “work with us.” I don't remember him doing a lot of work, but he sure had a lot of criticisms. The new meat-cutter put up with it for half a day then took off his name badge and walked out.

Back to square one. We hired another counter person. A 70-year old. And somehow we managed to make it through Thanksgiving which is actually one the easier holidays. Just a lot of heavy lifting, throwing turkeys around, keeping it all stacked and sorted, and keeping the fresh turkey orders straight. The new manager did an excellent job of ordering and we came through the holiday with a very good gross and a clean inventory.

Then came Christmas. The Christmas ad broke: $4.77 for standing rib, trimmed, boned and tied—more than a dollar cheaper than our nearest competitor who was selling them whole, untrimmed in the bag. And the warehouse plussed us out three pallets of ribs that were frozen solid. What a nightmare. Every case of ribs had to be unpacked, racked and placed in the warmer cutting room to thaw, then rotated back into the cooler while the next batch of frozen ribs was brought out. Meanwhile they are leaking everywhere. Everything is covered in wet bloody water. And we have one person in the whole shop that was proficient at cutting and tying whole ribs. Yours truly. It was horrible. The new manager had his hands full just trying to keep the case semi-full, the phone answered and the supervisors off our back.

It was a community feeding frenzy all over again. I cut like a mad man. I have no idea how many ribs I cut and tied in the ten days before Christmas but it ran into the hundreds. Besides all the other cutting. Meanwhile the shop is full of inexperienced people and strangers. People I've only worked with for a couple weeks. With a brand new manager, we had very little training going on and no system in place. Everybody was running around like chickens doing their own thing the best they could. Orders were coming in and were all over the shop written on wax paper, soaker pads, scraps of paper, Styrofoam trays. The walls were covered with orders, they were taped to the pillars, they covered the managers desk. The phone rang continually with yet more orders, more special requests, and more questions. So, so many questions. “So tell me about your standing rib roasts,” a typical call would begin,” Is that at all like prime rib?”

I like hard work. I do. I discovered early on, there is a purity-- a zen-- to hard physical work. It gets you out of your head. It keeps you focused. But there comes a point when it's too much. And I am not as young as I used to be. I could feel my body quickly wearing down. And physical exhaustion is one thing (its okay to go home at the end of a long day tired) but the mental stress was taking an even larger toll. Just being constantly behind, being pulled in multiple directions at all time, being criticized, being asked to answer questions above and beyond your areas of expertise. Working in a constant atmosphere of chaos and panic was nothing less than miserable..

I think the manager realized I was beginning to lose it. He scheduled me off two days in a row to begin Christmas week. It was really nice of him—except I walked into the shop after my two days off (his day off) and the place was completely destroyed. He'd hired a new cutter, it was his second day on the job, my first time meeting him, and we had an entire department to put back together. And it was busy. I cut as fast as I could cut while trying to break in the new guy but we couldn't keep up. The new guy was keeping up the wrapping, but we still couldn't get the case full. It was the kind of day when you're just forced to work too hard and too fast. The kind of day that accidents happen. Hands get sliced. Fingers get taken off and people slip and fall. In my case it was my @#$%ing back. Wrestling with one of those cases of frozen ribs off the bottom of the stack, I felt that terrible jolt of electricity go up my spine. I knew immediately I'd @#$%ed up. It was a thoracic back sprain (I knew cause I've injured the same muscle at least a half dozen times before) and suddenly I could no longer or lift anything. The slightest deviation from a perfectly upright posture send jolts of pain down my entire back.

I should've went to urgent care and called it, right? No, I borrowed a pain killer from one of the crew and soldiered on. As bad as it was, I couldn't bring myself to leave the shop. Not during Christmas week. Not in the heat of battle. Not that anyone was encouraging me to do so. The store director suggested I take some ibuprofen and if I needed to lift anything heavy to call him on the intercom.

I'll spare the gory details and the whining (which you're probably already sick of) but the rest of of the week was some kind of nightmare. My back hurt worse every day. Business increased exponentially everyday. The Friday before Christmas we did $14,000 (our average day was 4,000). The crew was beginning to fray, eyes were turning glassy. We were starting to snap at each other. On Christmas Eve the rookie manager scheduled one counter person (the 70 year old woman) him, me and a one legged clean-up. It began to snow. Everybody knows a Christmas Eve snow is magical, right? Well I can tell you, it magically drove people to jump in their SUVs and go shopping...

It was a blood bath. Several times the jolts of pain to my back drove me to my knees. And just when we thought the snow was going to slow things down, another wave of customers would rush in. By the time I got home, I wanted to crawl into a corner and weep. But I couldn't curl anything. My back was so trashed I couldn't take off my shoes. Christmas Eve I slept on the floor of the bedroom. I spent X-mas lying on the floor next to the tree, alternately staring at the ceiling and dozing. In other words, it wasn't a whole lot different than any another Christmas.

Oh, and before I left work Christmas Eve, I looked at next week's schedule. We have a super hot three day ad scheduled for New Year's Eve weekend . And the new manger is taking it off...

Happy New Years to me.