Featured blog: "8 tips from a last minute Christmas shopper"

For those of you last-minute shoppers who have yet to hit the mall, we've found the perfect blog for you. Hopefully, Beth Dean's humor will make the idea of setting foot into an overrun store of crazies a bit less cringeworthy. Read on.

"8 tips from a last minute Christmas shopper"
December 14, 2009
By BETH DEAN

With 11 days until Christmas, I have bought exactly zero presents. I’m not a bad person, I just don’t like hurling myself into the hordes of mall Santas, double-wide strollers, and Sbarro devouring teenagers. Before my illustrious career as web design rockstar (edit: corporate drone) I lived in the dark-ages: I worked retail for 7 years.

For seven long years housewives threw pens, money, credit cards, and obscenities at me. I learned that without the magic ability to produce merchandise that didn’t exist, or produce it at an unreasonably low price, a lowly shop wench didn’t stand a fighting chance. I saw women mow down my pyramids of stemware with hum-vee strollers, and witnessed the morbidly obsese walk again when their Rascals wouldn’t fit through the aisles. Desperate husbands scooped up gift-cards and jingle rock santas, while sticky-fingered, unattended children flung pretzels and cheerios across the store.

So, as I would sooner endure paper cuts to my eyelids than go near a mall the day after Thanksgiving, I’ve come up with a few tips based on my experiences to help out my fellow anti-commerce holiday slackers.

1. The item you want is probably gone already. Don’t trust internet inventory locators, they’re always wrong. Call the store and ask someone. Most stores, even during the holidays, will begrudgingly hold something for you if you can get there fast enough.
2. All bets are off. Don’t turn your back on the spoils in your cart and expect it to remain untouched. Someone else wants that poop-herself-pretty-pretty-princess. She who has her hands on it last, leaves the store with it.
3. Bring cash, and bring extra. Almost every holiday season my store’s card services went down after being overloaded with requests. Card processing will time out, and writing checks runs you the risk of having your eyeballs clawed out by the impatient lines behind you.
4. You won’t find a parking space, so don’t bother trying. Just take the spot in the middle of nowhere, it will take you less time to walk to the store than it does to sit in your car pissing off everyone trying to get around you.
5. There won’t be anyone to help you. The nearest salesperson is teetering on a ladder, getting the last thingamajic and whatchamacallit from the store’s highest display, for a moth-ball scented old bag who’s “just looking.” Know what you want and where it is.
6. If a store does offer free gift wrap, you don’t want it, and you’re a jerk if you get it. This means you’re pulling away staff from the sales floor and cash registers, potentially inciting a riot. And if you’re getting something oddly shaped or oversized, they’re not going to be able to wrap it any better than you would, it’s still going to look like a blob of crumpled up gift-wrap. Just go home and stick whatever it is in a gift bag, besides it’s easier for your stuffy sister-in-law when she regifts.
7. Always ask for a gift receipt first, even if you don’t want one. You never know when you’ll need it, your tastes aren’t infallible and you don’t want Aunt Ethel to know how cheap you are, and the cashier will have to get a manager to reprint one for you.
8. Get out of there. As soon as you’re done, leave the store, sprawlmart, or ye olde mall towne immediately. You never know who you’re going to run into. One unfortunate Christmas Eve I fell prey to a local weather girl gone investigative reporter spotlighting last minute shoppers, and my whole family got a sneak preview of their gifts on the ten o’clock news.

Now good luck, and get some of that pre-alcoholic eggnog, because you’re going to need it. And remember, gift cards are your friend.

For more of Beth Dean's blog, visit Resist Media's website.

For more tips on last-minute shopping, check out our article on last-minute gift ideas.