Trials and Tribulations of A First-Time Tree-Trimmer

9/11/07

I started a seasonal job a few days ago. I am helping decorate Christmas trees for a regional department store, and ... I love not being behind a desk. I feel like a big kid who has access to all the beautiful (gaudy, glittery, tacky) things in the world, and gets paid for playing with them! I am astonished when it's time to go home. (I'm not astonished by lunchtime--I get hungry in the middle of the day.) What am I going to do once Christmas is over??!!

My thoughts might flat-line temporarily but my hands keep working of their own accord. I cannot possibly get too far lost and confused in my work because all I need to do to get back on track is look at what I am doing. It's OK for me to have wacky ideas a mile a minute, and also to chatter with my coworkers. Wow!

Today I helped light the Christmas tree from hell. To make a long story short there were a series of improbable electrical problems (fortunately for me, I was not the one who got shocked). But, um, if there are going to be problems to be dealt with, best to learn what to do early on--especially when it's not busy yet, right?... In fact, despite all the time-consuming problems there was some concern that we'd run out of things to do today and have to go home early. I suggested, in my sweet angelic way, that if we finished putting up lights, then we could carefully remove them again just to look busy. In actuality we were able to stretch tasks out to almost the end of the day without resorting to such dastardly measures. Nevertheless, I am in my element here.

At the end of the day I paused briefly before Tree from Hell and bowed my head and put my hands together in prayer. "Please Stay Lit!" I said out loud. When I looked up there was the visual merchandising supervisor. He just smiled.

Visual merchandising--that's the name of this new thing I'm interested in. Indeed, the only thing that prevented me of dying from embarrassment is that I'm so in love with this kind of work.


9/19/07

I am tired, but I know I'm getting at least some sleep, because the other night I dreamed there was a meeting for all the tree-trimmers. We gathered at a round table that was too small to accommodate all of us, so we grouped ourselves, one sitting, one standing, all around the table. Just before the meeting was supposed to start, some people decided to go get coffee. I decided I wanted to get a cup of tea, so I decided to go with them. We went to the kitchenette, which was not the real-life kitchenette. In the dream-kitchenette I discovered the provisions with which to make coffee but none to make tea. I considered getting coffee but decided no, I really wanted tea. Disappointed, I headed back to the meeting, where the manager, who was not the real-life manager, was droning on: "And as you know, the tea kettle has been transferred to the home office, where it's hyperlinked to the main computer so that we can download the latest news from Washington in real time. Therefore, we cannot currently offer tea at this location...."

I think this dream may have been prompted by the fact that, by decree, the TV in the RL kitchenette is kept tuned to CNN.

Subconscious awareness about the importance of tea kettles notwithstanding, this particular tree-trimmer forgot today was Primary day. Thus good, hard labor and the concomitant fatigue accomplished something that not even the 9/11 attacks could bring about: I forgot to vote. Instead of thinking about participatory democracy this afternoon, I wondered what to do with the last fifty minutes of my workday. I thought pretending to be a cardboard box might be a good idea.

I'll let everyone know when I perfect the technique.

[I’ve lost track of the date this was written.]
I am even starting to appreciate the color pink. Today I helped decorate a tree which is very girlish in style and has a lot of pink ornaments. Among them were little pink dresses on hangers, looking about the right size for a standard Barbie doll. And I got a great and "happifying" idea. When I was little, my mother designed and stitched together awesome outfits for my dolls. (Sometimes she'd make a real-life-sized dress for me and a matching one for my Barbie.) My dad made ingenious little "closets" for these clothes out of shoe boxes and dowels. I always put the clothes away on their little plastic hangers....You can guess the rest. Yes, I've kept these special things for all these years. Finally... I can use the fancy dresses as Christmas ornaments, and Mom will smile down upon me from Heaven.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

The trees at the main store are all ready for the "grand opening," so we tree-trimmers have taken our act on the road. Four of us traveled in my car, and four others traveled together after meeting at another location.

During our morning commute, everyone in my car voted to stop at the Dunkin Donuts on the Hutchinson River Parkway. We were feeling leisurely, so we went inside rather than using the drive-through.

When we got to the department store we found that the other crew members had arrived ahead of us. The first person to greet us had been a passenger in the other car, and the hello she gave us was, "We saw you in Dunkin Donuts when we were driving by!" I felt a little betrayed. But I didn’t have any concise way of expressing my discomfort and I let it go. Later, one of my passengers admitted to having had the same reaction, and expressed it perfectly: “Dude, why you blow my spot?” FWIW, I think our coworker spoke out of mingled admiration and regret. None of the people in the car she rode in had known there was a Dunkin Donuts along the highway and they were already passing it by the time they noticed it.

The store we traveled to was quite lovely, except perhaps the stock rooms. I didn't see much of the stock rooms, as they were dark enough to develop film in. Apparently they are not only dark but also poorly stocked, as the managers were compelled to send somebody to Home Depot to purchase two strands of red lights for us.