Today marks the start of my quasi-exile from all retail establishments. I figured out a few years ago that I don’t actually hate the holidays — it’s the traffic, long check-out lines, and the rampant commercialization subverting all meaning from the holidays that I hate.
Spend! Spend! Spend!
Until late-January I put a clock on all retail visits — if I can’t park, find what I want, and pay within 15 minutes then I dump whatever I’d intended to buy and walk out empty-handed. Any store that can’t effeciently handle their peak traffic doesn’t deserve my money and anything I’m tempted to buy during the holidays is probably unnecessary crap anyway. And I end up much happier.
