Excuse Me For Not Taking My Vacation Time

I have been at my job for a ridiculously long time and therefore get an obscene about of vacation time. At the start of the year I plan out all the days I want to take off, pool 3 or 4 days for Mental Health Days, and promise myself that this will be the year that I will use my vacation days wisely.


Then November comes around and I realize I have way too many days left since I canceled three days of vacation and never took those mental health days. I start to panic. I already have the week of Thanksgiving off and the last two weeks of the year how much more time can I actually take? And that’s how I end up not working on Friday’s.

I used this last Friday to do some Christmas shopping. I had hardly started so my list was long. I made a list of all the people I needed to shop for, what I had already picked up, and some ideas of what they might like or what they had asked for. After lunch with Heidi at her school, I ran into Marshalls to start checking people off my list.

I used to work at Marshalls but they have since built a new store. I am always confused when I am in that store. Why are there different sections of women’s tops and four different sections of women’s bottoms?

I grabbed a cart and am wandering around the store. I notice they are playing Christmas music on the store radio. It is very busy and every aisle has at least one person in it. I am in the shoe department when a lady pushes by me saying excuse me as she shoves me into a rack. Well, that sure was rude, I think.

I do not see any super cute Puma’s I just cannot live without so I head over to the Holiday Decorations. I walk up just in time to witness a kid throw his arm wildly because his mom will not buy him something he doesn’t need. He knocks something glass off the shelf sending it to the floor where it shatters in many pieces. His mom throws him in the cart and pushes him away.

I am looking for an employee when someone pages a manager to the Holiday section. I stay near the mess to make sure no one steps in the glass when an employee and the manager show up with a broom. I over hear them talking about how they should stop selling breakable items since more of them are broken then sold. Nice.

Next I head towards what appears to be another women’s section with two more sections of tops, three sections of bottoms, and jackets. I also notice I can hear Christmas music coming from somewhere but the store speakers above this section are playing P!nk’s newest song. That’s odd.

I am flipping through a rack of jeans when a girl, about 17, plows into my cart because she is talking on her phone. “Oh! Excuse me!” she shouts to me and then into her phone she yells “I just totally ran in to some woman’s cart because she had it parked all up in the aisle.”

Yes, the aisles are very narrow but I had my cart to the side and if she were looking she would have been able to avoid me.

I make my way to the yoga pants section and another woman shoves by me. “I said excuse me!” She says to me. I just keep walking. But I do find a super cute new pair of gray yoga pants.

In the Men’s section I find two people hogging the main aisle to have a conversation. In the toy area I find kids under the age of 3 wandering around without parents. By the blankets, I witness people opening blankets and shoving them back on the shelf.

And then I remember why I don’t shop at Marshall’s very often. While you can’t beat their prices, it sure is an experience in culture.

The man at the checkout was very nice and reminded me that had I purchased everything in my cart at Sears I would have spent a lot more.

I left with my packages and loaded my good deals in the car. On my drive to the next store, I wondered who taught all these people that saying Excuse Me meant they could be so rude.

Maybe in 2011 I will remember to use my vacation time before November and just do all my shopping online.