The Tinsel Breakdown
December is a brutal, soul-crushing month for anyone working in retail. The holiday decorations are up, the store looks like a glitter bomb went off, and the same four Christmas songs play over and over on a loop until your ears feel like they are bleeding. Everyone is stressed, sleep-deprived, and ready to snap at the slightest provocation. I was working the graveyard shift at 2:00 AM, stocking shelves for the morning rush. The store was quiet, which was a nice change from the chaos of the day, but that silence was punctuated by the relentless, upbeat jingle of 'Jingle Bell Rock' for the fiftieth time that night. I was working near a massive display of fake pine trees, the kind that shed plastic needles everywhere, when I heard a loud, metallic crash, followed by the shattering of glass. I froze, my heart hammering against my ribs. I walked around the corner of the aisle and found a new employee named Kevin sitting squarely in the middle of the linoleum floor. He was surrounded by a sea of broken red and gold glass ornaments and a tangled, shimmering mess of tinsel. He wasn't moving. He just sat there, legs splayed, staring at the ceiling tiles as if they held the secrets of the universe. I put my box of inventory down and hurried over, my boots crunching on the shards. I asked him if he was okay, worried he might have tripped or had a medical episode. He looked at me, but his eyes were completely vacant. He had that blank, distant expression people get when they have officially disconnected from reality. He whispered, his voice raspy, that he simply could not handle the music anymore. It wasn't a joke. He was dead serious. He slowly stood up, gathered a handful of tangled, tacky silver tinsel, and wrapped it around his head like a deranged crown. Then, he started laughing. It started as a low chuckle and turned into a full-blown, slightly unhinged cackle. He started walking down the main aisle of the store, dragging a long string of plugged-in LED lights behind him like a tail. He looked like a Christmas-themed ghost. He started yelling at the store speakers, gesturing wildly at the ceiling. He was telling the imaginary shoppers, who weren't even there at that hour, that the holidays were a corporate scam designed to steal their happiness and their bank accounts. It was funny in a dark, twisted way, but it was mostly scary. I realized I was in way over my head. I pulled out my phone and called the store manager, Dave. Dave had been working retail for twenty years and had seen just about everything. He walked out from the back office, rubbing his eyes, and found Kevin standing on top of a display table, shouting about the futility of festive consumerism. Dave just looked at Kevin, sighed a long, heavy breath that seemed to contain two decades of retail fatigue, and grabbed his radio. He called a cab to take Kevin home. He did not even fire him. He just told him to take a few days off and get some sleep. Kevin left without his coat, still wearing his tinsel hat, walking out the automatic doors and into the darkness. I stayed to clean up the shattered glass and the tinsel nightmare. As I picked up the jagged pieces, I found myself humming the melody of the song Kevin hated. I stopped instantly, terrified. I realized I was losing it too. The store during the holidays makes you feel trapped, like a hamster on a wheel that never stops turning. The bright, sterile LED lights feel like they are burning your skin, buzzing with a hum that gets inside your skull. I finished the work, but I kept staring at the door, paralyzed by a sudden, overwhelming urge to just run. I wanted to run out into the freezing night, keep running, and never look back at this place. The holidays are a genuine test of how much a human being can take before they break. I am not sure how many more shifts like this I can handle. I finished my work, punched out on the time clock, and walked out into the biting cold of the parking lot. The stress lifted for about five minutes, just enough time for me to get to my car. Then the reality hit me. I realized I had to wake up in six hours and do it all over again. It is a never-ending cycle, a treadmill that only moves faster as the days go on. I put the keys in the ignition and sat there in the dark, watching the store lights flicker. I felt completely empty.