Shortcake received another button Wednesday. Santaland was down about 6 elves, so everyone got a button for picking up the slack.
There have been lots of crying kids in the last two days. The two most impressive were both boys. One boy was with a school group, and screamed for 5 minutes in his mother's arms. The entire time he was in the presence of Santa he was crying and screaming. His mother tried to take a picture with Santa with him on Santa's lap. She tried with him on her lap. He did nothing but scream, and she kept trying. Shortcake said multiple times that maybe she should just let it go. The kid was obviously terrified, and it was only getting worse. The second boy wouldn't come in the house. He hid and cried. The usher elf finally got him inside, and he just stood next to Shortcake hiding his face against the wall. After Shortcake took the picture of Santa and the boy's mother and brother, she told him it was over, then escorted him out of the house. But to get out of the house, he had to go past Santa. So Shortcake told him to hide his face in her smock, walk right next to her, and she walked the entire house with her back to Santa, blocking his view. Once they were outside, the kid stopped crying, and Shortcake told him it was over. She gave him to his mother, and went back to work.
Someone asked if there was a point where elves step back and say "not in my job description." Crying kids aren't those times. At that point in time, it's all about protecting the kid from Santa, even if the kid isn't technically in harm's way. It doesn't matter; a kid is terrified, and all Shortcake wants to do is calm the kid down. If that means walking sideways, hiding a kid's face in a smock, then that's what happens.
Shortcake was put in two of the slower positions today. Both positions consist of telling people where to go to exit after seeing Santa, which means people pass by, but inconsistently. Shortcake had a lot of time to entertain herself. She danced, flapped around her sleeves, decided having an opposable thumb is awesome, tangoed, waltzed, sang "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and tried to turn a broken button into a monacle.
It is one week to Christmas.
1 comment:
We missed Shortcake last night. We took Dean to visit Santa, and although there were only two people in front of us, it still took half an hour. The workers, who were not elves, were very bad at keeping things moving. Santa looked fantastic, but was clearly frustrated with his non-elf helpers. See, this is what happens when you outsource your north-pole labor.
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