Black Friday

Black Friday started very early.  Shortcake needed to be at Macy's at 6am, which means she was up at 4:30am.  Because commutes. (Fascinating article on how "because" became a preposition.)  So Shortcake was up bright and early, and she arrived and got right to work, getting ice for Santa's water, and putting together the schedule for the day.  There was a lovely note from Jeanne (her fellow strawboss) on the mirror: "Good morning, Shortcake!" Santa started the season by reciting "Twas The Night Before Christmas" for the elves, which was charming, as always.

Of course, because it was the first day of the season, it did not go as smoothly as Shortcake would have liked.  She had major belt issues.  She was wearing a men's belt which was too big (that's you get for buying a belt without really trying it on first), so there was a lot of extra on the side.  So Shortcake tried to use the radio to hold the belt tail down.  But that meant the radio was on her left hip, which means she was getting stabbed by the antenna.  And the headset cord was getting in her way.  So Shortcake moved the radio to her right hip, but then the belt tail kept catching on things, and her headset felt weird.  This whole situation was frustrating because Shortcake wears a headset every day.  Every single day.  She is very experienced at wearing headsets and never had this problem before.  So.  She took matters into her own hands and put her belt on backwards.  This way the belt tail went to the right, so the radio on her right hip could hold the tail in place, and she didn't get stabbed by the radio antenna.  One crisis managed.  More to come.

Shortcake messed up three times in the first three hours.  There's this new thing in the photo software that helps Macy's track how long visits are, how many photos taken per session, etc, and the strawbosses are integral to getting correct data.  Shortcake may have forgotten to do this very important thing until 8:40am.  So at 8:40 she went around and fixed it.  And then at 9:30am she realized she was still getting it wrong.  She went around and fixed it again.  And had to tell her boss, Krampus she failed, and the first three hours of data were corrupt.  And useless.  And then Shortcake hung her head in shame.

AND THEN.  She mixed something else up, and she had to fix that.  AND THEN the register line exploded because there weren't enough register elves, so the line was back into the village, and Shortcake wasn't able to give Santa his break when he was supposed to get it.  Black Friday was not her best day.

BUT she did put together information for special events, and put all the events on the calendar.  And she had a dance party to Cee Lo Green's cover of "All I Want For Christmas Is You."  (It does not appear to be available on YouTube, so Shortcake cannot link to it.  Thwarted by technology!  Again!)

 Shortcake at the strawboss desk on Black Friday.