I work at a grocery store and we are normally open eighteen hours a day. I normally work nights because I prefer it, so I’m always part of the closing shift.

Today is Christmas Eve. We normally close at midnight, but we closed today at 10:00 pm. We had forty people in the store at 9:45, so we were forced to lock the doors at 9:50. I was outside gathering all the carts, and my God, so many people were coming in the last ten minutes and fighting with my manager over the fact we closed the door early.

This normally always happens at midnight. People come at 11:55 and we deny them. What made tonight different is just the number of people cussing and trying to force their way in. It got to the point where customers started fighting with each other — the customers that defended us and the ones that were complaining.

We want to go home; it’s Christmas Eve. We literally were open from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm. Why come at 9:55 and fight us about it?

I didn’t end up leaving until 10:45, and my managers are still there closing everything. People have no idea what we actually go through. It’s ridiculous. People see the closing time and take it as a personal challenge to come a few minutes before.

A lady comes in on Christmas Eve looking for a specific item. I don’t remember what, but it’s some oddball thing.

Coworker: “Ma’am, we don’t have that in stock. We can order it for you, but it definitely won’t arrive before Christmas. It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

Customer: *Screaming* “How can you not have it in stock?! You’ve ruined Christmas!”

My coworker responded in the most dispassionate voice imaginable:

Coworker: “Just call me the Grinch, ma’am.”

And then he turned to the next person in line. She looked stunned for a moment and then just turned on her heel and left.

It was Christmas Eve. I was working a ten-item-or-less, cash-only register back in the days of typing in eight-digit codes instead of scanning. It was twenty minutes before closing on Christmas Eve.

A woman came through my register with a full shopping cart of clothes. I remember ringing thirty-eight pairs of socks. My manager was bagging for me and kept muttering:

Manager: “Keep calm… keep calm…”

I got it all rung up and — you guessed it — she paid with her credit card.

Me: “Ma’am, I can’t handle a credit card at my register. This will all need to be rung through at the service desk.”

I turned eighteen the year this happened, so I was just legally old enough to do scratch-off lottery tickets. I was at my mom’s house for Christmas, and she got me what looked like a legitimate ticket. I’m sure your heart is sinking for me already.

Well, I did the scratch-off, and it said that I had won something like $100,000 — one of the grand prizes. It would’ve been a huge payout at my age.

My mom encouraged me to call my dad (divorced parents who’d had fifty-fifty custody) to tell him the big news. She sat, with this little smile, through my telling him how much better things would be for the next few years, especially college.

This went on for about twenty minutes before I hung up with, “I love you! Merry Christmas!”

Then, my mom told me it was a gag ticket, and she burst out laughing. I could just feel my face fall as she made a comment about how funny my excitement was over my “obviously fake” lottery ticket. Through tears of laughter, she even criticized my intelligence over not realizing it.

Once again, I was newly eighteen and had never played before. I had no knowledge of what a real scratch-off was supposed to look like in comparison.

I left her house on the spot, storming out. I had to call Dad back and explain what happened, near tears. I went to his house, where we made a Christmas dinner together.

Ten minutes after I left, my mom sent me a text asking me if I was over my “snit fit” yet.

Twenty minutes later, she berated me via text for overreacting.

An hour later, she was alternating between non-apologies and demanding that I return to her house and apologize for “setting the family against her.” (Gotta love the family phone tree; everybody knew what she had done within the hour.)

Two hours later, I was calm enough to look at my phone to see all her messages. I merely texted her back a single message, saying that maybe there was a good reason for her to be divorced from Dad and now I knew why he didn’t like her anymore. (I had been shielded from most of the drama until that moment.)

It was one of the most intense mixtures of feeling simultaneous loathing, anger, and sadness I’ve ever felt. It took me almost all year to forgive her, and even after that, I’ve never treated her the same.

Yesterday, I was able to do a small, yet satisfying thing. I work in retail, but we don’t carry a lot of gluten-free items. Because of this, I have to go to a certain big box store because they have a lot of gluten-free name- and store-branded items.

My cashier was very nice, polite, and talkative with me. She saw I had cat food and dog food, asked about my babies, and genuinely seemed interested. As she was checking me out, her front-end manager told her to go ahead and turn her light off and go to break.

I thanked her for being so friendly and checking me before her break, and we talked for a second about how the best part of cashiering is sitting down on your break. She was getting done with me and another lady walked up.

The woman looked up and saw the light was off. She then proceeded to roll her eyes and start to pull stuff out of her buggy. I looked at the cashier and then turned back to the lady.

Me: “Ma’am, her light is off. Her register is closed.”

The lady looked startled to be called out but turned around and went to another line.

Cashier: “Thank you so much!”

Me: *Smiling* “I’ve always wanted to do that, but I don’t work here so I can say what I want!”

She laughed and walked with me toward the door.

Cashier: “Have a great day and a Merry Christmas!”