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Boxing Day

Submitted by ek hornbeck on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 3:50pm

Boxing Day.

On the day after Christmas...

  • In feudal times the lord of the manor would give boxes of practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land.
  • Many years ago on the day after Christmas servants would carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day's work. Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts.
  • In churches, it was traditional to open the church's donation box on Christmas Day and distribute it to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day.

Take your pick.

In the world of retail Boxing Day is the day everyone brings back all the crap they got for gifts that they didn't want or is the wrong size or the wrong color or that they shoplifted and now want full retail for instead of the 10% that the local fence will give them.

Now fortunately for me I never had to work the counter during this period of long lines and testy, hung over sales people and managers dealing with irate customers who think that making their sob story more pitiful than the last one will get them any treatment more special than what everyone gets.

  1. Is it all there?
  2. Is it undamaged?
  3. Did you buy it here?

Bingo, have some store credit. Go nuts. Have a nice day.

What makes it especially crappy for the clerks is that you don't normally get a lot of practice with the return procedures because your manager will handle it since it's easier than training you. Now you have 20 in a row and the first 7 or 8 are slow until you get the hang of things.

As a customer I have to warn you, this is not a swap meet. If they didn't have a blue size 6 on Christmas Eve, they don't have it now either EVEN IF THE CUSTOMER RIGHT AHEAD OF YOU IN LINE JUST RETURNED A SIZE 6 IN BLUE!

It has to go back to the warehouse for processing and re-packaging. Really.

So if you braved the surly stares today you have my admiration for your tenacity. If you waited for the rush to pass my respect for your brilliance.

But don't wait too long. It all has to be out of the store before February inventory so it doesn't have to be counted.

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Submitted by mhagle on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 4:13pm
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Freaked me out.

Did not encounter it until moving to Texas.

Gifts were sort of sacred in my former experience. Not expensive but heartfelt and treasured. They often were things you needed like socks and underwear. Long underwear actually.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Submitted by SnappleBC on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 5:30pm
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My wife and I take advantage of the quiet time to be together. We'll make a nice meal. I'll dress her up in some cute eye candy. We'll lounge about the house all day. If we do buy "gifts", they are carefully chosen to be things we actually need but, for whatever reasons, haven't bought yet.

I see no particular reason to buy into the consumerism.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

Submitted by Daenerys on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 6:47pm
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@SnappleBC I'm pretty over Christmas at this point. Like many other things, it's all a lie. It's cold and there's snow and ice everywhere (in the north at least), depression and suicides skyrocket during the holidays, people are more impatient and rude to retail workers, and everyone is brainwashed into buying things they don't need with money they don't have. And I'm apparently the only person on earth who gets annoyed at people giving us tins of Christmas cookies, because I'd rather bake holiday goodies myself for my family, and being diabetic I don't like to have too much sweets around all the time, so that gets taken away from me around the holidays too. Bah humbug!!

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This shit is bananas.

Submitted by gjohnsit on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 5:46pm

“This is unusual"

A small town in South Carolina was overjoyed in October after learning that a Mega Millions ticket worth $1.5 billion had been sold from a local convenience store.

Janice Curtis, the mayor of Simpsonville, S.C., said then that the ticket could put the town “on the map.”

The owner of KC Mart #7, where the ticket was purchased, added that it was “good for the community.”

As the year draws to a close, however, that excitement is slowly transforming into anxiety. As of late last week, the winner of the largest single payout in U.S. history still hasn’t claimed the prize, The State newspaper reported, and it’s not clear whether that will happen.

“This is unusual, considering that it’s $1.5 billion,” Holli Armstrong, a spokeswoman for the state lottery, told The State.

The winning numbers were announced Oct. 23, and the owner of the ticket has 180 days — or until late April — to collect the prize. If the ticket is not redeemed, according to the Mega Millions website, “each participating state in the Mega Millions game will get back all the money that state contributed to the unclaimed jackpot.”

The 44 states that participate in Mega Millions are then able to appropriate that money for a variety of purposes.

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Submitted by lotlizard on Wed, 12/26/2018 - 9:05pm
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@gjohnsit  
If the ticket is never turned in, an untold story with more than a little whiff of tragedy about it.

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Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Thu, 12/27/2018 - 2:59am

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP1Fh8yz6oE]

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The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.