1994 - Barrel Fever

by David Sedaris

  Everything about the cash register intimidates me. Each procedure involves a series of codes: separate numbers for cash, checks, and each type of credit card. The term Void has gained prominence as the filthiest four-letter word in my vocabulary. Voids are a nightmare of paperwork and coded numbers, every-thing produced in triplicate and initialed by the employee and his supervisor.

  Leaving the building tonight I could not shake the mental picture of myself being stoned to death by restless, angry customers, their nerves shattered by my complete lack of skill. I tell myself that I will simply pry open my register and accept anything they want to give me — beads, cash, watches, whatever. I’ll negotiate and swap. I’ll stomp their credit cards through the masher, write ‘Nice Knowing You!’ along the bottom of the slip and leave it at that.

  All we sell in SantaLand are photos. People sit upon Santa’s lap and pose for a picture. The Photo Elf hands them a slip of paper with a number printed along the top. The form is filled out by another elf and the picture arrives by mail weeks later. So really, all we sell is the idea of a picture. One idea costs nine dollars, three ideas cost eighteen.

  My worst nightmare involves twenty-two thousand people a day standing before my register. I won’t always be a cashier, just once in a while. The worst part is that after I have accumulated three hundred dollars I have to remove two hundred, fill out half a dozen forms, and run the envelope of cash to the drop in the China Department or to the vault on the balcony above the first floor. I am not allowed to change my clothes beforehand. I have to go dressed as an elf. An elf in SantaLand is one thing, an elf in Sportswear is something else altogether.

  This afternoon we were given presentations and speeches in a windowless conference room crowded with desks and plastic chairs. We were told that during the second week of December, SantaLand is host to ‘Operation Special Children,’ at which time poor children receive free gifts donated by the store. There is another morning set aside for terribly sick and deformed children. On that day it is an elf’s job to greet the child at the Magic Tree and jog back to the house to brace our Santa.

  ‘The next one is missing a nose,’ or ‘Crystal has third-degree burns covering 90 percent of her body.’

  Missing a nose. With these children Santa has to be careful not to ask, ‘And what would you like for Christmas?’

  We were given a lecture by the chief of security, who told us that Macy’s Herald Square suffers millions of dollars’ worth of employee theft per year. As a result the store treats its employees the way one might treat a felon with a long criminal record. Cash rewards are offered for turning people in and our bags are searched every time we leave the store. We were shown videotapes in which supposed former employees hang their heads and rue the day they ever thought to steal that leather jacket. The actors faced the camera to explain how their arrests had ruined their friendships, family life, and, ultimately, their future.

  One fellow stared at his hands and sighed, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be admitted into law school. Not now. Not after what I’ve done. Nope, no way.’ He paused and shook his head of the unpleasant memory. ‘Oh, man, not after this. No way.’

  A lonely, reflective girl sat in a coffee shop, considered her empty cup, and moaned, ‘I remember going out after work with all my Macy’s friends. God, those were good times. I loved those people.’ She stared off into space for a few moments before continuing, ‘Well, needless to say, those friends aren’t calling any-more. This time I’ve really messed up. Why did I do it? Why?’

  Macy’s has two jail cells on the balcony floor and it apprehends three thousand shoplifters a year. We were told to keep an eye out for pickpockets in SantaLand.

  Interpreters for the deaf came and taught us to sign ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS! I AM SANTA’S HELPER.’ They told us to speak as we sign and to use bold, clear voices and bright facial expressions. They taught us to say ‘YOU ARE A VERY PRETTY BOY/GIRL! I LOVE YOU! DO YOU WANT A SURPRISE?’

  My sister Amy lives above a deaf girl and has learned quite a bit of sign language. She taught some to me and so now I am able to say, ‘SANTA HAS A TUMOR IN HIS HEAD THE SIZE OF AN OLIVE. MAYBE IT WILL GO AWAY TOMORROW BUT I DON’T THINK SO.’

  This morning we were lectured by the SantaLand managers and presented with a Xeroxed booklet of regulations titled ‘The Elfin Guide.’ Most of the managers are former elves who have worked their way up the candy-cane ladder but retain vivid memories of their days in uniform. They closed the meeting say-ing, ‘I want you to remember that even if you are assigned Photo Elf on a busy weekend, YOU ARE NOT SANTA’S SLAVE.’

  In the afternoon we were given a tour of SantaLand, which really is something. It’s beautiful, a real wonderland, with ten thousand sparkling lights, false snow, train sets, bridges, deco-rated trees, mechanical penguins and bears, and really tall candy canes. One enters and travels through a maze, a path which takes you from one festive environment to another. The path ends at the Magic Tree. The Tree is supposed to resemble a complex system of roots, but looks instead like a scale model of the human intestinal tract. Once you pass the Magic Tree, the light dims and an elf guides you to Santa’s house. The houses are cozy and intimate, laden with toys. You exit Santa’s house and are met with a line of cash registers.

  We traveled the path a second time and were given the code names for various posts, such as ‘The Vomit Corner,’ a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree, where nauseous children tend to surrender the contents of their stomachs. When someone vomits, the nearest elf is supposed to yell ‘VAMOOSE,’ which is the name of the janitorial product used by the store. We were taken to the ‘Oh, My God, Corner’ a position near the escalator. People arriving see the long line and say ‘Oh, my God!’ and it is an elf’s job to calm them down and explain that it will take no longer than an hour to see Santa.

  On any given day you can be an Entrance Elf, a Water Cooler Elf, a Bridge Elf, Train Elf, Maze Elf, Island Elf, Magic Window Elf, Emergency Exit Elf, Counter Elf, Magic Tree Elf, Pointer Elf, Santa Elf, Photo Elf, Usher Elf, Cash Register Elf, Runner Elf, or Exit Elf. We were given a demonstration of the various positions in action, performed by returning elves who were so animated and relentlessly cheerful that it embarrassed me to walk past them. I don’t know that I could look someone in the eye and exclaim, ‘Oh, my goodness, I think I see Santa!’ or ‘Can you close your eyes and make a very special Christmas wish!’ Everything these elves said had an exclamation point at the end of it!!! It makes one’s mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment. I feel cornered when someone talks to me this way. Doesn’t everyone? I prefer being frank with children. I’m more likely to say, ‘You must be exhausted,’ or ‘I know a lot of people who would kill for that little waistline of yours.’

  I am afraid I won’t be able to provide the grinding enthusiasm Santa is asking for. I think I’ll be a low-key sort of an elf.

  Today was elf dress rehearsal. The lockers and dressing rooms are located on the eighth floor, directly behind SantaLand. Elves have gotten to know one another over the past four days of training but once we took off our clothes and put on the uniforms everything changed.

  The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean. She held up a calendar and said, ‘Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don’t tell me, ‘I don’t wear underpants, I’m a dancer.’ You’re not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn’t be here. You’re an elf and you’re going to wear panties like an elf.’

  My costume is green. I wear green velvet knickers, a yellow turtleneck, a forest-green velvet smock, and a perky stocking cap decorated with spangles. This is my work uniform.

  My elf name is Crumpet. We were allowed to choose our own names and given permission to change them according to our outlook on the snowy world.

  Today was the official opening day of SantaLand and I worked as a Magic Window
Elf, a Santa Elf, and an Usher Elf. The Magic Window is located in the adult ‘Quick Peep’ line. My job was to say, ‘Step on the Magic Star and look through the window, and you can see Santa!’ I was at the Magic Window for fifteen minutes before a man approached me and said, ‘You look so fucking stupid.’

  I have to admit that he had a point. But still, I wanted to say that at least I get paid to look stupid, that he gives it away for free. But I can’t say things like that because I’m supposed to be merry.

  So instead I said, ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Thank you!’ as if I had misunderstood and thought he had said, ‘You look terrific.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  He was a brawny wise guy wearing a vinyl jacket and carry-ing a bag from Radio Shack. I should have said, real loud, ‘Sorry man, I don’t date other guys.’

  Two New Jersey families came together to see Santa. Two loud, ugly husbands with two wives and four children between them. The children gathered around Santa and had their picture taken. When Santa asked the ten-year-old boy what he wanted for Christmas, his father shouted, ‘A WOMAN! GET HIM A WOMAN, SANTA!’ These men were very loud and irritating, constantly laughing and jostling one another. The two women sat on Santa’s lap and had their pictures taken and each asked Santa for a KitchenAide brand dishwasher and a decent winter coat. Then the husbands sat on Santa’s lap and, when asked what he wanted for Christmas, one of the men yelled, ‘I WANT A BROAD WITH BIG TITS.’ The man’s small-breasted wife crossed her arms over her chest, looked at the floor, and gritted her teeth. The man’s son tried to laugh.

  Again this morning I got stuck at the Magic Window, which is re-ally boring. I’m supposed to stand around and say, ‘Step on the Magic Star and you can see Santa!’ I said that for a while and then I started saying, ‘Step on the Magic Star and you can see Cher!’

  And people got excited. So I said, ‘Step on the Magic Star and you can see Mike Tyson!’

  Some people in the other line, the line to sit on Santa’s lap, got excited and cut through the gates so that they could stand on my Magic Star. Then they got angry when they looked through the Magic Window and saw Santa rather than Cher or Mike Tyson. What did they honestly expect? Is Cher so hard up for money that she’d agree to stand behind a two-way mirror at Macy’s?

  The angry people must have said something to management because I was taken off the Magic Star and sent to Elf Island, which is really boring as all you do is stand around and act merry. At noon a huge group of retarded people came to visit Santa arid passed me on my little island. These people were profoundly retarded. They were rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and staggering toward Santa. It was a large group of retarded people and after watching them for a few minutes I could not begin to guess where the retarded people ended and the regular New Yorkers began.

  Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

  This evening I was sent to be a Photo Elf, a job I enjoyed the first few times. The camera is hidden in the fireplace and I take the picture by pressing a button at the end of a cord. The pictures arrive by mail weeks later and there is no way an elf can be identified and held accountable but still, you want to make it a good picture.

  During our training we were shown photographs that had gone wrong, blurred frenzies of an elf’s waving arm, a picture blocked by a stuffed animal, the yawning Santa. After every photograph an elf must remove the numbered form that appears at the bottom of the picture. A lazy or stupid elf could ruin an entire roll of film, causing eager families to pay for and later receive photographs of complete, beaming strangers.

  Taking someone’s picture tells you an awful lot, awful being the operative word. Having the parents in the room tends to make it even worse. It is the SantaLand policy to take a picture of every child, which the parent can either order or refuse. People are allowed to bring their own cameras, video recorders, whatever. It is the multimedia groups that exhaust me. These are parents bent over with equipment, relentless in their quest for documentation.

  I see them in the Maze with their video cameras instructing their children to act surprised. ‘Monica, baby, look at the train set and then look back at me. No, look at me. Now wave. That’s right, wave hard.’

  The parents hold up the line and it is a Maze Elf’s job to hurry them along.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, I’m sorry but we’re sort of busy today and I’d appreciate it if you could maybe wrap this up. There are quite a few people behind you.’

  The parent then asks you to stand beside the child and wave. I do so. I stand beside a child and wave to the video camera, wondering where I will wind up. I picture myself on the television set in a paneled room in Wapahanset or Easternmost Meadows. I picture the family fighting over command of the remote control, hitting the fast-forward button. The child’s wave becomes a rapid salute. I enter the picture and everyone in the room entertains the same thought: ‘What’s that asshole doing on our Christmas Memory tape?’

  The moment these people are waiting for is the encounter with Santa. As a Photo Elf I watch them enter the room and take control.

  ‘All right, Ellen, I want you and Marcus to stand in front of Santa and when I say, ‘now,’ I want you to get onto his lap. Look at me. Look at Daddy until I tell you to look at Santa.’

  He will address his wife who is working the still camera and she will crouch low to the ground with her light meter and a Nikon with many attachments. It is heavy and the veins in her arms stand out.

  Then there are the multimedia families in groups, who say, ‘All right, now let’s get a shot of Anthony, Damascus, Theresa, Doug, Amy, Paul, and Vanity — can we squeeze them all together? Santa, how about you let Doug sit on your shoulders, can we do that?’

  During these visits the children are rarely allowed to discuss their desires with Santa. They are too busy being art-directed by the parents.

  ‘Vanity and Damascus, look over here, no, look here.’

  ‘Santa, can you put your arm around Amy and shake hands with Paul at the same time?’

  ‘That’s good. That’s nice.’

  I have seen parents sit their child upon Santa’s lap and immediately proceed to groom: combing hair, arranging a hemline, straightening a necktie. I saw a parent spray their child’s hair, Santa treated as though he were a false prop made of cement, turning his head and wincing as the hair spray stung his eyes.

  Young children, ages two to four, tend to be frightened of Santa. They have no interest in having their pictures taken because they don’t know what a picture is. They’re not vain, they’re babies. They are babies and they act accordingly they cry. A Photo Elf understands that, once a child starts crying, it’s over. They start crying in Santa’s house and they don’t stop until they are at least ten blocks away.

  When the child starts crying, Santa will offer comfort for a moment or two before saying, ‘Maybe we’ll try again next year.’

  The parents had planned to send the photos to relatives and place them in scrapbooks. They waited in line for over an hour and are not about to give up so easily. Tonight I saw a woman slap and shake her sobbing daughter, yelling, ‘Goddamn it, Rachel, get on that man’s lap and smile or I’ll give you something to cry about.’

  I often take photographs of crying children. Even more grotesque is taking a picture of a crying child with a false grimace. It’s not a smile so much as the forced shape of a smile. Oddly, it pleases the parents.

  ‘Good girl, Rachel. Now, let’s get the hell out of here. Your mother has a headache that won’t quit until you’re twenty-one.’

  At least a third of Santa’s visitors are adults: couples, and a surprising number of men and women alone. Most of the single people don’t want to sit on Santa’s lap; they just stop by to shake his hand and wish him luck. Often the single adults are foreigners who just happened to be shopping at Macy’s and got bullied into the Maze by the Entrance Elf, whose job it is to hustle people in. One moment the foreigner is looking at china, and the next t
hing he knows he is standing at the Magic Tree, where an elf holding a palm-sized counter is asking how many in his party are here to see Santa.

  ‘How many in your party?’ The foreigner answers, ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many in your party is not a yes or no question.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then a Santa Elf leads the way to a house where the confused and exhausted visitor addresses a bearded man in a red suit, and says, ‘Yes, OK. Today I am good.’ He shakes Santa’s hand and runs, shaken, for the back door.

  This afternoon a man came to visit Santa, a sloppy, good-looking man in his mid-forties. I thought he was another confused European, so I reassured him that many adults come to visit Santa, everyone is welcome. An hour later, I noticed the same man, back again to fellowship with Santa. I asked what he and Santa talk about, and in a cracked and puny voice he answered, ‘Toys. All the toys.’

  I noticed a dent in the left side of his forehead. You could place an acorn in a dent like this. He waited in line and returned to visit a third time. On his final visit he got so excited he peed on Santa’s lap.

  So far in SantaLand, I have seen Simone from ‘General Hospital,’ Shawn from ‘All My Children,’ Walter Cronkite, and Phil Collins. Last year one of the elves was suspended after asking Goldie Hawn to autograph her hand. We have been instructed to leave the stars alone.

  Walter Cronkite was very tall, and I probably wouldn’t have recognized him unless someone had pointed him out to me. Phil Collins was small and well groomed. He arrived with his daughter and an entourage of three. I don’t care about Phil Collins one way or the other but I saw some people who might and I felt it was my duty to tap them on the shoulder and say, ‘Look, there’s Phil Collins!’