For many of us, coming home for winter break means two things — relaxing with friends and family and making bank at our jobs back home. The holiday season is a busy time for many jobs that focus on the holidays. Your hours tend be a lot more straining, and you might have to work the holidays. So whether you work at a clothing store or a catering hall like myself, working over winter break definitely brings a new perspective on the holiday spirit.               

First off, thank you to those who spend their time folding clothes and restocking stores to make my shopping experience easier. Working in retail over the holidays shows you a lot about your behavior. You mainly learn that most people wait till the last minute to find specific things that they were supposed to order months in advance. And when your customer realizes this, they tend to not be in the jolliest of moods. Often they will beg you to make a “Christmas miracle” happen. More often then not, you aren’t a retail wizard, but you can guide them in the right direction or to a similar gift to lessen their stress levels. You also discover that people believe buying the “right” gift will make their holidays not a recipe for disaster. In truth, people who work in retail get to see how crazy we all get for our loved ones. Most shoppers just want to make their families happy and tend to not worry when it comes to how wide our wallets will open. But for us working folk, we discover that employee discounts are lifesavers when you’re a broke college kid.                

And for those of us who work in the food and services job area, thank you for dealing with our crazy families and friends who come in for your services. Whether you work as a waiter or behind the counter at a hair salon, providing holiday services definitely tests your holiday spirits. Those who work can agree that it’s not the most wonderful time of the year, but we have to keep a smiling face in hopes that we get a nice tip at the end of the day. However, the likelihood of getting a holiday tip is hit or miss. You can either be serving Scrooge before he reflects on his past or Scrooge once he fixes his past. We all hope for the latter, but if that’s not the case, we learn that at the end of the day, it’s all about making people happy during the Holiday season.            

Overall, working the holidays teaches you that we all go a little overboard for the ones we love to make them happy. It also gives you a deeper appreciation for the time over break you didn’t have work to spend with your loved ones. But best of all, it shows you that being a college kid has its perks because once the holiday season is over, you get to go back to college and enjoy being a couple of dollars richer.