Not so Merry Christmas

Whining alert!  Whining alert!  I’m watching the news the day after Christmas.  And people everywhere are moaning about not getting their Christmas packages on time.  Ok, so I understand the wonderful experience of giving family and friends presents and enjoying their reactions as they open your carefully selected gifts.  It is, after all, why I choose to give presents only when I get the chance to go home and visit my family in person. 

But come on, people!  Let’s have a little accountability check here!  If you purchased a gift at the last minute and it required shipping, you KNEW you were taking a chance it wouldn’t arrive on time.  Last minute means the last week before Christmas.  Never mind that the store promised the delivery and that UPS promised the delivery.    And Yes, the holiday buying season seemed crazily short – only 4 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.  But the news headlines since Black Friday have been screaming about the increased volume of purchases on-line.  People just delayed the purchases a little too long this time and are now crying “unfair – I was robbed!”

And let’s talk about the stores who made the promises of on-time delivery.  Wow, was there an over-promise, under-deliver situation going on here? Perhaps, just perhaps, the store management should have taken a more realistic look at their own capacity to package products and get them to their customers on time.  And maybe, just maybe, they should have started telling customers with one week left to go that there was a possibility the shipment might not make it to its destination on time.   But no, the risk of losing a potential paying customer was too great. After all, the forecasters are saying the stores didn’t make as much money as they’d hoped this year… 

I am so very tired of people complaining about things going wrong when they are at least partially responsible for the results.  Because people waited too late and didn’t get their packages, UPS, Fed-Ex and all the stores where purchases were made are going to have to refund some or all of the shipping costs and maybe even the purchase prices as well.  Because the stores didn’t have the guts to tell the truth and warn customers during the last few days before Christmas might not make it, there are a lot of unhappy people who haven’t received their presents.  And the end result is that ALL of us, whether we made our purchases early or late, are going to end up paying for the mess created this year.    And what was the true meaning of the holiday anyway???