I must admit, today I was utterly surprised.  Every Christmas Eve, I head out to the shopping malls and popular stores.  No, I am not a procrastinator and usually have all my required gifts already purchased (maybe not wrapped yet, but that is whole different story).  No, the only reason I do this is for the sheer entertainment value from watching holiday shoppers.  The best time to observe people is always at times of stress and there is not too many other days that rate higher on the stress meter than the day before St. Nick breaks into our homes and showers the good with presents.  I can remember the numerous occasions of people attacking line-cutters, angry shoppers engaging store employees, customers wrestling for the last Furbie and the all too common denial of credit card.  For a people watcher this is good as gold and since I was not in any time constraints I could slink back into the crowd and take it all in.

So, off I went today anxious as to what I might observe.  First off, Best Buy.  I wanted to do a quick check to see if there were any last minute reductions on laptops and figured I would check if they happened to have a gift for Linda someone had mentioned a few days ago (again, just a bonus since her shopping has been done for awhile).  There was the usual traffic cop directing traffic through the ridiculous single entrance to Cub/Lowes/Best Buy stores, but he really was not doing that much.  I was not even stopped or delayed once all the way into the parking lot.  This was definitely an odd occurrence.  Once parked, in a semi-filled BB lot I headed into the store expecting to see people defending their finds.  Again, nothing.  Some people were milling about, but that was about it.  I checked out the gift idea and there it was sitting on the shelf and nobody even looking in that direction.  I decided to go ahead and grab it and would instead have fun watching all the people get extremely annoyed in the checkout line.  When I arrived up front, I noticed they had recently put the blue line guides on the carpet and had snaked it out into the store for optimal capacity.  For clarification purposes, I had NO PROBLEM noticing it because I could see it clearly the entire time as I was walking straight up to an empty cashier.  Only two other people were checking out in the 3 other open registers.  This was an absolute first.  I disappointingly paid for my items and walked out of the store in disbelief.

On my way out, my wife called and wanted me to get some driveway salt for her mother who was having difficulty locating it in the Quad Cities.  Excellent, another opportunity to see the mad dash for last chance gifts for Dads.  This soon became ominous when I ended up parking about 8 spots from the door and that included the protection buffer I keep to protect my doors from those who apparently have no appreciation for others.  I crossed over the door beam and walked into a nearly empty store.  I counted no more than 40 people as I walked through the various aisles.  I located in the salt, found some lithium grease for an upcoming blog topic and again walked directly up to the cashier and paid for my items.  This is totally unbelievable.  In fact, I was so amazed, I ended up calling my wife to relay my disappointment.  Luckily she mentioned the dogs probably needed a couple more items for their stockings (don’t laugh, they are treated better than most kids) so I headed down past Cub to the local PetSmart.  This looked more like it.  I had to park pretty far out into the lot (buffer still included) and had a significant walk to the door.  There were definitely more people there than at Lowes, but there was definitely a more low keyed if not joyous atmosphere as people discussed how cute a particular collar was or validated the squeaker actually worked on a particular stuffed animal.  I had my first chuckle of the day since I validated a previous observation I had been working on.  Based on my findings, almost all people will check a squeaker no less than 2 times before they are satisfied that it actually works.  This testing process rarely goes past 4 squeaks because I think people start feeling self-conscious at that point because about then people in view start to stare.

I continued looking around, but could not find a single instance of any stressed out people.  Even the dogs were being nice to each other.  I grabbed a few stocking stuffers and headed up to the cashiers.  There was finally a small line at the registers and by that I mean each of the open registers were checking out a customer.  Finally, I could experience a wait scenario which usually breeds grumpiness.  My chance had finally arrived… NOPE.  A lady walks around the corner and asks to check me out in the register a row over.  So reluctantly, I moved over to that counter and completed the transaction.  She was even very nice indicating that she had not had her fill of unruly pet owners for the day.

Drats!  A complete waste of time.  Where is everyone?  Are the holiday shopping activities really this bad?  Has the economy in Peoria finally caught up with the rest of the States (as of last month, our housing market was still going strong)?  Has the recent Caterpillar announcements on layoffs and pay freezes significantly dampened the holiday festivities?  I doubt everyone has done their shopping early this year for that would be in out of character for the previous 18 or so years I have been making the Christmas Eve run.  For now, my best guess is the bad economy has hit everyone hard.  I will be interested in seeing the final revenue statistics from the local merchants.

Oh well, best wishes for a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.