I remember the Cabbage Patch thing! I was working retail back in high school, and our Christams shipment arrived in Sept. along with a letter reminding everyone the company signed a contract to not only keep the dolls in the backroom until a set date in Dec., but we'd be sued if we mentioned that we had them. What a hoax! Shortage my a......

years later when Furbies were the hot item of the season (and who remembers them now?) I came into work before the 6 a.m. opening to discover a line at the door. They had bits of paper, torn up deposit slips, with numbers on them. They had organized themselves on a first come, first serve basis! When the door opened, they marched, in order, to the first register where one of the managers had the case (there were only 20 in stock) and handed them out. Every time I see another Walmart melee on TV I thank those kind, sensible people.

The worst day was during a season when the retailers were being sparse with discounts. A local TV station did a segment on getting the most for your money in our parking lot, with our ad in hand and capped it with - 'and remember some chains have out of the way locations that get less foot traffic.' That was it - the "C" level store I worked at (vs. the "AA" store just a few miles away) rang up well over a million dollars in business in a single day, blowing all previous company records out of the water. I was so-o-o tired when I got home that night. But the news segment had put most people in a good mood about shopping there at least.

I'm not sure what it says about my character flaws, but I always thought it was amazing that you could wait on hundreds of people and life was great, but it only took a few seriously nasty people and your whole day could be ruined. I try to remember it - like when our Jeep was broken into recently and the police gave us a really hard time about filing a report. I know the insurance lady didn't go out of her way to help me out, but the fact she kept working with me in difficult circumstances, I made a point of not only thanking her, but asking to speak to her supervisor to give her kudos.

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