Tree's Company

On Monday I told you about my adventures in trying to hunt down a Christmas tree last weekend. With a storm quickly approaching it seemed as though everyone had gone out to get their tree at exactly the same time (which was a couple hours before me) and it meant the remaining pickings were slim. The trees which were left were the ones which had just come off the truck and many were still in the protective netting. Worse yet, they had clearly been stored that way for a couple of cold nights and as a result even the ones which had been cut from their nets were still holding that shape, making them more like treesicles. They looked to be a really nice crop of trees but you can't really be sure in that situation and since I take my Christmas tree shopping very seriously we decided to pass on buying a tree then and there. Instead we went back this afternoon, hoping for a better result but I have to admit my spirits were not high. Normally I have my tree well before now (Thanksgiving being so late and Christmas being on a Wednesday have combined to throw off my normal holiday schedule) and was not quite sure what to expect. Obviously I knew they would still have trees. But, the question was, would they still have good trees? I've never worked in tree sales so I am not sure how the system works. Since the trees become worthless on December 26th I would assume vendors only buy so many so as to not have leftovers. Driving up I expected the good ones to be long gone and my only choices to be one with large gaps or full but only come up to my waist. I'm glad to report I was wrong on both fronts.

I walked down the aisle, spotted a tree and that was it. Seriously, the first tree we grabbed was the one we ended up with, which almost never happened. Normally I talk myself out of the first tree for no other reason that it's the first one but we could help but to keep circling back to this one. It was almost too tall but nice and full and didn't appear to be too dried out. However, we didn't buy it right away because you always want to make sure that the tree you leave with is the best tree on that lot. Normally letting go of a tree is dangerous, especially since in the past I have been followed around by people waiting for me to take my hand off a particularly nice tree so they can snag it. What is nice is that when you shop for Christmas trees on a Friday at 3 in the afternoon you pretty much have the place to yourself so I wasn't too worried about the one other group looking for trees making off with my selection (they were sticking to the smaller trees). But I have to admit I still would have been fine if they had grabbed that first tree while I was checking out the other options because this may have honestly been the best crop of Christmas trees I have ever been able to pick through. I go to this same lot every year because they always have a nice selection but this year was unbelievably good. Every tree was full, tall and fresh. One of them even had what appeared to be a nest in it - that was not the one we bought (though I guess that answers the question of how often the vendors get new trees delivered). If this is what you get when you shop for a tree this close to Christmas remind me to start altering my schedule.

The only issue came when we went to buy the tree because while I am normally quite willing to defer to the experts (especially when I am on their turf) I am quite hands-on when it comes to my Christmas tree. I am not quite sure how the 18 year-old manager of the place took that, especially when I asked if I could just use his clippers and cut the branches how I wanted them done. In my mind I was just giving him a break because he's been doing this for a month and probably would appreciate having the mini-break. (It has to be grueling to lift Christmas trees for 8 hours a day, which is probably why I have been going to this same place for about a decade and have yet to see anyone work their for two seasons in a row.) But from the look I got I think he was working more along the, "Oh sure - you do it. What do I know? I just do this for a living" mindset. His annoyance with me only grew as I told him not to worry about carrying the tree to the truck because I would handle that as well. I would think the final straw was when I realized I would need some twine and went back to help myself because when I un-spooled a couple of arm lengths before realizing I didn't have a knife on me, he came over to cut me some but put about half what I wanted back into the box before doing so. As he walked passed the truck after helping the other couple put their tree on the roof of their car I imagine he was looking over my tie-down job with a very critical eye. Part of me wonders if he was hoping the tree would go flying into the street as I made the first turn. (It didn't.)

Hey, I've been there. One of the reasons I got out of customer service is because the customer is almost never actually right and more often than not things would go a lot smoother if they would get out of the way and let the people who work there do the task they were trained to do. The chances a guy working as an accountant actually knows the best way to pack a box truck are pretty slim and yet these are always the guys you see trying to carry boxes out to their car and show the movers where things should go. I guess it is sweet that people in this country are so eager to help themselves rather than just be waited on but every now and again they just get in the way. I am just as guilty of this as the next guy because as I have discussed before on this site, all I have to do is complete a task one time to consider myself an expert, at which point I will bristle at any further attempts at instructions. But, at least I can admit this is a problem and I believe that is a good first step. Of course, it is entirely possible that this guy was annoyed because tips are a big part of how they make their money and since I carried the tree to the front, trimmed most of my own branches, then put the tree on top of the truck and tied it down that was not going to get him a particularly huge holiday bonus. If that was his problem I would simply advise him to start being more insistent about helping because even though I am a big fan of the dollar-inside-the-palm handshake I'm not going to do that just for the fun of it. Money doesn't grow on trees after all - something you would think the guy selling Christmas trees would know better than anyone.