Ho, Ho, Oh, No!

Finally, Diane thought, my own station, my own register. Walmart has had Sarah of twenty years, monitoring me for a full week. I’m glad she did though. Certainly covered every conceivable type of situation, every kind of customer.

After inserting her key, she entered the code to activate her register and then flipped the switch to turn on the Open sign above. Yep, I am ready.

She zipped through her first customer, a young man with a can of car wax and a set of screwdrivers, and then a husband and wife with men’s athletic shoes, two women’s dresses and assorted fruit and canned goods, next a woman with underwear and several blouses.

Feeling confident with her ability, then turning to see who was next, her jaw dropped. Some old guy had lined up with six carts piled really high with merchandise.One contained small children’s clothes and five were loaded with toys. He was beginning to place items on her belt.

“Sir, will you be paying with cash or a credit card?”

“Never had a reason to carry cash.” He handed her a charge card.

After examining the card, she knew she had a problem Diane had never covered. She rang for a supervisor.

Janice, a senior supervisor came, looked at the card, and said, “Is this the only card you have?”

Drawing out the words, he said, “Yep, sure is.”

“Sir, do you have any ID, like maybe a driver’s license?”

The man chuckled and said, “Me? A driver’s license? Now that’s funny.”

“Sir, the signature on this charge card says Mrs. Claus.”

“Of course it does. Been married . . huh, don’t really remember, but seems like forever.”

Janice stepped back, narrowed her eyes and slowly looked him up and down. The chubby customer had long, curly white hair matching a full white beard, and was wearing a cotton red T-shirt and red shorts held up by green suspenders. A pair of black thongs on his feet. Was this some kind of test? Maybe a gag or a goofy dream?

She examined both sides of the card again. “And so you’re trying to tell me that you, shopping here in Walmart in August, are Santa Claus?”

After nodding yes, he said, “That’s me. So now if you could get things moving along, I sure would appreciate it.”

Janice said, “Ah, sir, maybe you could help me understand something. Why,” she couldn’t believe she was about to say it, “is Santa here in Los Angeles in the middle of summer?”

“Elves, never should have let them watch TV. They saw people striking for higher wages, fewer hours. Little buggers are on strike.”

Realizing they were attracting an audience of shoppers and even some of the cashiers had stopped processing merchandise, she said, “But there are millions of children in the world and you only have six carts.”

“Well, of course, I’m just getting started, but I can’t get behind in making the toys.” 

‘But where are you taking them?”

“A nice old-timer outside is letting me use his van to fill up and take to the airport. Be a lot easier if I could just make the van fly like the sleigh. The reindeers would never go for it.”

“But even one plane—”

“Old Harry, a veteran, mentioned maybe the military would help me with their giant cargo planes.”

A teenager in the crowd said, “And this guy can cover the globe with just one tiny sleigh?”

“Magic, son, magic.”

Janice saw that the crowd size was increasing, probably every customer in the store. A dozen started singing, “Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus right down Walmart’s lane.”

They were soon outdone by a much larger group chanting, "Put him through, put him through."

Janice closed her eyes, but she could not close her hearing. If this is a dream, I hope I wake up soon. When she opened her eyes, she realized her phone was beeping.

The manager, Tom McCarthy, had texted, ‘TV crew from WLON in parking lot. They will put it on the news Walmart refused Santa Claus toys for children. Put him through. No charge. Great publicity.’

After Santa was aided by volunteers pushing his heavy wagons outside and the noise level lowered, she thought, if I survive till Easter, I sure hope there’s no giant white rabbit with a bunch of colorful straw baskets filled with plastic green grass and candy.