All right everyone, gather around over here. We off to a late start today and this stuff has to be done by opening of business tomorrow.
You, up on the ladder, since you didn’t bother to come down when I said to gather around you can stay up there and pull down those silver and gold streamers and the fake snowflakes and get the red ribbons and hearts up. Do we have any cupid cutouts you can hang at the end of each aisle? Good. Get those up too but not that last row. Make that one green and find the shamrocks we had up last year.
I need someone in the window to get Santa out of the chimney and wrap the trees up. Fine, you’ll do. After you get the fat man packed away find the most of whatever we have and make a big pile in the middle of each window and change the signs from Holiday Sale! to Year End Clearance! What? No, don’t change the prices! Are you new here?
Now then in the candy section, any candy canes, foil wrap bells, those Christmas packaged candies, and the prefilled stockings get loaded up into 2 or 3 shopping carts and tape a 50% off sign on the front of them. Yeah, I know last week they were 75% off. That’ll teach people to try and hold off for a better deal. So what if somebody notices. If they remember next year we can get rid of all this junk before Christmas Eve and not have to scramble like this. After you get those shelves empty there are a bunch cases of those sappy heart shaped boxes of candy that didn’t sell last year. Put them out, mark them up a third higher than whatever they were then mark the whole section 10% off.
..
I need somebody to check the ad copy before it hits the emails tomorrow. It should say FLASH SALE, ONE DAY ONLY, PRICES GOOD ON ALL ITEMS* FRIDAY THROUGH TUESDAY and then in the real small letters “some exceptions apply.” Last week somebody used a readable size for that and three customers actually wanted to know what wasn’t on sale before they got to the check out lines.
..
..
Okay then the cards and ornaments let’s make buy 1 get 19 free. I know we’ll be cutting our profit down to under 300% but we need the space for the sunblock and flip flops that we have to put out next week. What? Hmm. Yeah I know those guys down the street have their leftover gift wrap 90% off but I figure it doesn’t go stale and we’re just going to have to buy more next year. Look, most people are using gift bags for presents any way. Just stuff whatever is left in the fake chimneys when they come out of the windows and push it all to the back corner of the stock room. We’ll put them back out in October.
.
You two, take this list and go through the store and anything you find that looks like a match bring to the guys in the crafts section. That’s the list of Olympic sports. Yeah it’s time for them again. I don’t know exactly, July something. Whenever they are we’re running out of time. Corporate sent some people to stencil something that looks almost like the real logo on whatever we got. We need to get started with that so we’ll be ready when we pull whatever Dads and Grads crap that didn’t sell off the shelves in April.
You all have your jobs to do. Any questions? New Years? Get a few bucks out of petty cash and go down to the dollar store and buy some noise makers and cardboard hats. We can set up that end caps right across from the cash registers. We can probably make a pretty penny on some last minute shoppers. Good thinking!
Now let’s get out there and remember, sales sales sales! That’s the reason for the season!
The Real Reality Show Blog 
It’s the circle of life, grasshopper.