'Tis the season to go postal.

For 6 years, from late 1994 until late 2000, I worked in a mall and lived the life of a clerk. It started at Waldenbooks in the Boone Mall, eventually moving over to Software Etc in the Boone Mall (Now Gamestop) and ended after my transfer within the now Gamestop company to San Diego. Those of you who've ever worked in a mall know of the mall employee christmas curse: a permanent and incurable hatred of christmas music. This is due to the fact that malls, typically, start playing christmas music the day after halloween, and keep playing straight through January 2nd. That's 63 days of non-stop heartwarming holiday classics. For a full time employee, that's roughly 45 work days, or 360 hours listening to the same handful of christmas songs repeated hundreds of times. Assuming an average of 4 minutes per song, that's 5400 christmas songs listened to. Assuming there is, at the very most,  30 different songs,  you'll hear each song roughly 180 times, or at least 4-5 times per day. That's enough to make almost anyone sick of it.

Still, my co-workers at present, in an office environment, were incapable of understanding why I reacted with sheer terror at the prospect of them turning on the cable channel dedicated to non-stop christmas music. My earnest and desperate protests were met with ridicule as holiday favorites performed by legendary talents such as John Tesh and Pat Boone began to fill the room. As my eyeballs melted and my skin began to peel back, I was only able to fend off certain death or psychotic breakdown by plugging my computer speakers into my iPod and turning up loud enough to drown out the cheery holiday horror. Tomorrow, I may have to use my headphones.
wish me luck...