Holiday shopping stresses retailers

by Chandesha Thompson

The busiest time of the year for shoppers is the Christmas holiday season.

While this is a stressful time of year for shoppers retailers also feeling the stress. Retailers have to deal with customers, Christmas rushes, shipments and theft. Retailers are able to track inventory, check if the gift card is authentic and monitor employees with closed circuit television in all parts of the store even with all these precautions. Retailers still lost over $37 billion to thieves and scammers in 2005, according to the National Retail Federation. Devonshire Mall in Windsor has a high rate of thefts around the holidays according to Caroline Lambire manager of Dynamite.

At Devonshire Mall security tries their best to prevent theft.

“I have witnessed someone steal from the front counter before,” said Blain Lavigne, a Benix sales associate. “They came right on in and just picked up a few items at the front counter and acted like nothing ever happened when security stopped him.”

We hire an extra seven people around the holidays,” said Lambire. “This is done, so the store is more secure because more people are watching the store. There is double the amount of customers around the holidays.”

“It is very hard to deal with holiday stress. Retail is very stressful staff usually vent to get over the stress,” said Rosie, a Children’s Place sales associate who didn’t want to give her full name.

She said many retail customers find that prices seem to change over the Christmas holidays. Everything goes up and once the season is over things go on sale immediately. Customers try to get shopping out of the way quickly around the holidays.

In order to make the holiday season less stressful for everyone, some retailers are offering people advice like having respect for store employees, sticking to a budget, making a list and most importantly, have patience.