Why Men Shop on Dec 24th 2 of 2 < WildBob >

At first I was relieved. Then they told me they were taking me down to the station. I was handcuffed and ended up in the back of a police car heading for jail.

I just couldn’t fathom what had happened. I just tried to go Christmas shopping.

Once we arrived at the jail, I was searched, photographed then led into a small room. Soon a detective walked in and introduced himself as detective Stevens.

He turned on a tape recorder stated the time and date and his name. Others were in the room watching the proceedings.

“Would you care to confess now Demon Slayer?”

“Pardon me?” I replied.

“It won’t do you any good. We know who you are. We’ve been on to you for months. We just never thought that you’d be foolish enough to make a purchase in person”

I told the detective my name and address. I suggested that he look at my license to confirm what I had just said.

He had my license on the table in front of us. He examined it with a large magnifying glass. “It’s remarkable”, he said. “As far as I can tell, it’s perfect”

“Who makes these for you?” he asked.

I replied, “The DMV” Everyone in the room leaned forward to hear.

“Who is you contact at the DMV?” asked detective Stevens.

“What are you talking about?” I asked again. “I am Jerry Walters. I already told you my address. I don’t have a clue about why I’m here”

Finally another policeman came into the room. “He’s the real Walters. His fingerprints have been confirmed”.

Most of the other people kind of looked a little depressed. Detective Stevens explained that they had been on the trail of a criminal who practiced identity theft and credit card theft over the Internet. He went by the moniker Demon Slayer. He sets up bogus web sites, then gets peoples credit card information and of course never sends any of the goods that you thought that you had purchased.

Detective Stevens was very helpful. He gave me a little information kit on credit card theft and identity theft.

Then I had to call my wife and explain why I was at the police station. That was not a call that I’d like to make again. “Honey, can you come give me a ride back to my car?”

“Where are you?”

“At the police station.”

“What happened? I thought you said you had to work late.”

“I went Christmas shopping.”

“You lied to me!”

“Just a little white lie. I just wanted to get some things for you and the kids. There was a big misunderstanding. I’ll explain it all when you get here. Can you just come give me a ride back to my car?”

She kept looking at me from the side as we drove back to my car. When we finally got to where I had parked my car, it was gone. I was in a tow away zone. Any cars parked on that street during commute hours were towed.

It was clearly posted. We went to the impound yard and had to pay $187 to get my car back.

What a night. The next day, work had stacked up. Just because you take a little vacation doesn’t mean that your work takes a vacation. I looked at my meeting maker and noticed that Mr. Peterson had me scheduled for another meeting. I hoped it wasn’t about the Internet again.

I plowed through my work with my usual enthusiasm and soon it was time for my meeting with Mr. Peterson. Once again I was seated before a grumpy looking Mr. Peterson.

“I have to tell you”, Peterson began, “You’re sales numbers are in the toilet. If it wasn’t for your long history with the company we’d be thinking about letting you go.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “My numbers are almost as good as all the others combined!” I shouted at him.

He turned his laptop towards me and showed me a bar chart of sales by person. Mine barely registered on the graph.

“That’s impossible!” I said in a pretty irritated voice. “I sold more than that today, let alone in a month. Something is seriously messed up with your system. I’ve got printouts of my daily sales for the past several months in my office. I be back with them in a couple of minutes.”

With that I stormed out of the office. I got my daily printouts and marched right back to Mr. Petersons’ office. By the time I got there, the computer geek, Metcalf, from IT was there also. I put the printouts on his desk.

Metcalf immediately said, “Your not supposed to keep a copy of the daily sales reports. That’s against company policy”

Peterson examined the reports. “These figures tell a different story than the quarterly summary that I was reviewing. Can you explain the discrepancy, Metcalf?”

“We’ll have to review the reporting procedure. I don’t know how this could have happened?” was the only thing that he offered.

The next couple of days at work I had to attend a series of meetings about the computer system in addition to trying to get my work done. I didn’t really understand much of what was talked about at the meetings other than the fact that my sales figures were being switched with the new guys. The programmers just couldn’t figure it out. They would get it to work, then the next day it was wrong, then it was right. It was chaos. When I wasn’t working on that, I had to keep calling credit reporting agencies, banks, and just about anyone connected with all my credit cards to inform them that I had been a victim of credit card theft.

Then, it was December 24th again. There I was. No Christmas presents. I did get emails that politely informed me that the merchandise that I had ordered would be delivered in February. I left work early, went to the bank and withdrew some cash. One of the bank managers had to verify my identity before I could withdraw money from my own account since it had been flagged. I was at the same department store where I had been arrested. The only way I could describe the store is that it looked like a tornado had swept through there recently. I ended up with the same kinds of lame gifts that I always gave.

There is a reason that men shop on December 24th and that is because it is their destiny. You can fight destiny as hard as you want, but it is called destiny for a reason.

I vowed to start my Christmas shopping next year during the summer!

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