Holiday Joy Jinxes

I was in New England with my Yankee family for Christmas, so I missed this year’s island store shopping action week, which is well known in the jewelry biz as the Christmas crush (And don’t think my daughter Lindsay didn’t mention the fact that I was MIA in the trenches on numerous occasions). Personally, I have had the pleasure of experiencing over fifty years of the pre-Christmas blitzes; twenty-some odd years while living in Boston and over thirty here in paradise. Some were easy, most were excruciating.

Back in the old days in Boston, the Christmas crunch began in early November. I did work for numerous jewelry stores that included large chains, plus many Mom and Pop enterprises, not to mention my own clientele. This was a cornucopia of jewelry projects for the holidays because it was both wholesale and retail. Needless to say, I was a rather busy goldsmith.

I left all that in 1994 and came to Marco, where the holidays here were a bit different and not always in a good way. At first, it only began to get busy in the last weeks of November. That’s when normal people who want jewelry made-to-order or by their specification should come in because that stuff takes time to create and finish in time for the holidays. Oh yeah, over the years I’ve had plenty of lost souls think Christmas Eve is plenty of time to place a custom order, only to find out it is not. Which leads me to the topic of this column; it’s about people who have no clue that jewelry stores might possibly be a bit busy on the days before Christmas.

The shop is jumping, the crowd queuing up to the counter, my sales crew is totally occupied selling and wrapping gifts, and that includes yours truly. Most of my male customers want to get in and snatch that perfect Christmas gift and get out and enjoy some Christmas cheer in one of our many island holiday watering holes. One year, a woman barges up to the counter pushing the patient customers aside, yelling she needs service immediately, emptying her purse and covering the showcase with her baubles. I picked up her rude maneuver and told her there were, in fact, several folks ahead of her. She said she wasn’t here to buy anything; she needed a written appraisal for several pieces immediately because her insurance company told her so! So, no warning, no appointment, no nothing (not that anyone working for me would issue an appraisal two days before Christmas). Plus the fact I never laid eyes on this person in my life! You have to be kidding. I told her to “put your stuff back in your purse and please make an appointment and come back after the holidays!” She left madder than a wet hen. Next was a young couple who had been hugging, kissing, and groping each other while waiting in line the whole time. “We are interested in looking at wedding bands.” Wedding bands? May I ask when you two lovebirds are tying the knot? “Not for two more years, we haven’t even picked out an engagement ring yet!” Whaaat! And you decide Christmas Eve is a great time to spend hours picking out rings? I’m telling you, if these two were standing on a trap door that deposited them in the nearest canal, I would have most definitely pulled the handle. Typically, all day there can be one person after another leaving a freezer bag full of jewelry repairs and watch batteries that have been broken since before Clinton was president on Christmas Eve, my busiest sales day of the year.

The best one just happened a couple of days before I left for Boston to spend the holidays. This same gentleman drove me up a wall last March over a custom-made engagement ring. He changed his mind over and over whether it would be a natural diamond or a lab diamond, then it was the shape and the stone size, then the color of the gold. At the last second, I had to change the finger size from a “he’s sure it’s a six” to a reality it’s a size three. When it was all completed, he ghosted me for four months. (A friend sent him to me, so stupid me, I never asked for a deposit!) I put the ring in the showcase so I could hopefully recoup my money. So, who do you think pops in the shop out of the blue in August, requesting the custom-made ring? He was a bit surprised when I told him it was for sale in the window.

He reluctantly paid, saying she did not deserve the ring, and that was that, so I hoped. A week before this Christmas, who waltzes in? He tells me she refused to marry him (A big surprise?), so he wants to return the ring. I told him from the beginning that you cannot return custom-made jewelry; we made it for you and you only, period. Besides the fact that it’s a size three, and that won’t fit anyone on this island. He begins to explain he now has a new girlfriend and he wants to propose to her in mid-January and he doesn’t want to give the new girlfriend the old girlfriend’s ring. Bad Mojo, he says. This poor new girlfriend, this guy is bad Mojo! Why me? I told him I can’t deal with this turn of events until next year! As usual, most people wait until the last minute to request things that would be impossible to do in four weeks, let alone two days before Christmas, and they never have a plan B. The last one of the Christmas Eve year disasters was a woman in tears who wanted us to reset a pile of diamonds an hour before we closed because her husband forgot to bring it in - it was supposed to be her Christmas gift tomorrow! We felt terrible, but what she wanted us to do was impossible, and we were fresh out of Christmas Miracles.

You can’t make this stuff up! As I slide into retirement, all things considered, I love my customers both old and new. It’s a blessing that 99 % were born with common sense. It’s that tiny 1% that never fails to jinx my holiday year after year!

A Happy New Year to everyone! (Including my one-percenters).