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Shopping Mall Santa

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by tochatihu, Dec 8, 2022.

  1. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    By popular (though tepid) demand, here is what it’s like to be a Mall Santa.

    Job offer was brought to my attention by a 10-yr-old. I was tepid but he mentioned “last year’s Santa arrived by helicopter”. OK I’m in. I and an older lady were hired to work shifts. I did the season opener arriving by firetruck to Mall parking lot. Helicopter would have been better, but I got to play with the firetruck siren.

    Soon after I was working both shifts because ‘evening Santa’ did not have enough immune system to withstand the onslaught (kid lungs did not start being bad news in 2021). There are too many aspects to tell (in first post anyway). So, stick to demographics.

    Ideal client ages are about 3 to 7. Some of then were into it to a surprising degree. Repeat visits, bring me pictures they had colored, etc. Problem with repeaters is that they expect you to remember names. Deflection! Guess a couple of off the wall strange names (Violina, Blinky, Abner, Hershey, etc.) Soon giggly they will reveal name and then it’s all “ho ho, of course I knew that. Just joking with you”. Then they ask if you remember what they want for Christmas. This is the easiest, so you must make it seem difficult. (grimace, overact, etc.) TV commercials are very effective so just give any of top 3 (you’ve heard them all before; you’re Santa) after some theatrics. Santa knows all.

    A few years older are beginning to catch on, but still fun. “I know you’re not Santa” “Wow. How do you know that?” “Because the other shopping mall also has Santa and it’s not you” “I am glad such a smart person came to talk to me. How many shopping malls do you think there are?’ “ I do not know” “There are thousands. Each one needs Santa. We are all subcontractors”. A bit more fluff and a very satisfied client departs. Perhaps to a career in shopping mall management.

    Older than that leads to gender divergence. The boys pull off your hat and run away laughing. “Last your you said you’d bring me a motorcycle and you didn’t” “Look my friend you’re as big as I am and you know what’s going on here. Now say goodbye and let the kids have some fun”.

    The girls dare each other to sit on that famous lap for photos. None of those scenarios worked for me, but I was solemnly advised beforehand by adult females not to mess with the girls. Apparently it is not rare in that profession.

    Worst demographic of all is 1-2 years. They are there for photo and all dressed up included hard leather soled shoes. Might as well have been soccer cleats, but probably not available in that size. They have no interest in sitting with an oddly dressed hairy man unknown to them. I had elves (everybody has elves) running the camera and they were to get it done fast so I can hand off this screaming kicking dervish. Who under no circumstances am I allowed to throw out to the crowd gathering to see fake Santa get kicked.

    Anybody else here ever had that gig?
     
    #1 tochatihu, Dec 8, 2022
  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    You maybe ought to be eyeing publication for that. Look where it got David Sedaris, and he was but an elf. You were the big cheese.

    Just don't make too much of it up, or you could become the subject of an interesting article like this one.
     
    #2 ChapmanF, Dec 8, 2022
  3. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    "...don't make too much of it up..."

    I never would. Sir you come perilously close to calling for a duel over honor. Difficult to arrange our place of meeting though. Any ideas?

    I hope NewRep link works for others. Access here is as it is, meaning, not including that. I understand that a topical article appeared in Playboy (back about then) but I've not read it.

    ==
    Y'all have not yet seen my most heart-rending parts. I guess I'll not blurt all my intellectual property. Instead to see if I can make a buck by publishing, well, where?

    I think that mall Santas are of the past. Current-world mall managers have no budget to throw an old body against all those young frothy lungs with exciting new microbial gifts on offer.

    But, if enough of us are old, it might be a fun little thing to talk about, approaching Christmas 2022
     
    #3 tochatihu, Dec 8, 2022
  4. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Ok I listened to David Sedaris on NPR. It's awful in terms of power dealing, and with a bit of icky sexuality. Very far from anything I'd want to say on this topic. Can only include that NYC is weirdly different from USA larger, and why the heck would NPR imagine it resonates USA?

    Oddly, it motivates me to contact NPR editors.
     
    #4 tochatihu, Dec 8, 2022
  5. Leadfoot J. McCoalroller

    Leadfoot J. McCoalroller Senior Member

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    I've suited up for the NYC SantaCon in the past, but that was back when it was just a mildly unsavory bar crawl that tipped okay.

    I understand it got a lot bigger and cruder later.

    We just took our young cleated dervish out to the local pop-up holiday village thingy with santa photo setup, just the other night. She did very well, got through quickly without maiming Santa and got a cute picture out of it.
     
    #5 Leadfoot J. McCoalroller, Dec 9, 2022
    tochatihu likes this.
  6. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    One summer, a fellow came walking up out driveway dressed as Santa and yelling ho ho ho.
    Scared the wits out of us. I was afraid he was going to pull out a ak47.
    Turned out to be our slightly off neighbor across the street.
    Just got his costume for Mall Santa the next Christmas,
     
    #6 bisco, Dec 9, 2022
  7. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    And surely just as well, for if you had only the same things to say, you'd find he had scooped you.

    Ok, now you've sent me back for another listen, to what I only dimly remembered from probably one of the first years it aired.

    Under power dealing, I counted several of the things he observed others doing: the customer with the "I'm gonna have you fired" attitude—power dynamic between customer and elf—and the parents pursuing objectives of their own through their kids (Jason, Rachel)—power dynamic between parent and child.

    A different case would be the business with Riley's mom relying on him to scare Riley out of his tantrum—power dynamic between parent, elf, and child, parent making the elf play the heavy. Now, all the stuff he reports having said to poor Riley, about incurring Santa's implacable wrath, was surely way over the top. I'm gonna guess that was one of those spots where Sedaris exaggerates dialogue for the laugh, and he's doing it here at his own expense.

    I didn't come away with a sense that he reported any of that power dealing favorably or approvingly. I had more a sense that speaking to it, in particular the parents-acting-through-kids kind, was sort of his aim with the piece (the other aim, besides laughs). Seemed like the final line bore that out.

    I don't think of that kind of power dealing as a predominantly NYC thang. I moved here to bucolic Indiana with a woman whose family had lots of delightful sayings. If you were struggling to remove a bearing, say, and went to one of them for help, you might get both the help and a "hav'ta be smarter than the bearing" delivered with a twinkle.

    We hadn't been here long before hearing a story about a grocery-store worker (happily, it wasn't either one of us!) who must have grown up with that same line, and helped a customer who was struggling to pull a cart from the big stack of nested carts, and smiled and said "hav'ta be smarter than the cart" and the customer said "I'm gonna have you fired" (and, if I remember right, did).

    You had me worried especially that I might have remembered, as funny and innocuous, something with icky sexuality. As you mentioned above, that could easily be a concern in the Santa profession.

    But on re-listen, didn't I only hear Sedaris, as a young person working a young person's low-wage gig, confessing that his head was turned by the flirtatious antics of one of his own co-workers in the elven labor force? And it went nowhere, and didn't affect their job performance?

    And it got me wondering ... if the fascinating co-worker had been a vivacious, fetching elvess (and it had gone nowhere, and not affected their job performance) ... would it have been icky sexuality to mention that?

    I should perhaps mention: I guess I have a Sedaris number of 2. Never met the guy myself, but had a colleague back when I worked in Detroit who was a fan, who wrote to him in advance of a trip out that way, hardly expecting to get a reply, and ended up having lunch or coffee and telling me it was a nice chat.
     
    #7 ChapmanF, Dec 9, 2022
  8. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    When no children were about, my elves (camera ops and money takers) told off-color jokes. One elf decided she ought to be second shift Santa. Mall manager was cool to the idea, so I untimatumed it. "She's in or I'm out".

    She did fine. It's really a matter or rolling with the punches and trying to get the prime demographic to leave with a vague idea that something wonderful happened. Set dressing helps with that.
     
    #8 tochatihu, Dec 9, 2022
  9. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    #9 bisco, Dec 10, 2022
  10. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    #10 tochatihu, Dec 17, 2022
  11. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    #11 bisco, Dec 17, 2022
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