Dear Hallmark, Target, Barnes and Noble and all the rest:

Please accept this letter as my notice of resignation, effective immediately.

This was an easy decision to make. I have spent too many of my years mindlessly wandering malls looking for the perfect gift for that special relative I see maybe one, maybe four, times a year. After very little consideration, I have decided to ignore your Black Friday sales, your Christmas specials, your post-Christmas blowouts and anything else associated with the season. Why? Let me count the reasons:

1. The hundreds of “valued customer” emails I receive that are obviously cranked out by some mindless computer with no special thought that I now have to sift through.
2. The mindless idiots who hold up thirty cars waiting for one parking spot to open up when another spot two cars earlier would have been much faster for everyone involved.
3. The throngs of shoppers who go as a group and use blocking aisles as a social event for themselves.
4. The extremely narrow aisles at stores that just aggravate #3, above.
5. The store managers who place interesting items at the end of these narrow aisles so #3 and #4 are more likely to occur.
6. The other store managers who don’t manage checkout properly  so standing in the wrong line is a penalty. (Bed, Bath and Beyond, I’m talking about you.)
7. The seasonal employees who offer to help, but then when asked a simple question respond with “Let me go check with my manager.”
8. The [bleeping] teenager on her cell phone who didn’t notice my car and narrowly avoided hitting me, and whose slamming on the brakes scared the [bleep] out of everyone behind her.
9. The other [bleeping] teenager on her phone who did hit someone while backing out of her parking space!
10. The many Goodwill, Teen Rescue and others who further block and mug shoppers trying to get in and out of stores.
11. The traffic.
12. The stress of unrealistic expectations.
13. And I’ll say it, some of the oft-repeated Christmas music barely qualifies as music. It’s so bad it deserves a place on the Gong Show.

So there you have it – A baker’s dozen reasons why I no longer want to play. Call me a Grinch - I might actually be proud of it – But I’m sitting the next one out. And the one after that. And so on. I quit and there’s no amount of money or perks that will get me to reconsider.

Any questions?