I love this time of year, but it is not without its challenges.  I’m starting to notice aggravations which could morph into full blown pet peeves.  Maybe you’ve noticed some of your own.  Forgive me while I vent just a little.

• There is a national craft store that had several coupons in the paper for black Friday.  But when you read the fine print you realized that the coupons changed every four hours.  Essentially you had to go to the store in your jammies, stay all night and all the next day, carefully watching the clock to enter the check out line within specified time frames to take advantage of any of the coupons.
• This same store always gives a 40% or 50% coupon for your next visit.  Read the small print.  It says 50% off any regular priced item.  To keep you from getting that real bargain, they reduce almost every store item by 10% making your coupon useless.  You won’t discover this until you check out.
• Other stores give you “bucks” for when you return.  What is wrong with giving us the lowest possible price now?  Why can’t we have the sale price while we are actually in the store?  I need to hire a personal shopper to buy small items the day before I actually shop to accumulate the coupons I need to really shop.
• Many stores now show you how much money you saved on their receipt.  How dense do they think we are?  If they can give you 50% off, it really means their prices are inflated by 70%.  Economics wasn’t my strongest subject, but even I can figure that out.
• Pre-lit trees should light up when you first plug them in.  You shouldn’t have to test each bulb individually to find the culprit that blackened the entire tree, the very first time you assemble it.  Didn’t those kind of lights disappear twenty years ago?  This makes real trees on which you could hang lights that don’t burn out all at once look pretty darn good.  You could drive to a forest and cut down a tree and drag it home faster than you can find the one bum bulb on a pre-lit tree.
• Another pet peeve?  Online sources that send me three reminders of their great bargain offering free shipping on cyber-Monday.  Then on Tuesday they offer 20% off the item you bought the day before.  That’s not marketing.  That is a premeditated attack on your holiday cheer.

I fear if I go any further I will begin to sound like Scrooge.  I think I’ll sit in front of a fire and get my holiday spirit from a cup of…uh… cocoa this evening.