Tips for making this a better shopping season

Tips for making this a better shopping season
EDITOR:
The Christmas shopping season has begun, but the busiest days are yet to come. Here are helpful hints that should make all our lives less stressful at this time of the year.
The clerks who are in the stores are not your enemy. We want to help you as much as we can. However, you must remember that we do not make policies that may make you angry. Yelling and swearing at us is not the way to get concerns solved; tell management. Those of us who have worked in retail for a number of years know that we wouldn't have jobs without customers. We just want to be treated courteously.
1. Shopping with a tired, irritable child who is screaming stresses the parent as well as all around them.
2. Before leaving your home to shop, check for checkbooks, coupons, cash, and credit cards. Having your order rung and then discovering you have no means to pay just holds up other customers.
3. If you know ahead of time that your credit card is near the maximum amount, please don't have the cashier run it through and then act as if it our fault that the charges are denied.
4. Please remember that the cashiers need the upc codes in order to ring your purchases. Please check for them before coming to check out. It is not your fault if the upc code is not on a product; however, in the rush sometimes they get torn off and the associates in the store try very hard to make sure everything is up to par.
5. Try and remember to wait your turn. If a clerk is waiting on someone, please don't interrupt that clerk. The clerk will get to you as soon as possible. After all, the clerk can only do one thing at a time.
6. When you come to the check out and you have unloaded your cart, you cannot leave the area and expect the cashier to hold the register until you "finish" your shopping.
Let's remember why we celebrate Christmas and be kinder to one another. Thank you.
PAT ZOCCALI
Warren
When you read between lines, Thomas is no joke
EDITOR:
Cal Thomas' column of Nov. 14 was pretty scary stuff. I agree with him that the Democratic leadership is a left-wing joke. Then I read between the lines. He made fun of the Democrats helping the afflicted and elderly. I remember a conversation I had with a person who thinks like him. He said the Indians had the right idea, when a person can't take care of himself or herself, they should be left in the woods.
The Republicans are gung ho against abortion, but after the children are born, to hell with them, let them starve. As you have done to the least of ye, you have done unto me, the Bible says. Paul O'Neil, the millionaire secretary of the Treasury, said in an interview with the London Times that people should not expect society to support them when they get old.
What a slap in the face to the people collecting Social Security in this country. This country needs a political party that cares about its people and workers. The pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-free-trade and pro-Israel lobby controls the Democratic Party. The Republicans are controlled by the super-rich, the televangelists, and the free trade and Israel lobby.
GERALD MILLER
Niles
War without effort
EDITOR:
A fine column by Bertram de Souza on the drug-terrorism connection (It's time to go after Valley's 'terrorists,' Nov. 24). I have to ask whether or not he will also bring oil into the equation in a future column? It is an undeniable and unpopular truth that the terrorists are also financed by our own love affair with the automobile and electricity. The World War II era taught us (I thought) that civilian support in the form of cutbacks in consumption were crucial to the war effort. This is war, isn't it? We don't make a difference by putting a flag on our car or making Christmas yard displays that resemble Vegas, prompting folks to drive around to look at them.
KIM R. KOTHEIMER
Boardman