Well, I may be a full time mall elf. Not Santa, don't have the beard. And, actually, I don't think they even bother with the elves. They're usually obscure figures dressed in black taking the cash and running the queue for the train.
As Santa shows up in the mall first thing on November 1st and is gone when the mall closes for Christmas, this is obviously a seasonal thing. Last year, I believe Santa arrived at the mall by helicopter, but I don't think we went to the mall those two months, so I never saw the set-up.
Back at OldUni, Santa didn't have a train. He hung out in front of the abandoned Wal-Mart and I never saw much of a line for him. Never saw him there much, either, come to think of it.
But in DM, man, every mall had a Santa, and there were always lines. The best set up originally was the valley mall, they had a huge train that would go around the barns for Santa's life sized animatronic reindeer- just heads, but still cool. It was an open train with a bunch of cars and as I recall it had a driver. Santa sat in the middle of all that on sort of a Black Forest throne. It was Gothic German Christmas, and it was cool. That all went away when they renovated ten or twelve years ago, but that mall still has a decent Christmas set-up. They go all out with the decorations because they're one of those 1970's double decker roofed numbers so there's lots of open space and walkways and things.
The west side mall had a little house with a fireplace and Santa had an armchair. I think that one may've been sponsored mainly by the big anchor department store he was in front of, because I think everything in the house was from the store. This is the same mall that also had Chatsworth the Reindeer, whom I preferred to Santa here. They were the first mall to buy a generic train.
Now, all the mall trains are those little three car enclosed numbers that go by themselves around a little fake pond with dancing penguins. Some company must be doing them cheap. Santa usually has a bright red throne and everything looks a lot more plastic.
I can remember one Christmas when we hit all three malls in one day and stood and counted the number of times the train went round so we'd know later which mall gave us the longest ride. Those generic ones only go 'round maybe ten times, but the better ones would go twenty, even when it was busy.
Er, anyway... Saw an ad that the mall's looking for Santas and Santa helpers, so I called them. They're going to call me back for an interview. It'll probably be horrible, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun.
I remember going to see Santa; it was all about him, everyone else was a blur, I didn't realise there were assistants for years. I don't understand what's so scary about him, though. All these people who remember being terrified of mall Santas really puzzle me. Maybe it's the gloves, or the pressure for kids who only get to talk to Santa when the line is eight miles long, but nothing about that situation has seemed frightening to me.
Still, I can remember watching kids throw tantrums in line, or near it, anyway. Not once did I ever hear a parent pick their screaming kid up and drag them off admonishing, "I think Santa Claus has seen all he needs to see." That would've been all it would've taken to get ME to shape up, were I stupid enough to behave like that any time after Halloween. We already knew the guy could see you when sleeping and awake, it must count double when you were actually in his presence.
Aside from that, I'm filling out a Barnes and Snowball application. I don't expect to hear back from them (neither am I certain that I want to), but still, it's something, I guess.