With the Patience of a Saint (Nick) : TREE SALESMAN : ‘Arguments Arise . . . but the Wife Chooses’

By the thousands we come, bearing boxes that must be gift-wrapped, buying trees that must be perfect, and scrounging for carts that all seem to be occupied.

It is the time of year when shoppers test the patience of the holiday work force--when we make demands that would cause Jolly Old St. Nick to grumble.

But out there among the ceaseless carols and flocked window displays is a hardy breed of worker who, despite the holiday madness, wants only to see us happy: among them, Martin Ortega, a gift-wrap department supervisor; Virgil Fadenrecht, a Christmas tree salesman; and Dagan Wallace, a shopping cart rounder-upper.

*

Virgil Fadenrecht knows trouble when he sees it.

The kind-faced man from Santa Morgan, Ore.--about 50 miles south of Portland--sees a large van pull up to the Christmas tree lot in Orange where he is spending most of this month. Out of the van scrambles Mom, Dad and the kids.

Mom leads the way.

“It’s very interesting,” muses Fadenrecht, who says his first season selling Christmas trees has made him an astute observer of human nature.

“The man and his wife come in with the kids. The man trails the wife. If you ask him anything he says, ‘I don’t have anything to do with this.’ The kids always want the tallest and widest tree. Sometimes arguments arise; like ‘I want this one.’ ‘No! I want that one.’ But the wife chooses.”

The man pays. Then he asks Fadenrecht to load the 50-pound tree atop the six-foot-high van--by himself.

“He’ll say, ‘Throw it up there on the top,’ ” Fadenrecht recounts.

Off they go.

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree, how lovely are thy branches.

Putting in 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. days on the lot has taught Fadenrecht that it takes about 10 minutes for the average buyer to choose a tree. Elderly women tend to take longer.

“A good salesman will get the job done in 10 minutes. But there are people who are very particular; they can’t find the right tree. They’ll go around the lot, look over every tree. They’ll ask to see the rest of the trees.”

The “rest of the trees” means the hundred or so that are bound with twine and stacked off in a corner of the lot. The salesperson has to paw throughout the sticky branches, reach in and grasp the trunk, avoiding the needles aiming for one’s eyeballs, and hold the tree interminably while the Joneses think.

And think and think.

But a professional Christmas tree salesperson never complains. After all, ‘tis the season.

“I usually have to set up about three trees. They’ll buy it when they get to the third tree,” perhaps feeling a stirring of pity for him, Fadenrecht says.

“Other people will hang around the lot, and then they’ll come back the next day and buy one. Some people tell me they’ve already been to two or three other lots. Everyone wants the perfect tree. I tell them there are no perfect people and there are no perfect trees--although we come awfully close sometimes,” he says, with pride, glancing around the dusty lot.

Fadenrecht, a retired real estate salesman, says he decided to take up a friend’s offer to work in a Southern California tree lot because it seemed like an adventure.

“I thought it would be an interesting experience, to come to California, live in a trailer [on the corner of the lot] and meet people. The hardest part is unloading the trees from the truck and drilling every tree. And the hours are long. But the people make it worth it.”