FARMINGTON mdash; Rodney Vaneckhoutte is a last minute shopper. He says for one reason or another he's always shopped that way. Early Saturday afternoon, with less than 48 hours left before the Christmas morning deadline, Vaneckhoutte, 55, of Farmington, was at the Animas Valley Mall, wandering the aisles of Walden Books.
With the clock ticking, he was in search of Christmas gifts for his wife and daughter, neither of whom, he says, would suffer in silence if he were to grab any old gift for them simply out of desperation. Procrastination, Vaneckhoutte claims, is not the reason for his delayed search for gifts. He says the demands of his job, working as a heavy equipment mechanic for pipelines, kept him from beginning his quest at any earlier date.
He was delighted that Christmas fell on a Monday this year because it provided him an extra chance to shop on Saturday. Sometimes, he noted, it comes down to a Christmas-Eve-dash. "And on Christmas Eve, stores usually shut down at 6 o'clock and you're not even half way
"(You grab about anything) and I made a mistake one year." Mistakes do happen with last-minute shopping since the shopper is not afforded the luxury of additional consideration upon a few days' reflection. The last-minute shopper must act quickly or risk the chance of being empty-handed (and the subject of someone's ire) on Christmas morning, said retailers.
The majority of people interviewed for this article said they were not shopping for more than one or two gifts and generally knew what they were looking for, such as Jason Fugate, 26, of Durango, Colo., who ducked into Dillard's knowing what he wanted to get for his girlfriend of 4 years and was out in a flash. But there were some, like Bryce Shambarger, 19, of Farmington, who became last minute shoppers unintentionally.
Shambarger, who was studying the display cases at Dillard's, never planned to wait until two days before Christmas to look for a gift for his mother. But he says his classes at the University of New Mexico got in the way. However, Shambarger was not overly concerned about the approaching deadline.
His mother, he mentioned, is not overly particular when it comes to Christmas expectations. "If I run out of time, I'll grab her something and say, Here you go, Merry Christmas. I did the best I could,'" he said.
Even the president of the Navajo Nation could not get all his shopping done early. President Joe Shirley Jr., was at the mall Saturday finishing up the last of his purchases.
"I have a lot of things to do. Being president ..
. they keep us very busy," he said. Charlie Nielsen is the manager of EB Games, an electronic and video game store in the mall.
He has worked retail during the Christmas holiday the last four years and says he has come to know the ways of the last-minute shopper all too well. "People wait until the last minute and sometimes their excuse is I don't have the money until Christmas.' .
.. It's always funny how people can find the money at the last minute," he said.
Nielsen said those shoppers who wait to the last minute are likely to find a good portion of the most popular items sold out. For the most part, by Dec. 17, Nielsen estimated, the new video game consoles and the newest and most hyped games are gone.
At that point, he said, people are likely to grab what they can that is close to what they were originally looking for. "I think a lot of people are grabbing (not) anything ..
. but it's more along the lines of if we don't have a certain game, like if we don't have a racing game, they'll ask, what can you suggest?' So it may not be exactly what they were looking for but still (close)," he said.
Nielsen recommends that if you can't get someone exactly what they want, get them a gift card that allows them to buy their own gift. "What I always suggest is a gift card," Nielsen said. "A lot of people think that's impersonal, but to me that's one of the best things you can get.
...
It is the perfect last minute gift." Vaneckhoutte was not looking for gift cards and he stands by this decision. Even though it came down to the wire, he got exactly what he set out to find.
It's not revealing too much about what Vaneckhoutte bought his wife for Christmas to say that if he had waited just a few minutes longer, there is a chance she could not have received the gift that she wanted. The items he chose for her were the last on the rack.
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