When I worked in retail many years ago, one of my duties was to wrap boxes in the store’s approved gift wrap to be displayed on a large board.  Customers would then select the package they liked and the professional gift wrapper would wrap their purchase.

During the Christmas season, the store hired a part-time person or two to work just in the gift wrap area in the evenings and weekends.  And I would help out during the day hours.  Sometimes I would also come in on the weekends to work as well.

My daughter was hired two years in a row for the job.  She and I watched the video on the correct way to wrap a gift.  It was quite interesting.  We watched how many pieces of tissue were used to line a shirt box.  How to wrap regular sized boxes.  How to wrap odd sized boxes.  How to fold in the corners nice and straight.  How to make a perfect bow.  No stick-on bows for sure!

The gift wrap service was not free so it had to be worth it.

Yes, we were professional gift wrappers.

The gift wrap area had all the papers on a rack so all you had to do was unroll the paper and pull on the cutting edge to get it separated from the rest of the roll.  There was a shelf under the wrapping surface with the store logo-imprinted tissue paper.  Ribbons were also on a hanging bar with a pair of scissors near by.  A tape dispenser, gift tags, and gift embellishments were also close by.

Shirt boxes, lingerie boxes, large boxes for towels and coats, sweater boxes and tie boxes were stacked on the floor for easy reach.

It was almost perfect.

The only issue was that the wrapping table was too low and my back hurt after wrapping gifts for several hours.

When gift bags became all the rage, people stopped wrapping gifts.  That area in the store where I used to work no longer exists and I’m sure it doesn’t exist in a lot of stores any more.

But it’s much more fun for a child to rip open a wrapped gift than it is to reach in a gift bag and pull out the gift.

A Christmas Story

I love to wrap gifts.  It’s an art.

So do you wrap or bag?