83% of
the elves now work in receiving and distribution, not toy making
It's interesting how the world has changed since the early days of Santa.
Unlike my still-in-pre-production idea of a Post-Apocalyptic Search For Santa, the real Santa Claus is a delightful guy. I've met him on many occasions in the past, and in fact, he just came through my grocery store over the weekend. He seemed thrilled, but was surrounded by too many kids for me to get a chance to chill with him. It's okay.
In the past, it's a well-known fact that the elves in the North Pole Workshop make toys. Lots of them. I mean, seriously...there are hundreds of millions of kids out there who need toys. The problem quickly became the fact that Christmas got very commercial, and kids' taste in toys became very specific. The typical elven wares of trains and blocks and houses and such weren't what kids were going for anymore. Santa, of course, learned this very quickly because he takes all his own polling data in malls before the holidays, in the form of kids telling him what they want for Christmas. It's a bit of subtle subterfuge, but it gets the job done, and the kids never seem to mind. The bottom line in that very specific, name-branded toys were the predominant needs for the kiddies.
Not to be left in the dark, Santa went to work very quickly, using his remarkable brand to cut promotional deals with nearly every manufacturer of toys, gadgets, games, and wanton avarice in the world. The end result is that now, Santa is able to deliver the exact make and model toys kids want without all of them being designed and built in his workshop. He actually managed to get companies like Sony and Mattel to do all of his R+D for him and provide him with their goods at ridiculously reduced costs.
Unfortunately, this does result in some decreased need for skilled labor in the workshop. The olden days of toy crafters being top of the heap really are no longer. However, Santa, being the stand-up guy that he is, never had a layoff of a single worker. The elves merely spent some of their summer hours actively retraining for jobs of the modern era, and went right back to work the following Christmas as logistics and distribution experts, making sure that all of the toys arrive at the North Pole on time and are staged and ready to go when the sleigh takes off. It's an enormous undertaking, but one the tireless elves are up for.
Come back all week, as we present more odd and wonderful facts about the Jolly Old Elf for your edutainment.
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