I just got sent a report that says verbal abuse by shoppers towards retail employees and call center workers is up dramatically this year. They even have a term for it when the employees go for help after the abuse: Critical Incident Stress Debriefings, or CISDs.

Shoppers struggling with time constraints, family obligations, and expensive shopping lists, are taking out their stress on retail workers. And acute-stress counseling sessions related to customer abuse have more than doubled since 2005.

I served time as an employee in a New York City department store. I can tell you I've seen many a half-crazed soccer mom – who just spent the last four hours dragging three whiny preschoolers all over Manhattan looking for the new Tickle-Me-Elmo – grab a sales clerk by the throat and unleash a torrent of language so profane it would make a dock worker blush.

Holidays are stressful. Holiday shopping is stressful. And believe me, I've been this close to choking the life out of some untrained idiot who can't tell me whether the camera I'm looking at has a digital or an optical zoom. All I'm saying is before you unload on that sales guy, take a deep breath and realize he's probably spent the last 14 hours dealing with more idiots than you could possibly imagine. Don't be another one.