Christmas Eve is ten days away…but Elf Bernard is ready to call in help now.

I found him in his office meeting with all of his assistants. I could tell from the meeting that things didn’t seem to be going well in Santa’s workshop but I waited until after the meeting was over to confirm it with Elf Bernard.

“We are almost 2 weeks behind right now” Bernard told me. “We haven’t had any problems in the last couple of days but we just can’t seem to dig out of this hole. I have every available elf in here helping out but it just isn’t enough. I think we have reached the point that we won’t be able to do this on our own. I need to put out a call for help. My assistant’s want me to wait until the end of the day to see if we can gain some ground but I just don’t see it happening. I just don’t think I can wait that long. So I told them I would give them until noon and if they hadn’t met today’s quota by then the call was going to go out.”

I let Bernard get back to work and tracked down Elf Wally to see what he thought of Elf Bernard’s plan. “That is great news” Wally told me. “If we can get some help in here soon we may actually have a chance of getting this done on time. The slowdown in the workshop has given us a chance to get caught up here in the wrapping department but we will get swamped as soon as things get back on track over there.”

I also asked Elf Wally how the powered tape dispensers have been working out. “So far they have seem to work as good as we hoped they would. We’ve had a slight learning curve but I think we have them figured out now. The true test will be when the help gets here and the workshop starts cranking out things at a really high rate of speed. If they can hold up during that time then they will be here to stay.”

I also bumped into Santa, who returned to the North Pole for a little while today to look things over. I asked him if things were really behind in his workshop. Santa just smiled and said that Elf Bernard worries too much. Santa seemed to be in a hurry so I didn’t hold him up to discuss it more.

— Elf Ernest