Holidays are Coming

I have ranted about Christmas before and I probably will again, but I feel compelled to do so now after having had to go into a shop today.

Those who work in retail probably suffer more than anyone at this festive time - a festive time that seems to be in full swing in some outlets, despite it being almost 10% of a year until the “big day”.

I worked for former high street giant, Woolworths, as a schoolboy and during my wasted two years at sixth form college and Christmas was simultaneously an overtime cash cow and the biggest nightmare ever experienced.

I worked in the confectionary department, which meant having ready access to a number of illicit sweet-eating sessions in the stock room. I learned that it was almost possible to eat my own body-weight in jelly fruits without being sick and that you can get quite a buzz going if you consume almost three boxes of Famous Names liqueur chocolates in half an hour.

Being tasked with filling up advent calendars and oversized boxes of Just Brazils never ended as customers snatched these items from the trolley before I made it to the shelves and decimated what stock we had managed to put out before the shop opened, leaving the whole snack-food area looking like Beirut in 1983.

Once the store was closed, we had our fair share of fun though. We invented the game of ‘Christmas tree surfing’, which involved pushing large boxes containing half a dozen faux evergreens at great speed across the shop floor and then jumping on to the box right before it smashed into a display of Disney videos.

Today I was in the king of discount tat-you-don’t-need stores, Yorkshire Trading.

They had a large amount of kitsch Christmas pointlessness, including Griswold-esque illuminated reindeer and fit-inducing flashing lights. By far the worst thing I saw - and quite possibly have ever seen - was a dancing Christmas tree.

The “tree” was obviously manufactured using only the cheapest and most flammable materials known to man. It had a face so sinister it would make Tim Burton shit himself and two lifeless arms hanging by its side.

Pressing a button on it made it “dance”. It moved around in an unrhythmical way, perhaps like a drunken uncle at a wedding, whilst Jingle Bell Rock played from a concealed speaker.

I was in there for just over five minutes and was subjected to this awfulness at least ten times.

Now imagine how it is to work in retail at Christmas. Minimum wage and having to tolerate manufactured fun all day, every day whilst pretending that you don’t wish you were dead.

It’s probably for the best that we aren’t allowed to carry guns in this country.