the end is nigh

Christmas.

It's right around the corner. If you have been listening to any kind of retailer they will have been telling you exactly how may days there are to go till the fat man hits the town, having us all on some kind of demented countdown till his arrival. There will be lines upon lines. There will be screaming fits thrown (and not necessarily by the toddlers). There will be god awful christmas carols pumped out across the airwaves. There will be bouts of insane shopping madness. There will be my sanity walking out the door. And if you are very lucky you may even get to see it happen.

It will start innocently enough. Start of an especially long ball breaking shift in retail, my spirits will be high and sugar induced but it won't take long for reality to come crashing in. There will be a line snaking around the store for gift wrap, a ridiculous division of who wants what gift wrapped and in what colour, someone WILL yell and abuse you. Tea WILL be spilt. Teenagers will swarm through the store much akin to locusts, eating you out of house and home all while reminding you of just how uncool you are. There will be the ass that enters the store at 2 minutes till close then demands giftwrap on 27 items. There will be the ultra rude woman who insists on being on the phone while you serve her. She will mouth "sorry!" to you but both you and I know that is utter bullshit and you aren't even a glitch on her radar. You are just the sales robot. Greet. Sell. Add on. Wrap. Repeat.

Soon it starts to get louder in there. There is no clear path to walk in the store, you are constantly crab walking your way through the store, or my personal favourite, 'ghosting' the customer as they walk at a snails pace as you have a handful of six full tea pots, trying to make it to the hungry locusts. Pretty soon that apron you are wearing starts to weigh you down, you feel the oppression of your sisters in sales before you, is it hot in here? (of course it is centre management are tight arses and the air con is off), you start to sweat. All of a sudden, before you know it, you are lowering yourself behind the counter, cramming your fist into your mouth in the silent scream, teapots are crashing down around you, the giftwrap has gone to hell, who knows where Aunty Glenda's gift is anymore, the ice machine has spontaneously combusted and the sirens are going off (of course no one heeds these piercing alarms going off but customers scream over the top of the wailing "does this come with an infuser?!"). Get out save yourselves, the christmas apocalypse is here.

So spare a thought for your brothers and sisters out there doing time in retail. Give em a break. Don't bust their balls. It's a pretty simple equation here, you be nice to them, they be nice to you. Don't be a christmas jerk. In the words of the great time travelling man himself, Rufus;

"Be excellent to each other".

It's that simple.



Oh and by the way, I wasn't always this jaded about christmas. Trust me, I want the wreaths, I want the sparkly ornaments, I want to gorge myself in gingebread and I want the scent of pine needles so far up my snout I'm breathing needles for weeks. I want all that I do, and there was a time when it was all that and more, but thats another story for another day.