Christmas. A time of love, giving, joy and festivity. It’s can be a challenge maintaining this festive ideal when you work in retail, and the stress and strain of angry shoppers, meeting sale quotas and being exposed to hours of Christmas tunes on loop takes it’s toll. In case you’re fortunate enough to not be aware of this struggle, here are the festive season’s struggles that all retail workers have to deal with at this time of year
1. Dealing with a stressed customer and feeling like Christmas as a season of good-will is a myth. Christmas shopping can be a very stressful ordeal, so I can understand shoppers losing their cool. Everyone working in retail has dealt with a customer who chooses to take out all of this stress on the nearest convenient worker, and this tends to dampen your experience of Christmas as a whole. Unfortunately, angry customers are always going to be a thing, especially at the busiest time of the year. So if you work in retail just try to remember that Christmas improves as a whole the minute your shift ends. And shoppers, please try not to take your frustrations out on the sales assistants trying to help you out. Their Christmas spirit may be on it’s last leg.
2. Wearing a Christmas jumper every single day, whilst being surrounded by all of your fellow Christmas jumper wearing colleagues. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas jumpers, but eventually they become ever so slightly over-bearing.
3. Christmas shopping becomes even more unbearable. You can’t go into a shop without having extreme sympathy for everyone working at that time, and even being in a crowded store in your free time feels like unpaid overtime.
4. Missing out on the festivities. It feels like you’re working constantly and every time you look at Snapchat, there’s some fun festive activity you’re missing out on. Seeing your friends at the city light’s switch on celebration, or at the college pub for Student Christmas while you’re not even half way through a ten hour shift starts to get pretty upsetting after a while.
5. Never-ending Christmas music. Oh my god, the music. Christmas music is probably one of the best parts of the whole season, but when you’re listening to the same five tracks on loop every single day at work, you slowly start to detest the most wonderful time of the year.