Monday 6 April 2015

If you stayed at home so could we


"It's such a shame you have to work on Easter Sunday, I don't really think you should open"


At least half a dozen customers said this or a variation of this to me yesterday without the slightest sense of irony. It happens every Easter, every Boxing day and every bank holiday, and not just to me, my twitter feed was full of vexed retail workers who would love to be home eating chocolate eggs and big roast dinners with their families but instead are working selling you mostly non essential items. Not a single one of us hasn't thought that if the customer stayed home so could we. If next Easter Sunday we made so little profit that it wasn't worth it, the next Easter we would be able to have a nice day with our loved ones instead.


This may turn into an unseasonal rant about Boxing Day, but it is the worst day to work in retail. I actively dislike all Boxing Day shoppers. They stink of all the things that are bad about the modern Christmas, Selfishness, greed, lack of gratitude. One day after receiving whole bucket load of gifts a large population of the western world feel the overbearing need to go out and spend more money on more stuff. Were all the things they got for Christmas that boring or crap that they are fed up of them already? Are they that impatient that they can't wait one more day to spend that gift card? Why the need to go out and spend more, get more. 


Imagine you work for one of those retailers who has a Boxing day sale, you probably had to stay at work til 8pm on Christmas eve to set up the sale and then have to be in before 6am on Boxing day to control the crazy hoards of bargain hunters - who if they just took ten minutes to think about how capitalist led retail works wouldn't come on the first day of the sale anyway because that is when we put out all the crap we couldn't get rid of last time because we know just the whiff of the word sale drives some people bargain crazy.

 If even a tiny bit of you can empathise with what it may be like to be one of those workers amongst those crowds of people working those hours on those particular days of the year for minimum wage, next year stay home, play with your Christmas presents, eat your left over turkey and spend the quality time you are lucky to have with the people you love, if you really have to get that bargain or spend that gift cards just leave it one more day.







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