My Top Ten of How to Christmas Shop without becoming a Sociopath.

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Merry Christmas everyone. I hope your season is filled with vast amounts of Gingerbread and awesome.

It’s been quite a while since I have written, I do most profusely apologise. I don’t really have an excuse other than it is Christmas and I work in retail.

Working in Retail at Christmas time is a bad life choice. People who are Christmas shopping are generally angry, annoyed and have small children running around them like hyperactive sea turtles (which is to say they don’t make sense). Occasionally you will come across the few who recognise that they too have made a bad life choice by leaving all of their shopping this late, have accepted the fact and will always say a great big “Thankyou!” and a smile.  Most of the time you get people who are angry. Angry that December strung upon them so quickly. Angry that little Timmy didn’t need to go to the toilet 15 minutes ago but is now Really needing to pee. Angry that they had to stalk someone in the carpark at ten past nine in the morning in order to get a space.

I admit these are all good reasons to be a little bit rank. But my advice is, if you get angry before you even start the last minute panic shopping, you are going to be a hideous human being to everyone. You will be hideous to your family (should they be with you), hideous to the random strangers you pass, who are all in the same boat as you and hideous to the poor sods who made the exceptionally bad life choice of working in retail at Christmas time.

So here is my guide on How To Not Become a Sociopathic Dickhead:

1) List. List like there is going to be no damn tomorrow (and there mightn’t be seeing as today is the 20/12/12).

If you go into the shops without knowing exactly what you are looking for the Gruen Transfer is going to hit you like so many bricks being flung out of a trebuchet. This will mean you have to spend more time thinking, which is more time you don’t have, so make a list and ignore anything and everything else.

2) Understand what The Gruen Transfer is- I realise that many of you may only know it as they title of a most excellent television programme. The Gruen Transfer is the moment when you walk into a shopping centre and forget what you were there for. Designers make it happen on purpose- they make the layout confusing and bombard your senses with stimuli so that you get confused and have to walk past everything, thus increasing your chances of impulse buying.

3) Aim to be at the shops AT LEAST HALF AN HOUR BEFORE OPENING! The fact is most people will aim to be there at opening, so if you are there nice and early you WILL get a carpark and you wont be rushing to get the last Furby on the shelf. Honestly, try and give yourself that extra half an hour. You can get in, figure out where you are, what you need, sit down, have breakfast and a coffee and start your shopping relaxed and fed. You will be a nicer person for it.

If you can’t because you are working, aim to be as late as possible. Most shops are now on extended trading hours. If the store is open until 9pm, come between 7:30 and 8.

4) Budget. Suss out the prices of everything before you go. Now that we have the handy dandy Internet, you can do this at home before you some to the shops. Knowing how much things cost will save you time and worry.

5) Be understanding. If you are doing your shopping from the 20^th onwards you are very, very late. Some items that would be perfect for your loved ones, friends and frenemies are going to be sold out in your most convenient stores. This isn’t the stores fault, you have no one to blame but yourself so get over it. If you had done your shopping earlier, you would have got what you wanted, but you didn’t. Either ask the shop assistants to look up where one might be and go and get it, or get something else. Don’t stand there and complain.

6) Have backup plans. This comes off number 5. If you haven’t been able to get what you wanted and have no idea, you’re screwed. Think of a few things for each person so you can get them something other than an I.O.U.

7) Be aware of your kids. School Holidays are great when you are a kid, fabulously horrific when you are a parent trying to do the shopping. Even the most well behaved kids can turn into little Godzilla’s when confronted with a day at the shops with mum. Rope in some help to herd them along behind you. There is nothing worse than losing control of a child in the one section of a shop where everything is breakable.

8) Feed and Water yourself and companions regularly. You WILL get dehydrated and you WILL get a headache. So drink… all the time. Bring a water bottle and a snack- food court food is damn expensive.

9)Wear comfortable shoes. It may sound stupid, but think of going Christmas shopping the same way you would think about going hiking. You are making a day of it, you will be carrying a lot of extra weight by the end and you will have walked a very long way.

10) PLEASE. PLEEAASSEEE be aware of closing times. I can’t tell you the number of times in the last few weeks that I have been stuck having to stay at work for an extra half hour unpaid because people are just being slow to leave. When you see that it is 10 minutes before close, or hear the 5 minute call, go and pay for your stuff and leave. Staff are only rostered on until closing time and we don’t get paid to stay and herd you out. Closing time means the door gets closed, NOT you have another five minutes of browsing time.  

Going Superhero...

It may be considered blasphemy by some to learn that I really, really don’t like summer. Summer is my least favourite time of year.

In Autumn, Winter and Spring you don’t have to wear several thousand layers of sunscreen every waking moment of daylight to keep from becoming red like an overdone lobster.  You are not in a constant state of dehydration due to sweating and you don’t have to complete change up your work wear to accommodate not being able to wear sleeveless dresses without a cardigan.

Summer is the time of year when people who are blessed without the good ol’ Irish complexion show off their ability to gain a bit of colour without having to go all red and painful first. Summer is the time of year when fashion designers only design shorts for people with Really Good Legs. I have been on the hunt for a new pair of shorts for about three years, I am yet to find a pair this season that cover my arse. I am not a tall person, I am just over 5ft 2”, finding shorts that at least cover the very top parts of my stumpy little legs shouldn’t be that hard right? Right?

Dead wrong.

Apparently this season comes to you courtesy of denim underwear with the pockets hanging out the leg like misplaced testicles. Make sure you always wear your best undies because the rest of the world will be able to see them no matter what you do. We will see the waistband creeping over the top of your hipster shorts and should you need to bend over, your outwear will simply move to let those knickers take the spotlight.

Now, I’m not saying that they always look bad…. Wait… no that’s exactly what I’m saying. They always look bad.

When I was at work the other day a young lass came in wearing these “pants”. To start with she was a healthy looking human being, which is to say she was an average height, fit looking, not a lot of extra fat. In anything else she would have looked absolutely stunning, instead her underwear shorts said “look at my owner’s enormous thighs!”. The other problem was that I don’t think she was wearing any underwear, as an entire shop full of people were treated to a view of her pubic hair when she bent over. Its pretty hard to ignore something like that.

I think that if you are going to go and wear underwear as outerwear you should at least go superhero. Get some leggings, whack your undies on the outside and give yourself a superhero name. People will still be staring at you, but it will be because they think you’re a weirdo, not because they can see your hoo-ha and they’re not sure if you know that.