Debt is Not Festive

The Christmas music has been playing all week, and all I hear is Slade over and over. The CD must only be about thirty minutes long as the repetition is frequent. It's the usual subjects: Slade, Wizzard, McCartney, Lennon, Chris DeBurgh, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Mariah Carey and, of course, the Pogues (which isn't really a Christmas song in the usual, festive sense. I wonder if people actually listen to the words or merely look at the title "Fairytale of New York" in a very literal an unironic way, and take McGowan's word for it...). The music is torturous, and whenever I complain I get told to "get into the Christmas spirit," to which my answer is, "It's November and I have a headache."

People don't really seem to care though. Just one short month until Christmas Day. I'm going to come clean: I love Christmas. My favourite time of the year. I love all the schmaltz and Christmas films, I love the decorations and swapping presents, I love how it's cold outside - I even don't mind the religious connotations of the holiday. What I hate is retail, in all it's forms. Debt is not festive, yet it is the ultimate goal of all the shops on the high street to destroy us all financially at this time of year. Prices are up, adverts are designed to make us feel guilty and Scrooge-like for not spending more money on useless items - happy kids with rosy cheeks play with the latest must have toy, families gather round a huge golden turkey, rush now or be disappointed on the big day. Why must we have to aim for perfection? Why can't we just be satisfied by having at least one day of guaranteed holiday a year, spending time with our loved ones and having fun? It seems that we are being told the only way to have fun is with material possessions and the best food money can buy.

The Company I work for is guilty of this illusion of perfection, its adverts ludicrously glossy and it's "special offers" a cynical device to make people buy more than they need - Buy a dinner jacket, trousers, shoes, a shirt, a pair of silk boxers, some sock WITH suspenders, some spare laces, a red rose for the lapel (only available in bunches of twelve), cummerbund, a white silk scarf, some aftershave, a moustache comb and scissors, a top-hat, a cane, a dress coat (made of a mixture of wool and cashmere), some silk gloves, and a monocle and you can get a FREE dickie-bow. That's right a FREE dickie-bow. Get spending now people! You need all of this stuff for Christmas. You do. Don't try and argue with us. You absolutely NEED it. Can't afford it all? That's what our new improved CREDIT CARD is for. Why worry about paying now, when you can worry about paying in a month's time? Huzzah, I see you're approaching the till point. Well, don't forget to take advantage of our SPECIAL offer on mince pies. They are just here, by the till point. Yes, next to the overpriced champagne that's on special offer too. Sir, you are being sensible by buying all this stuff. You are going to have the MOST PERFECT CHRISTMAS EVER! Oh, remember to pick up a brochure so you can order your MASSIVE turkey on the way out...

There are also other products that key into people's laziness in making them spend money:

1. Pre-whipped cream. More expensive that the normal whipping cream obviously. But you don't have to spend that precious three minutes tiring out your wrist and dirtying up a bowl.

2. A baked potato with grated cheese. The potato is pre-sliced, the cheese is pre-grated. The cheese has been placed within the slice of the potato. The cooking guidelines are on the packet. Cooking guidelines? For a baked potato and cheese?

3. Pre-sliced apple. Never will you have to use your teeth again!

4. Pre-sliced garlic baguette. And I don't mean just cut to put the garlic butter in as normal. I mean sliced. With the slices rattling around in the bag.

I'm sure there are more. But I'm too lazy to list them. It's all status symbol for the customers, especially at the location I work. These customers can afford all of this, and they will enjoy telling their friends: "I buy my cream pre-whipped" They are the sorts of people who also buy special Christmas Dinner dog food, made from turkey and cranberries. A dog will happily eat horse shit. I'm sure it's not fussy about cranberries.

Well, if that's what people want to spend their money on, then who am I to argue. We live in a feudal society, and the lords can do what they want. But we are all slaves to commerce, and we are all duped in believing a perfect Christmas is possible...

Survival Gone Too Far

Oh how I yearn for a Stockton, a Cosmo, a Sergei or a Spike. The worst thing about the department store is the solitude. Yes, I'm surrounded by people, but conversation is sparse, and each member of staff toils in isolation. Whether it be on the tillpoint or stacking the shelves, there is little opportunity to connect with anyone. This loneliness erupts in strange ways, members of staff suddenly divulging personal and irrelevant information in the hope to be noticed. I've had women telling me their procedure for obtaining a lift home from their husbands, people telling me, in great detail, their technique for efficient date rotation, people sitting next to me in the canteen and opening their hearts in the most pornographic and gruesome way, their outflow punctuated by them scoffing dry oven chips and over-cooked fishcakes.

It is no wonder that the majority of the staff have a slumped posture, frowning faces and a deep, deep melancholy. In some cases, the management deem it necessary for certain members of staff to wear t-shirts that declare "Happy to Help!" Whether this is to convince the staff or the customers, it is not clear. I doubt there is one person who is actually happy in that place, let alone Happy to Help. Of course, there are the opposites. A few members of staff who are so willfully chirpy that it can only spell mental illness, or a lamentable submission to the gruesome machine of retail. Maybe it's simpler being that way, and I don't judge them.

The managers, however, are a different animal. They are all the same, so much so that their faces bleed together and it's impossible to recognise an individual. They all have arrogant swaggers and walk around the shopfloor with mobile phones to their ears, doing absolutely no work, but maintaining a harried, busy look. They thrive on ordering their minions about, waiting for the day when they will have their own gang of flying monkeys to do their bidding. They speak in terms of profit, a naked greed shining in their eyes - the worst mental illness of the lot. They say things like: "This percentage increase really was an achieve." I'm sure they really mean achievement, and somehow this mutation of the language contains more threat than a thousand "innits" or "m8tes". There is a list of retail slang that these freaks pour out of their mouths, and all of them believe they are a higher race of warrior people, a strain of ubermen whose personal Kryptonite is having to deal with us, the retard till-jockeys and shelf-stuffers. A couple of days ago I witnessed one of these managers laying into a cleaner. After shouting at the poor guy for a good five minutes, he used the line: "Come on, it's not as if your job is hard." Christ, it takes a certain person to be a retail manager, and they have constructed their own twisted vision of a Fourth Reich, where intolerance reigns and the dirty work is far from their hands...

An example of the managers' manipulation: They asked a young lad to come off the till and dress up as a turkey to promote the new Turkey Ordering Service for Christmas. The lad was reticent. "Come on," said the manager, with an affected friendly laugh in his voice. "It's Christmas, it's all a bit of fun!" The lad felt he had no choice but to don the turkey costume and begin the process of handing out leaflets. This was particularly sinister, using the idea of a celebratory, "fun" Christmas to disguise the ugly profit-wrangling and money-chasing of commerce. The lad, no more than eighteen, felt he would be viewed as some kind of Scrooge if he didn't humiliate himself. The manager in question would never dress up like a turkey, yet he is the one that is invested in mark-ups and profit. The world is upside down, I fear.

All of this is even before you start talking about the customers, people who will happily spend £600 on luxury items and spend a good portion of their day complaining about the price to all who are in their vicinity. They are the citizens of a particularly negative place. A Cheshire town which Stockton once described as "like a long, squealing guitar solo with no bass or drums." There is no need for more comment on this matter, but all of this adds up to a strange experience. I feel like an astronaut, touching down on a particularly nasty planet, unable to comprehend any of the madness. As soon as my landing craft is refueled, I shall be leaving...

I HEART GREED!

I approached the carpark, unnerved by the chaos. It was full of abandoned cars, as if reports of a flaming meteorite had been broadcast sending people insane with fear and fleeing their vehicles. I managed to find a space and thrust my car in quickly. As I walked towards the store I saw angry faces behind steering wheels, grimacing at the behaviour of other drivers. The cars that were abandoned, on double yellows and over two parking spaces, were all 4x4s or some other status symbol - shiny, sleek cars that speak of a desire to forget one's mortality in a luxurious bubble bath of greed. If you're disabled and want to shop, forget it, some fully functional rich woman in a Merc deserves the charity of a special parking spot much more than you.

Christ, moral outrage is an ugly emotion, but I'm locked into it tonight. Once installed on my till I become an actor, smiling, joking, being nice. All the time I'm petrified of drowning in a sea of spittle. Old ladies licking their fingers to access the bags, licking their fingers to withdraw bank-notes, licking their fingers for no reason whatsoever. I picture the spit of a thousand strangers, glowing around me, transmitting disease and filth. And the amount of plastic that they use. They don't care. They are old. The world will end long after their silicon enhanced skin rots. One bag per item seems to be the order of the day. Fuck the ice caps. They are chewing up the world even before they turn the key in the ignition of their Audi 4x4s. All they are lacking is an "I HEART GREED!" bumper sticker.

The Company is no different. A few days ago a manager pulled me off the till and took me off the shop floor.
"I have noticed you are not selling the company credit card," she said, completely straight faced. "You need to do that to every customer." She emphasised the word "every" with a pointed finger, directly at my name badge.
"It makes me feels a little uncomfortable," I said, in all honesty.
"It's part of your job to do it," she replied forcefully.
"I find it morally dubious," I said.
"Just do it." With that clichéd corporate slogan I was dismissed from the uncomfortable tête-à-tête.
I still do not advertise this. If I wanted to sell credit cards I'd be back at the airport with the Two Fake Tits, asking people if they "liked the football". I can act many things, but I cannot even pretend to be a company stooge.

I apologise for my tone this evening. It would have been better maybe if the chaos hadn't been caused by the promise of a free bottle of wine to customers. When a reasonable person would ask "Is it really worth it?" these greedheads head into battle, as if the word "FREE" absolves them of the guilt of being greedy. We live in a Deal or No Deal society. People want the most, and will work themselves up into a tearful stress if they can't get it. Res Ipsa Loquitur.