Shop staff shine as the real saints at Christmas

The men and women who wake up early on Boxing Day to launch the post-Christmas sale in Next. The ones who have a few less drinks on Christmas Day to arrange cut-price DVDs in HMV early on the morning of the 26th.

To you, I dedicate this column; for your hard work and patience when people like me are putting blocks of cheese back in the wrong place because I've found some on offer on an end aisle.

I'm sorry for everything.

As a nation, we're obsessed with shopping. Remember Black Friday? I watched videos of people grappling to get their hands on cheap tellies, elbowing others out of their way to nail a bargain.

We love shopping; you only have to look at the Christmas adverts to see how obsessed we are with spending.

What I find we overlook year in and year out are the people that work overnight to get the shelves stocked in the supermarket or put the clothes back on their hangers properly after we cast them aside when we can't get them over my Christmas bellies.

Forget Saint Nick, the staff in my local Asda Living have the patience of saints when it comes to festive shopping.

In Father Christmas tales, the elves that put in all the graft to make your iPad, Kindle or Frozen Elsa light-up doll never get any credit. The more I think about it, the more I believe it to be slave labour.

Do elves get paid double time for putting a shift in? Do they have pensions? Do they take annual leave? I digress.

We get so caught up in the wonderment of receiving the best ever gifts that it's easy to forget all of the people that were involved in getting it to us.

Factory workers, delivery drivers, stock managers, shop floor staff, cashiers that ask if you want them to put it in a bag for you.

Making sure that other people's Christmases go smoothly is a thankless and challenging task.

This year I am going to make sure I mind my Ps and Qs like never before. I'm going to put things back where I find them if I find a better alternative.

I'll tip my waitress and put a drink behind the bar for the barmaid, because, after all, they're putting a real shift in to make my Christmas a little bit more enjoyable and we have to do our bit to keep the Christmas spirit alive for them too.

Sure, there'll be the odd few idiots that make the whole thing a bit of a pain (remind me to tell you about my abysmal customer service experience in Subway last week), but on the whole, spending Boxing Day away from your family and friends to pop cut-price tubes of Pringles on shelves can be a pretty miserable sacrifice, made so they can make ends meet and make their own loved ones' Christmas Day perfect.

So, here's to you, retail dudes. For making Christmas run just that little bit easier for the rest of us.

Cheers!

By Kirsty Bosley