For The Shift Workers At Christmas
Commonplace Newsletter #74
Today is Boxing Day. At least it is if you are reading this ‘live’ and not in some future physical volume. And if you are reading your emails the day after Christmas that means that there is a very good chance that you are at work.
And if you are one of these unacknowledged, forgotten and almost certainly underpaid Christmastime workers then todays missive is dedicated to you. It is about you and it is for you. To make you feel appreciated and understood- if only for a brief moment or two- is its sole aim and purpose.
And if by some chance you are reading this piece off-work, from the warmth and comfort of home, perhaps armed with a little tipple and a plate of even-better-the-next-day Christmas dinner leftovers, then I hope I can remind you of the Christmas workers and so make you think of them and what they do.
I guess I am just feeling in a grateful, spread-the-good-cheer kind of mood today. Because I am not working over Christmas week for the first time in virtually as long as I can remember. I have always been a shift-worker you see, always on a rota or a timetable where working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day was a possibility. And I was never sharp-elbowed or canny enough to get my annual leave requests submitted in January for the December that felt like a lifetime a way. So it usually fell on me.
(In the spirit of full disclosure I did have Christmas 2020 off work but only because I caught Covid and tested positive before my Christmas Day shift. And I was symptomatic and everything. I don’t think that quite counts as having Christmas off)
I’ve done all kinds of Christmas shift jobs over the years- bar work, kitchen work, table service, 72hr shifts in care homes for the mentally ill and head injured. I’ve poured Christmas drinks, cooked turkey dinners for scores of people, mopped out toilets, dispensed medication, waited on the phone line for what felt like hours as I called duty doctors or police because a patient had either absconded or stealthily got wasted enough on holiday booze such that it was questionable whether they were safe to take their evening medication.
I’ve done all of this kind of work. And I say this not to congratulate myself or to say woe is me but merely to point out that I have some experience of both the plight and the occasional joys of working over Christmastime.
The plight is that you start to resent the whole season and see it as an inconvenience to suffer if not a cross to bear. All of the magic and meaning of the season (and I believe that even the most jaded of adults still retains the lingering capacity to be moved by the spirit of Christmas and this time of goodwill to all men) fades to nothingness. It is just a crass consumerist extravaganza and indeed the very instrument of your torture. It becomes a thing that only other people seemingly get to enjoy. All of these middle class people- no better than you- with their degrees and office jobs get to noisily shout booze-breathed b.s. shoptalk during their annual Christmas shindigs while you pour their drinks and clear away their plates and tolerate their poor manners and condescension because a good night of tips could be the difference between a real meal or ramen noodles come the lean times in January.
Or you work retail while people- filled with inexplicable levels of self-inflicted stress- keep shopping and shopping and shopping until the very last second and then get straight back at it virtually as soon as the turkey and stuffing have been digested. If they weren’t here- and there is no real actual reason why they should be- then you wouldn’t have to be here ringing up their purchases and restocking shelves and cashing out the tills at the end of the night. And this says nothing of the on-the-shop-floor abuse and the unwavering management with their slave-driving demands and the colleagues who break and quit and make the whole ordeal even harder on those left behind. And on and on and on.
This is the hell of it. But it’s never quite unremitting. At least in my experience. Christmas some how finds a way. Because amidst the endless canned Christmas songs and the awful working hours and the aching feet and legs and the members of the public acting their absolute worse, you do sometimes see the opposite too. You see genuine moments of goodness, of kindness and generosity of all of the things that the storybooks and movies tell you that Christmas should be about. It can be enough to turn a coal-hearted worn-down worker into Scrooge himself once the three spirits have done their magic and made him as happy as an angel and as merry as a schoolboy.
Because as Dickens reminds us ‘there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.’ And somehow laughter and humour find a way of surviving all of this. I have never laughed so hard in all of my life (and perhaps their was a hint of hysteria in it) than when I was in the eye of the storm during a Christmas shift where everything was falling apart. It’s just what happens. Somehow you survive and sometimes just the smallest acts of decency and warmth and charity can keep you buoyed against the storm of chaos all around you.
Unless you’ve seen it yourself you wouldn’t believe the positive mimetic ripple that even a modestly generous tip, or heck, even a few kind words can have in this context. And if there’s a message to this festive ramble it is that. Treat the people who serve you well- waiting staff, barstaff, healthcare workers, cooks. Aside from being the obviously correct thing to do, the difference it can make can be immense. I know from being on both sides of the exchange.
So with that being said I’ll sign off this last essay for this most intense of years with some more words from the great Mr Dickens:
‘God bless us, every one!’
Thanks Tom for the year of great reading you have given me, I've enjoyed all of it. Thanks too for the film recommendations - they've been fantastic. Wishing you a very happy new year.
Interesting.