Two tales of a very Woolies Christmas

If you work at Woolies, Christmas is not the cheeriest time of the year.

1. Repeat the sounding joy

Christmas is a time of joy and a time of giving, they say. It’s one of the best times of the year. Unless you work in retail. If you work on the checkout at Woolworths, then Christmas time is the worst.

At the quietest of times, our store is understaffed. When Christmas comes around, management simply squeeze existing staff rather than rostering more on.

We shorten or skip breaks because there’s no one to replace us. There’s no time to let it get you down though. We’re expected to smile and be cheerful to every one of the ten people waiting to be served at any given second.

At least you get Christmas Day off, you might say. Well, we do, sort of. Last year management started making us use our annual leave for Christmas day.

It’s not all gloomy though. There are perks. The humiliating Santa hats, the Christmas themed T-shirts. The Christmas party, or “lunch get-together”, scheduled in the tearoom when most of us are working. But hey, if you’re lucky enough to be on break, you might score yourself a free Woolworths Select mince pie.

And, of course, there are the carols. The shrill and constant soundtrack of Christmas music that envelops the store. The songs start early in November and don’t stop until that first Easter bunny appears on the shelves sometime in the middle of January.

2. Silent night(fill)

Night fill at a supermarket is a thankless task at the best of times. Backbreaking, monotonous labour with overbearing managers telling you to speed up is standard. As Christmas approaches it only gets worse.

Usually we are short staffed because store managers want to cut costs. We are told that management’s calculations show that it is possible to unload goods from the truck and get them onto the shelves in time for store opening. These calculations always assume that we work twice as fast as usual.

Health and safety goes out the window. Spills are left on the floor because there is never enough time to mop. We have to work around broken bottles while packing the shelves as fast as possible in a neat and tidy manner.

The repetitive labour is from November onwards accompanied by the soul crushing drone of Christmas songs. To cut costs, lights are dimmed and the air conditioning is turned off; we work in the stuffy aisles in virtual darkness while the jingles repeat endlessly.

During the day, the managers put on a Christmas Eve spread in the tea room to congratulate themselves for a year well done. Our thanks is to munch on the leftovers, which have been sitting for ten hours with flies buzzing all around – even they get a feed before us.

We walk out of the store Christmas morning tired and exhausted with only sleep on our minds. All we have to look forward to is doing it again the next night in preparation for Boxing Day.

Merry Christmas for supermarket workers? Hardly.