Every year, hearing the first jingle of Christmas music played over a shop tannoy triggers an electric jolt in me. While my years of working in retail over the festive season are now behind me, once the tinsel starts to go up and Oxford Street begins to throng, I find myself taken straight back to the misery of rude customers, forced festivities, and one particularly tragic pair of mandatory elf ears.

This year’s festive spending is expected to set a post-Covid record. Behind the predicted £22.7 billion of sales is a low-paid workforce, set to face queues out the door, crammed schedules, extended opening hours, and heaps of stock to shift. But, apart from a brief window of nominal acknowledgment during Covid, the punishing conditions of Britain’s 2.7 million retail workers during the holiday rush all too often gets forgotten.

For Hassan, aged 23, who works at a discount retail store, “Christmas makes us feel shit because we’re expected to do a mountain of work that we just can’t finish. They expect us to work at this ridiculous beat. We all know that we’re not being paid the best and we’re not being treated the best.”

While other retail workers end the year with Mariah Carey-ear worms, spare a thought for Hassan and his colleagues. “They’re too cheap to pay for actual Christmas music,” said Hassan. “So we just get these weird cover versions of Christmas songs. There’s a lot of instrumentals.”

Whether soundtracked by piano renditions of Wham or not, workers are expected to perform an ever-spiralling number of tasks while constantly demonstrating the spirit of festive goodwill. “You have to be extra cheery and nice over Christmas,” said Ida Février, aged 25. “But having to switch on and off emotionally takes a huge toll, which customers never really consider,” she said.

Now working as a waitress, Février has spent previous holiday stints selling everything from clothes to shoes. Add the emotional demands to the bright lights, glittery decorations, and loud music, and you’re left with “an environment that’s trying to persuade you to be happy and joyful at the exact moment it’s the worst to work in the industry,” she said. “You can’t do a bougie Christmas window then pay your staff minimum wage.”

The expectation to be merry starts well before Christmas. In November, Tesco sent out a survey asking customers “how much festive spirit did you find staff had in the store?” Presumably workers who displayed between “no” and “not much” festive spirit find themselves on the naughty list.

Alice Howick, 25, has worked at the iconic department store Harrods for three years. “It’s meant to be a magical period,” she said. “You get a lot of people who have travelled especially to come to the store, so there is an expectation on us to provide a once in a lifetime experience for them, all whilst we’re being worked like donkeys.”

“As the store will make more money in this period than it will in any other,” managers feel able to squeeze more and more from workers, usually for no extra pay, said Howick. Currently, some workers are gifted a £50 voucher that they can spend in the store. “There’s not very much you can get for £50 in Harrods,” she said.

Fed up, workers at the luxury store organised by the United Voices of the World (UVW) trade union have voted to strike over Christmas, including on the Boxing Day sales, demanding that they’re given an above-inflation pay rise and an annual Christmas bonus, starting this year at £500.

“You get so used to being fed scraps by a management who expects us to think that it’s a benefit, when in reality, it’s just the bare minimum. Now, we have the courage to ask for more than that,” said Howick.

With brick-and-mortar retail stores anxious about competing with the shift to impersonal online orders, workers are under greater pressure than ever to provide a unique in-person experience, ready at a moment’s notice to give a gift recommendation or scour the shopfloor for an obscure item.

When I worked in retail, I was amazed at how readily and frequently customers would threaten to “order it from Amazon” if I couldn’t conjure up the exact item they wanted on the spot. The intended effect of the comment, which I can only assume was to make me spend my unpaid lunch break crying into my marmite sandwich, failed. However, it was a clarifying lesson in how the working conditions Amazon fights tooth and nail to normalise make work worse for those far beyond its warehouse walls.

Retailers dream of reproducing Amazon’s phenomenal success, and are more than willing to import the labour practices that have enabled the corporate giant to make such vast profits, resulting in so-called “Amazonification” of retail work.

One departure from traditional retail has been the move to stores increasingly operating like mini warehouses. A 2023 report found that almost 40% of stores are facing pressure to fulfill online orders alongside in-store sales, with staff expected to juggle the work of selling and shelf stocking with the picking and packing of online orders.

When I worked at a branch of Waterstones, much of my time was spent walking around the shop finding books to fulfil orders. When this meant I did not have time to track down a copy of Great Expectations for a customer who had turned up to shop in person, they would often be indignant.

It’s not only shop workers caught up in the festive frenzy. At Amazon’s “fulfilment centres”, the stress begins with Black Friday and continues through till late December. Garfield Hylton, an Amazon worker at Coventry’s BHX4, said: “Working in this busy time means that we have a constant stream of boxes throughout the shift period of day and night,” with some staff taking on 20 hours a week in overtime.

The problem goes beyond the volume of orders. At this time of year, customers are more likely to purchase bigger appliances, like electrical items, which makes the job of shifting the endless boxes more strenuous and physically exhausting.

“On the lower side, boxes can weigh 15 kilos,” said Hylton. “But they can also be 20 or 25 kilos. And there are literally hundreds of boxes on the lie. You take one box, they keep coming, you take another box, they keep coming. Eventually you just become tired of the constant flow and the pace of the boxes.”

Amazon workers told Novara Media they have to use their holiday allowance to book off time just to recover from the job, or even to attend hospital appointments. But as peak season gets underway, workers report being prevented from taking leave.

Workers say they are told by management to use holiday allowance to attend medical appointments. They said there is no guarantee that requests for holiday will be accepted, with the decision depending on the discretion of managers. “When they book their holiday for their hospital appointments, they tend to find that it’s been denied or blocked,” said Hylton.

Another worker, who chose to remain anonymous said: “They tell you to use holiday hours but with no guarantee it will be accepted, unless you have a rarely nice manager who will raise a ticket for you.”

Amazon denies that this is the case, telling Novara Media that if an employee at an Amazon site required time for a medical appointment, it would be provided.

At Harrods, employees report not being able to take holiday in December, to ensure the store is fully staffed over the Christmas period.

“That’s incredibly difficult for people who want to go back to their families for Christmas,” said Howick. For many it means that you’re working across the Christmas period, then you go home and feel completely exhausted, but your family isn’t there.”

Harrods did not respond to Novara Media’s request for comment but told other media: “At Harrods we recognise the enormous contribution of our colleagues, particularly at busy trading periods such as Christmas … We are committed to working with our colleagues directly to address concerns, as we have been to date, and continue our constructive relationship with our recognised unions on pay and benefits.”

The rise of next-day and even same-day delivery has drastically distorted customers’ expectations of availability and timeframes, putting them grossly out of step with the actual power shop workers have over what is or isn’t in stock and making them less tolerant of inconveniences. “One year, a woman came in wanting a jumper for her daughter the week before Christmas,” said Février. “When I told her we didn’t have it in the right colour, she said ‘You’re incapable. What are you even doing here?’”

“People don’t realise the amount of work that we have to do,” said Hassan. “Or the fact that we aren’t miracle workers.” With a few days scheduled off over Christmas for respite, he’ll be back at work for the post-holiday sales. “We’ve already started getting deliveries of stock for Easter.”

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