To anyone working a shop job on the busiest day of the year for bargain hunters, we salute you.
Retail sorts the men from the boys and Stephen's Day is the biggest challenge you'll ever face.
Here's how working the day after Christmas will go down.
1. You go to bed with a sense of dread on the 25th.
You've stuffed your face several times over, you've watched
Shrek and the
Mrs Brown's Boys special and now the Glenroe-itis hits. It's basically the worst Sunday night fear you've ever had.
2. You underestimate how bad it'll be.
Surely online shopping means people don't go to the shops anymore. Surely?
3. Your family will be sympathetic - to a point.
Your sibling or other half will give you a lift to work but they'll be smug in the knowledge that they're going home to a day of lying on the couch, eating and sleeping.
4. The customers will be waiting outside the shop in their droves before ye even open.
Walking Dead -style.
5. There'll be a glitch of some kind.
The till will malfunction, your manager will go missing for hours at a time, a woman will fall on a slippery step and threaten to sue you personally.
Just breathe.
6. People will be doing their Christmas shopping for next year.
Sad feckers.
7. Stuff will get broken.
One day of being stuck indoors means people will have an urge to 'accidentally' break hangers, ornaments and anything else in their path and then kick it under a table and stroll off.
8. There will inexplicably be loads of children about.
Like, what kind of mad person brings their brood of seven kids to the sales?
9. People will be hounding you with returns.
And you'll eyeball them and judge them for being ungrateful as you scan their ugly scarf back in.
10. You'll have a cry.
And possibly take up smoking.
11. You'll vow that it's your last year working in a shop.
Nothing to put some fire under your arse to get a new job like the chaos that is the Stephen's Day sales.
