New Years Day Madness

The Nightmare just doesn’t end.

After being assured News Years Day off two weeks ago by not one, but both of my managers I was gearing up for a nights celebration to welcome in the new decade. There was going to be wild abandonment, copious drinking and failed attempts to pick up strange women in bars.

However, the day before New Years Eve I was informed that because of staff shortages, caused by the company’s steadfast refusal to put anyone else on the pay roll, I’d actually have to work a 9 hour shift from 10am till 7pm on New Years Day.
After spending two days bitterly pissed off I decided to not let this interrupt my nights festivities and proceeded to do all the things I had lined up for myself and just deal with the aftereffects the next day. I abandoned with wildness, drank copiously and chatted to this girl who seemed interested for a while but texted me a happy new year from 40 miles away in another man’s bed. All was going to plan. I went to bed at around 5am, knowing I had to be up in about 4 hours to work but figured it was New Years Day and so no one would come in to get coffee. It would be nice and quiet.

It’s amazing that even though practically every other shop and store in town was shut people still flooded in, gawping at empty store windows, pressing on the doors lightly, unable to understand why it wouldn’t open or why the bright lights on the inside weren’t switched on. This mass closure confused them. They got irritated. They became angry. Then they came to bother me.

Now it’s important to remember that people who go to town on New Years Day and the people that are so stupid they’re not actually capable of completing the act of sleeping. They are so brain dead that sleeping is even too challenging for them. On the one day of the year when it’s perfectly acceptable to spend all day under the covers without fear of reprimand, they fuck it all up and resort to basic primitive instincts: buy coffee, complain loudly and pick flint from their belly buttons. Hundreds of them. We were busier on New Years Day than the build up to Christmas. It was disgusting.

There were two significant things happening in our store on 1/1/10. Firstly the VAT charges had gone up. Most of our items had risen by 5p. This not so complex economical situation perplexed many. The regulars, old biddies with their change of coppers all stacked in neat, precise little piles, politely waiting for their coffee were suddenly flabbergasted by the fact that it wasn’t the correct amount. Explaining the VAT change was like explaining family values to Joseph Fritzl. They just stood there, dumbfounded, unable to comprehend this simple fact. I may as well have been talking French while juggling starfish and wearing ladies underwear and a snorkel. They didn’t have a clue.

The second significant thing to change today was the fact that we closed early. Instead of 7.30pm we shut at 6pm. Many couldn’t understand this. “What? But I was going to come here and do some work on my laptop tonight! What am I going to do now?” One man protested. Shit, you could be using your laptop to surf the internet for a Thai Bride to smuggle heroin into Felixstowe for all I care, but you’re not doing it in here tonight. Go home, put the kettle on and do it there you braindead cretin. Another man even challenged us, saying a sign outside said we were open to 7.30 so therefore we were legally obliged to open for that long. Unfortunately he cranial abilities couldn’t compute the sign directly under the Regular Opening Hours sign which listed the Christmas Opening Hours sign. <

These poor omens on the first day of this new decade suggest that the next ten years will be no more progressive or uplifting than the last. It’ll still be inhabited by noisy assholes that would rather spend a day in a congested coffee shop, surrounded by other morons, all unable to understand things like Vat Charges, Christmas Opening Times or the concept of sleep. Bastards.