All that for a chocolate orange.

You may or may not know of the Chrimbo tradition of buying Terry's Chocolate oranges for everyone and their mothers regardless of whether they died twenty years ago or not.



Fig. 1 - A Terry's Chocolate Orange in it's prime.

It's something we do every year in the UK. I currently have three of these delights in my bedroom.

Today at work we were selling them for 25p as opposed to the usual £3-something and within ten minutes of arriving we noticed something... wrong...

The ticket machine was going apeshit, firing out reservations BY THE HUNDREDS of Terry's Chocolate Oranges.

We eventually realised that the system had cocked up and allowed people to reserve MANY more than we actually had in stock.

This was the beginning of the end...

Today I had my longest shift yet and it was an early morning. Everyone was hungover (or still slightly drunk, bless 'em) and generally dying, myself included.

The day was littered with "My friend phoned and said Argos were selling chocolate oranges?" "I'm sorry but we've sold out." "But I made a reservation!" "I can only apologise, the system allowed more reservations than we had in stock." "I don't believe that for a second! It's your staff! You've taken all the chocolate oranges." "Well you can speak to my manager if you like..." "Well it is VERY suspicious that it only happened in this branch." "Like I say, I can only apologise but we have no more chocolate oranges." "Right. I want a refund." "You haven't bought anything." "I- This is a bloody disgrace." "Sorry."

By the end of the day I was THIS close to snapping at the customers. Why do they have a go at ME?! I didn't even buy any damned chocolate oranges. But it happened anyway. I got yelled at over and over for a solid seven hours throughout the day by different people with a common goal...

It was like the search for the golden ticket or something. People are so greedy.

I was sorta glad to go home. You get a heavy dose of 'people' when you work in retail.

Buuuut, I'm back, front and centre at 12 o'clock tomorrow, and 10 o'clock the next day.

Keep calm and carry on.