THESE last few days before Christmas are famously stressful (unless you are one of those sickening people who has finished their shopping by October, planned their food by November and spends December perfecting the decorations, in which case: bah humbug to you!).

Thanks to Christmas Day falling on a Sunday this year, this week is not so much a wind down as a wind up. Many people will work until Friday and then try to get their last bits organised on Saturday, which is going to mean the shops are rammed with people frantic to get everything on their list.

On top of that, the rail strikes last weekend meant that many people put off socialising with friends and colleagues, so lots of those will be piling out together this Friday night before the strike action begins again on Christmas Eve. That potentially means a busy night for pubs and clubs, especially in Scotland’s towns and cities.

And when we are all short of time, short of cash and short of options, it’s all too easy to be short of patience. When things go wrong because it’s busy and crowded, it’s tempting to take it out on the member of staff in front of us. But it’s not their fault that the employer hasn’t been able to recruit enough workers to make this season slightly easier on the last-minute shoppers and merrymakers.

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In fact, it may not even be their employer’s fault. It is very hard to find staff at the moment and hospitality is especially struggling with that. The latest Business Confidence Survey from CGA by NielsenIQ shows that one in nine hospitality jobs were vacant in October and there are few signs that will have improved heading into Christmas. That means pressure on the existing staff as they try to deal with the seasonal surge in business when there are not enough of them to cope.

Then, more staff are leaving jobs in hospitality just now than at any time since the start of the pandemic. The latest data from Fourth, a workforce management solutions provider, shows that 8.3% of the workforce left between August and September, the highest rate since March 2020.

That puts a constant pressure on staffing but also on customer service: a new, inexperienced bar worker is not going to know as much about the variety of ales or whiskies behind the bar as someone who has been there for years. That can mean complaints, which may stop that new employee from having time to learn their Dalwhinnie from their Lagavulin.

Another horror show for hospitality is the vindictive review. If you have had a bad experience in a pub or a restaurant then of course you are free to post a review online, to warn others. However, if your bad experience is clearly because the venue has had to recruit a bunch of inexperienced workers just to cope, or because it is absolutely rammed and doesn’t have enough staff then maybe think twice before posting.

January and February are always quiet months for hospitality and in the current economic climate there is real fear that those quiet months could sink a lot of businesses. When customers are deciding where to spend their limited money, those reviews can have a real impact on their choices, so unjustified or unfair negative feedback could have a devastating impact.

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Of course, the pressure facing hospitality, transport and retail are only what call centre staff have been experiencing for months now. There seems to be a perpetual shortage of call centre workers, meaning that a simple interaction with your bank or energy provider or mortgage company can take several hours of stomach-ulcer inducing hold music, broken only by a pre-recorded message that states: “We’re currently experiencing higher call volumes than normal.”

We all know that there’s never a time when they are NOT experiencing higher call volumes than normal. Memo to those companies: if the high call volumes are happening every day then they are normal.

However, none of those frustrations are the fault of the poor man or woman on the end of the phone when you eventually get through. In fact, their situation is even worse. You have had a couple of hours of terrible music but they have had up to eight hours of furious customers yelling at them. And they have to stay professional in the face of all that, or risk losing their job just before Christmas.

Of course, it’s not just bar staff and call centre workers. It’s anyone who is the public face of a service under strain just now. The text message I received from my GP telling me there were no routine appointments available until January 9th was followed a little while later by a text warning that there was no excuse for verbal abuse of their staff. Clearly, it’s a very uncomfortable time to be a GP receptionist, even if the callers know in their hearts that it’s not the fault of the individual receptionist that the NHS is stretched and resources are so limited.

As the Christmas Day gets closer, there’s also far more pressure on postal workers, delivery drivers and online retailers to get people’s presents to them in time, putting them at risk of abuse from stressed shoppers. Then, after dealing with all that customer abuse, those workers also have to deal with their own Christmas pressures as well!

So this Christmas, this season of goodwill, let’s remember that we are almost all experiencing the same daily frustrations. We are all under the pressure of the season, combined with the shortage of workers to answer our calls or staff our bars; the delays and disruption that are inevitably caused by strike action; and the general financial pressures of the cost of living crisis.

The most important thing we can do for each other this Christmas – and next year – is to be kind.