Santa's Little Helper
© 2016 Bad Hobbit
Author's Note: I wrote this back in 2016, when I'd been working with some Social Care professionals. It dates back to a time before everything was outsourced to for-profit companies, and when there were department stores that had "Santa's Grottos" every Christmas. I've just revisited it and found it was more complete than I'd remembered. Here are a few chapters; more to come if it's popular.
In the Grotto
"Have you ever been Santa before?" An unusual question, but not unexpected under the circumstances.
"Yes - every year," I replied.
"So do you have a place in Lapland where you keep your flying reindeer?" she asked.
I smiled. "I managed children's homes for most of the past 20 years. I was often the only male member of staff, so someone had to do it."
"Why did you leave?" Yes, always the same question. I suppose it's natural if they're offering a job where you'll be around kids. The implication is always 'Were you sacked for doing something you shouldn't?' I sighed.
"My wife died. It hit me hard, and I couldn't concentrate on the job as much as it needed. I loved the kids but they weren't getting my best and I knew it. When a chance of redundancy came up, I took it."
"I see. So why do you want this job?"
"The redundancy money doesn't last forever, and I miss being around kids. And anyway," I said, trying to lighten the mood, "I've got the voice for it." I was proud of my bass-baritone.
"But not exactly the figure," she replied. That was true. The word most often applied to my body shape was 'wiry'. I was quite fit, and I certainly didn't have the belly required for the role.
"I use a lot of padding. And I have my own suit," I added, trying to be helpful. I could see she wasn't that impressed.
"Look," I continued, "I've had 20 years of working with kids of all ages, and I understand them very well. A lot of them will come into your grotto either nervous, overexcited, or downright bloody belligerent and demanding all sorts of stuff. I can deal with all of those. I've also been a financial manager and a bit of a salesman, so I understand how to maximise value out of each contact with your customers - if you can call five-year-olds 'customers'. Oh, and I'm CRB checked, which will save you the cost and the time."
To be honest, I think that the last point carried more weight than the rest. Anyway, long story short, I got the job, which was good because I needed it. The money wasn't great - four weeks' work at not a lot more than the minimum wage, plus a bit of commission from what the kids' parents subsequently bought - but it would help refill the coffers. But as I said, my redundancy money was getting eroded and Job Seekers' Allowance didn't do much to help.
But most importantly, I needed the job psychologically. I'd had six months of sitting on my arse at home, completing job applications that were unsuccessful and often seemed to be for jobs that didn't exist. The fortnightly trip to the Job Centre to stand in line with the Special Brew mob, who'd never held down a job in their lives are were unlikely to start now, was deeply depressing. What I needed was something to give me a sense of self-worth again - and to be with kids.
See, what really floats my boat is seeing a kid happy and excited. Often, when they came to me, they were damaged by neglect or abuse. Sometimes they wanted to just lash out to pass on some of the punishment they'd received. More frequently, they just shrank into themselves and trusted nobody. Getting an excited smile out of a child was probably the main source of satisfaction in what wasn't exactly the best-paid job in the world.
Some people seem to think that if you're male and you like kids, you must be a paedophile. I just love seeing that look of excitement on the face of a child who feels safe and loved, possibly for the first time in their short lives. I remember one little girl; her parents were druggies. Her mum's boyfriend burned the child with cigarettes, and the mum was too stoned most of the time to stop him. When the kid came to me, she was terrified. I made a point of sitting with her for ten or fifteen minutes each day, talking to her, trying to get her to talk back. Gradually a bond built between us and she began to open up. Then one day, she ran into my office, crying. She climbed onto my lap and snuggled up against me. Ten minutes later, when the care assistant who'd been looking for her came in, the kid was asleep in my arms, sucking her thumb. It's moments like that when you feel your career has been worthwhile.
So I started at the end of November in this big toy department in a very large store in London. I had a small band of 'elves' to help me, mostly kids just out of sixth form or college unable to find a proper job. They were alright, I suppose, but one or two of them were cocky little sods who were either too full of themselves because mummy and daddy had treated them like demigods, or because they felt abused by a system that denied them meaningful employment after getting the qualifications they'd been told were so important. Most of them worked part-time, some because they were finishing their A-levels, some because they had 'internships' on rubbish money that promised them a chance of a job at the end.
Of all of them, I took to Nina in particular. She was the one who most fitted the bill of an 'elf'. She was quite petite - not much above five foot - though she carried a bit more puppy-fat than some of her fellow 'elves'; not that she was fat as such, just a little bit more rounded that the usual teenage stick insect. She had a cute, pixie face, which looked much nicer once the boss had got her to remove the eyebrow piercing and nose stud. Her hair was an untidy, lank black with green highlights - seemingly the standard uniform for a Goth - which she tucked inside her elf cap so as not to scare the kids. I was surprised that the manager was enlightened enough to give her the job. Perhaps he saw in her the qualities I'd identified; she was kind, sweet-natured - despite the spiky appearance - and was great with the kids.
As soon as I'd met Nina, I recognised her as being like many of the kids I'd seen in the homes. She didn't seem neglected or abused, but she found it hard to fit in and form friendships with her peers, and her Goth look was part of her personal rebellion. She had three younger siblings, two of them much younger, part of a second family after her mum remarried. Inevitably, she became her mum's helper and almost a surrogate mum in her own right. She understood how to manage small kids, to deal with their tantrums but also to get them excited about Christmas and the chance to meet Santa in the flesh.
Our job was to sell toys. Not directly, you understand, but by helping feed the child's avarice and capture what it was that they most wanted from Santa. An 'elf' would show a child into the grotto, and I'd find out what it was they were hoping for this Christmas. Sometimes I'd have to plant a few ideas if the kiddy's wishes were modest. Another elf would note down the toys that the child had requested on a special voucher that gave the parent 10% off the items listed and 5% off anything else. It was a neat idea. Mummy or daddy would be encouraged to give the voucher to an assistant, who would send someone off to collect and package the goods while the parent was presented with a bill and a wireless card machine. Some of the other elves ran a little train ride and a ball-pond to keep the kids occupied while mummy or daddy completed the transaction.
Nina and I worked very well as a double act. Whether the child was nervous, screaming, throwing a tantrum or bouncing off the walls with excitement, she'd get them into the right mood to sit on Santa's knee. I'd get them into an acquisitive frame of mind, and Nina would capture the child's aspirations in lovely clear handwriting. She also had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the current toy fads and seemed to be able to interpret exactly what the kid wanted and specify it with precision. We were a good team, and the resulting commission was higher than we'd expected.
Perhaps the other elves resented the fact that I always asked for Nina to help me in the grotto. They seemed to have very little empathy with the kids and were slapdash at best in the all-important filling out of the vouchers. On one of Nina's days off, I had to work with Craig, a lanky blond who obviously thought a lot of himself. I had to keep repeating the names of the toys so that he could scribble them down - something I never had to do with Nina - and I was so disgusted with his inability even to spell the names of the toys sufficiently well for the sales assistants to recognise, that I demanded he never get 'grotto duty' again. He clearly resented the loss of commission - Santa and his 'little helper' often got three times the commission of the 'background elves' helping with crowd control outside. However, I pointed out to him and the departmental manager that on a day with Nina we sold over twice the volume of toys than we did with him, so my decision was final.
From then onwards, Craig seemed to go out of his way to be unpleasant, not just to me but also to Nina, as if it was her fault he was a useless fuckwit. Increasingly he tried to get the other 'elves' on his side, so most days Nina and I spent lunch and coffee breaks together. We talked about our families, about our aspirations for the future and so on. One evening, when I was scanning the job adverts online, I saw that the Council were advertising for full-time care assistants at a home where I used to work. I printed the advert and took it in to give to Nina.
"Nina, you said you were hoping to go into social care. This position is on the bottom rung, but there's a lot of training included, the money's better than you're getting here and it plays right to your strengths."
"Oh Frank, that's very kind of you, but I've got no experience. Who would hire me?"
"Well, if I were the manager, I would like a shot. You have all the right skills and attitudes with kids - you're great with them, a natural. If you like, I'll help you put a CV together to highlight the relevant work you've done, and I'll also write you a reference you can attach to your application. What do you say?"
That evening, we went to the local pub, found a quiet corner and I got my laptop out. We composed a CV and a letter of application - frankly, Nina had all the right skills but hadn't a clue of how to sell them. I created her an account on the jobs portal, and we posted it, together with a reference I wrote, based on our work together. She insisted on buying me a beer to say thanks. And as we headed for home, she kissed me - on the cheek - which was very nice.
I hadn't been kissed in a long time. Since Celia, my wife, died three years earlier, I'd been a mess. My daughter Jo helped a lot, but she and her husband Eamon lived in Dublin and had a little girl of their own, Alice, who'd just started school. Though they came to see me as often as they could, it wasn't as often as I would have liked.
Celia's death, from cancer, had torn me apart. I knew I was underperforming in my job, and my employers gave me a lot of leeway as I'd always been good until Celia's illness. But after two years of moping and failing to live up to what the job required, it was inevitable that, when they had to merge my care home with another, the position that had to go was mine.
"Take a few months off. Get yourself back on track, Frank," Dave, my boss, said to me after the redundancy meeting. "When there's a new position we'll let you know, and if you feel ready to come back, then we can take it from there."
That was easier said than done. Fortunately, I avoided the obvious traps of alcohol and anti-depressants, but I found that the main thing I missed was the kids. They can be selfish little shits a lot of the time, but other times they can light up your day with a smile or a few words. But for a long time, nothing was happening.
I was pleased when Nina came into work a few days later and gave me a big hug and a kiss. "I've got an interview!" she squealed. "Thank you, Frank. Thank you so much!" She kissed me again - this time on the mouth. Almost immediately we were both too embarrassed to say anything else, so we got on with work.
That evening, Barry, an ex-colleague from Social Services, called me at home. "Hi, Frank. I saw your reference for this kid called Nina. It glows in the dark. I'm on the interview panel. You know I trust your opinion, but is she really that good?"
