Santa was absolutely livid.
One of the sleigh’s runners was causing the whole thing to lean left. Ever-decreasing circles.
Rudolph was on the sauce.
Again!
His nose red for different reasons.
Santa’s To-Do-List was longer than the Naughty List, which in itself was longer than ever...what with everyone having gone a little bad mad this year.
Cupboard stashed booze.
Hate on emails.
Vaccination frustrations.
Loads of Private Search filters.
Social Media accredited degrees.
And that was just the adults.
Santa was behind several on schedules and saw no way of digging himself out of this hole.
Santa had already downsized and digitized. He’d transferred a lot of operations online.
He’d had to given that Next-Day Delivery was a force to be reckoned with.
Sally from Marketing had also had the great idea to run the Portable North Pole App, and this now meant Santa was contractually obliged to message the privileged and the greedy every 15 minutes.
Yes, Santa had funneled some funds through the BVI, through the Caymans and through Luxembourg, so the future’s future was set.
Santa’s sack was nibbled and gnawed by rats who’d been attracted by the festering bins round the back, how was that for a euphemism.
Santa wanted nothing more than to send millions of kids coal and Reindeer droppings.
He would absolutely do it, but for the courts of human rights and litigation.
Image rights and damage control.
In 20 minutes Santa need to meet a family from Strassen, Luxembourg, they’d booked themselves the Ultimate Lapland experience and were no doubt going to what to selfie the shit out of everything.
Santa thought of the millions of mince pies, the gallons of sherry and milk.
The cookies.
The detox. The colonic irrigation.
He thought of working solidly for the next 96 hours and the sheer amount of caffeine he needed to prop him up.
If anyone did happen to see him on his final rounds, they would see a goggle eyed, red face monster. Sweating bloated and exhausted.
Santa surveyed his workshop. Helpers were calling in sick in their dozens.
Interns were useless.
The recruitment firm had sent him a bunch of listless no-hopers and this was an absolute shambles.
The most wonderful time of the year indeed.
