Rebellion in Santa Claus' Workshop (Christmas Special) - Klaus Fernández

 

REBELLION IN SANTA CLAUS' WORKSHOP

    The elf Fingus was sick to death of Christmas, Santa Claus, Rudolph the reindeer and his damn mother. Every year it was the same. Bursting to work 16 hours in a huge workshop at the North Pole in semi-slavery conditions. The workshop wasn't even called bucolic and beautiful. You've been told it's a magical place where only six or so elves work, singing most of the day, making toys surrounded by exquisite Christmas decorations, handmade Christmas trees, nativity scenes, wreaths, decorated garlands and all the rest of it. Well, no. You don't even know the names of those wonderful elves. The workshop is a huge dark factory with multiple assembly lines where more than two hundred anonymous elves work their backsides off making toys piece by piece. In such miserable conditions that there are many accidents and sick leave, such as lumbagos, trapped hands, falling pallets of stuffed animals on their feet... Production cannot stop. Everyone must be reached. Other, less qualified, elves are busy taking the goods and preparing the orders. They can't even go to the toilet; they are penalised and often urinate in plastic bottles. The delivery can't stop either. Because they don't have any, they don't even have a labour agreement.

    Fingus, our elf, was tired of working his ass off. And yet, this year was not the worst, the year before took the cake. He comes from a proud lineage of elven carpenter craftsmen. His whole family had always been involved in making wooden flutes. Well, nobody asked for wooden flutes in their wish lists anymore. They asked for other kind of flutes. And last year he spent the whole Christmas season in the adult section. Making Satisfayers, latex whistles, rubber dolls, things of that vicious style. How low our proud craftsman had sunk.

    A few years ago, an elf, Betus, with pretensions of grandeur, climbed on some wooden boxes (quite a few boxes, elves are short, they are not tall like in Lord of the Rings, you believe everything, dammit) and began to harangue them to rebel against the system. The machinery of capitalism was greased with the blood of the elves, the scoundrel said.

    The elves, excited by the change of air he promised, voted for him in masse to form the GUEW (General Union of Elf Workers) union. Once elected, the elf Betus was released, i.e., he never went to work, and was seen very animated with a folder going back and forth without doing anything. The conditions of the elves did not change at all. In fact, they got worse. They now had a union, could not complain, and enjoyed a €1 canteen discount.

    Fingus, in an act of rebellion, occasionally slipped notes into some parcels denouncing their miserable conditions. But with little success. A bit of a fuss was made and in China or Taiwan conditions were improved a little, never at the North Pole.

It must have something to do with the fact that they didn't put "Made in North Pole", I think. But this year everything was going to change, this year the fat one was going to find out, the one who had already suffered 3 heart attacks due to being overweight, and the reindeer with cirrhosis.

    He had hatched a whole plan to dynamite everyone's Christmas, together with another elf fed up with living and other things, in the large dining room of the workshop while they ate a kind of pink jelly with sticks of hard candy.

    You may wonder why they didn't just quit their jobs and move on to something else. It's very bad out there. It's very cold outside, as Father Christmas once reminded them. All the elves lived badly outside the Christmas season. Some worked as horse jockeys, others at stag parties disguised as firemen. The dwarves, believing that they were all going to be famous actors like the one in Game of Thrones, had abandoned the hilarious and highly valued night out job handcuffed to a drunkard's wrist, only to come face to face with reality. That film and TV didn't count on them. When they wanted to return, their place was taken by elves at half the price. All that was left for them to do was to go back to the circuses to climb into cannons and be fired into a net to the delight of the spectators. It was also too cold out there for the dwarves.

    But back to our elven conspirators. The other elf, Ludwingus, to top off the bad Christmas cheer, confirmed to Fingus what had already been rumoured for several years. Santa's workshop, along with all its workers, was to be sublet for two weeks, from 25 December to 5 January. Three Arab sheikhs, with outlandish names, were to enter the toy business and extend the offer until Epiphany. As a result, two more weeks sweating blood and working from sunrise to sunset. And the fat red-haired man lying there drinking mulled wine and counting banknotes next to the reindeer with only yellow teeth to be seen. Of course, Betus had been missing for several weeks. His union said he was working for its members, preparing briefs and appeals. Sitting warmly at home.

    As Fingus knocked out another tooth with the damn candy, he explained the plan to an already toothless Ludwingus.

    The conniving elf had sabotaged the entire technology wing of the factory since the start of the Christmas campaign. He had introduced bad programming into the manufacture of microchips and semiconductors. The result was defective goods. And almost all electronic devices had them. So, this year there would be no Smart TV, no smartphones, no PlayStation consoles, no Satisfayer, no cucumbers in vinegar. This year it was time to watch puppets in a wooden box, talk to a boat tied to another one with a string, play with a whistle and satisfy yourself with the cucumber. No, in the end, we would even have to thank him for the sabotage. He was going to get people to go back to the traditional, to the authentic. It was enough of everyone being giddy in front of a screen. They should even put up a statue, an exquisite one of him on wooden boxes. Fingus the magnificent.

Of course, the fat man started to get nervous. All the items were wrong. Nothing was coming out on schedule. He increased the length of the shifts creating more unrest among the elves. He also took away the €1 off the meal voucher, they had to make an example of saving money. The elves were exhausted, fed up with the gills and very angry. Of course, no sign of Betus. Everything was going according to Fingus' plan, his broth of rebellion was ready.

   With four illegal rallies, after the endless shifts, and perched on wooden crates, the fuse was lit. All the elves armed with torches, pitchforks and hoes took over the workshop. The first thing they did was to ransack the coke machine and break a lot of glass. That was in the manual of the first course of Revolution, and everybody knew it, said an elf, a very cocky one, with a crest. He also said about stealing televisions with a balaclava, but they ignored his ass. They were too busy kicking the fat man and the reindeer out of the workshop in the middle of the night. Santa ran away in his pants, they didn't even let him dress, and it was the second time this had happened to him in a short time, and Rudolph, they painted him as a cow, gave him false beards and a Deer Sold to Capital sign.

    -I'm a reindeer, dammit! -Rudolph grumbled, but to no avail.

    To the shouts of Elf Lives Matters! and Long Live the Elves' Workshop! the revolution and the escape of Santa, Rudolph and Betus (yes, yes, that one also ran off with his folder, which was curiously empty except for a Playboy magazine) came to an end. A very serious Fingus, erected leader of the Elf Workshop, proclaimed very proudly:

   -The age of Santa is over; the time of the elf is here! Our workshop will be a beacon in the darkness! We are all equal! Our name will be chanted for millennia as a symbol of sustainability, teamwork and working conditions! We will be eternal!

   A week later, a dreary sign hung half-vanquished on the door of the workshop. It read:
FOR SALE, FOR RENT OR WHATEVER YOU WANT. OFFERS WELCOME.

     Let's be clear, it was normal, and it could be seen coming. Not all of us are good enough to run a business. We think we are put in front of one and we would take it with a cap and a lollipop in our mouth. It's a big mistake. You must have a basic knowledge and a seriousness. The elves had been partying for almost two days, dancing, eating, drinking, smashing things. Typical of an elven celebration. One even came up with the 7 commandments of the Elven Workshop and set about immortalising them on a wall. They were supposed to be basic rules that would govern the future of their recent conquest. The first one read: Any human who wears or looks like Santa is an enemy. And he wrote nothing more legible.

The following 6 commandments were a mass of erasures, misspellings, and attacks on the language, not to mention the usual drawing of a male reproductive apparatus. The damned elf was so uneducated.

    In short, the party was over, and it was time to pay the bills. Fingus at that moment, lying under a table with a good hake, realised that things had to be thought about a little beforehand. That revolutions are good, they give you a real rush and give you points for flirting with the opposite sex (or your own, you must be open-minded), but that's all there is to it. The ship was sinking, and everyone was in their cabins. He went in search of Ludwingus, pushing bottles aside, dodging fellow dancers and jumping over different fires. In Santa's former office he found him. He was trying on his suit, evidently it fit him like a sack, in fact, you couldn't tell whether it was the suit or the sack itself that he had put on. They both looked at each other and did what two adult elves usually do. They grabbed each other's necks, starting to hit each other and blaming each other for everything. For the poor execution of the revolution, for its dire consequences, for the price of petrol and for the failure of their marriages. If one day you want to get your fill of laughter without marrying a dwarf, as the song says, watch the fight between two drunken elves. It'll break you.

    After a few minutes of thrashing about, their eyes already swollen and battered like feel back off a truck, their bravado had worn off. They sadly realised that their rebellion was bullshit. They had no technical or managerial knowledge of a company. They were only good at making wooden whistles and the other at tightening screws. The remaining 198 elves were also no luminaries and were rather skimpy. Anyway, they had got used to working only two months of the year and don't make them work more, they get stressed out. For the rest of the year, they get a small allowance, which, together with what they do in the black, is enough for them to do just enough.

    The old man in red had to be handed back the reins or else things would get even more twisted. Santa wasn't far away, where would he go in his underpants in the cold, with his reindeer. A week later, the elves surrendered the square in a sad ceremony and power was passed back to Santa. He said that he had understood the message and that things would change from now on.

    In truth, everything stayed the same. Santa turned out not to hold grudges, Rudolph neither, nor decided not to fire anyone. The elves had enough to deal with because they were such a pain in the ass. This year, however, the orders went out late and half-finished. Don't let them tell you any strange stories about pandemics, rising container costs, a ship getting stuck in a canal, and so on and so forth. If you don't get things this year, it's because certain elves got their balls swollen and staged an (unsuccessful) rebellion.

    Fingus and Ludwingus are still friends, even if they sometimes grab each other's necks to remember how close - and far from it - they came to success in the...

 REBELLION IN SANTA CLAUS' WORKSHOP.

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