With retail spending at Christmas soaring in Australia this year, it's war out there: underground carparks become bloodied battlefields, snaking queues crisscross to form enemy lines, scores of trolleys stream over glossy floors - marching toward victory like tankers - and AWOL shoppers wander through aisles, dazed, confused, aching.

This. Is. Christmas.

As physically painful as shopping centres in December can be - spare a thought for the soldiers on the frontline: retail workers slogging through the holidays and battling customers, carols and queues en masse. It's one of the most arduous, thankless jobs of the season - so how do they do it?

Liquid courage doesn't hurt - or so say a handful of retail workers in Sydney as they pick their poisons.

Wounds tend to heal over post-work beers, says one retail worker, Julia.

"I always make sure I have energy drinks and sugar, and at least one friend [working] the floor," says another retailer, Alex.

"Lots of coffee - coffee helps a lot," shop assistant Lara tells Hack.

But when the caffeine stops flowing? Maddy, who works at a shoe store in the middle of the city, has been in the retail game for ten years. She says there's nothing quite like a breather.

"Just learn to be very patient. Always just have a big smile on your face. And breathe, take a deep breath, go in the back room to have a swear, have a rant.

"But come back out with a smile on your face and pretend like nothing ever happened."

Grin and bear it

Isaac, another retail worker - highly practiced at the art of the fake smile - would agree.

He survives the Christmas rush "With the biggest, fakest, smile I possibly can." And he's a natural at topping it off with a cheery "Hi! How can I help you today!"

"It's really atonal. And you can hear that fakeness amongst it." On the inside, he says, there's "a lot of pain and suffering, really."

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Trading horror stories/literal battle scars

Maddy's seen it all and then some, she tells Hack. But what's been the worst?

"I've had cash registers thrown at me," she says casually.

"A customer wanted to return a top that had been worn, obviously smelling of things...and she threw the cash register at me because she wanted to refund a $7 top."

The register was "very heavy. I had a bruise for two weeks," Maddy explains to Hack.

Julia might not be physically bruised, but she says she's apparently responsible for ruining Christmas - even though there's still over a week till the big day. "I've been told I've ruined someone's Christmas already...because we didn't have a Christmas movie in stock," Julia says.

"It's kind of like the be all and end all to get this one particular item," but "I just complained about it to a few people and then got over it."

Alex says there's always tears on the shop floor at Christmas - and sometimes the best solution is...no solution.

"I had this one customer that went up to me and asked for a pair of shoes. And I didn't have the shoes in her size, so she had a fit and cried in front of me...I was just so awkward, I didn't know what to do. So I kind of just walked off."

Lara's also a fan of the too hard basket. She says she'd palm off customers that prove too much. "I'd probably just pass them off to somebody else, being like - 'oh, can you deal with this person?' I can't deal with people like that."

Isaac says those kinds of people have "the 'Christmas' coming out of them."

Light at the end of the tunnel

Isaac's survival tactic is to count the days. "It ends. That's the best part. It's thirty...thirty-one days."

But Julia says it's longer than that - the special kind of retail hell actually comes after Christmas. "It's usually like one day off, and then you're back on Boxing Day, which is the worst day of the year. People seem to sort of lose their minds a bit."

Maddy admits that lots of sacrifices are made to work in retail at Christmas. "You're not with your family and friends as much. That's something you have to explain," she says, but adds that her colleagues have a prety special bond. "It's like a family away from our own family. It's a very good environment where I am at the moment...we all take care of each other in a way."

Alex describes retail work as a love/hate relationship. But he says that actually helping customers - AKA, doing the job right - can be the most satisfying thing. "It's going to sound cheesy - but just bringing a smile to customers' faces...it's a great feeling, for me."

Isaac wouldn't say the same. From working the retail grind, he says he's learnt something valuable - albeit bitter - about humanity.

"Humans are terrible," he says.