Even at the best of times, bookshops are weird and wonderful places to work in. As one of the few remaining places where you can spend hours without being expected to buy anything, they’re the natural resort of the idle, the elderly, the lonely and the romantic. Our curious position as ersatz community centre means customers feel no qualms asking for help that undermines or has nothing to do with our store – from bespoke internet research services (“Can you see if it’s cheaper on Amazon?”) to free childcare (“Just for five minutes!”).

Come Christmastime, though, things escalate. Wildly.

It’s the time of year when our previously calm if eccentric workplaces transform into hellish battlefields, where last-stand booksellers fire round after round of Moriarty, FitzSimons, Gabaldon and De Botton at the serried ranks besieging the counter. Gift books are blasted into the mob like grapeshot, children stunned with skillfully thrown copies of Grug. Customers come with partial information (“I think there’s a boat in it?”), vague questions (“Mate, what are the women reading at the moment?”) and relentlessly exacting requests (“I read it 25 years ago on a yacht in the Aegean – I need it by tomorrow”) until the shop takes on the character of an arthouse zombie film – like 28 Days Later, but instead of rage everyone is infected with a virulent strain of Jennifer Byrne.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Having borne witness to many a nightmare before Christmas in my years as a bookseller on Sydney’s north shore, I humbly present the following suggestions, accompanied by real-life examples for a better festive bookshop experience this year on both sides of the counter.

1. Know what you’re after

Woman who looks remarkably like a corella: Yehs. I need an Enid Blyton for my grandnephew – he’s got five of them but his grandmother wants him to have more.

Me: Of course! Do you know which five he’s read?

Corella Woman: No. How many of them are there?

Me: Heaps. Shall I show you where they are?

Corella Woman: Yehs. (pauses; thinks) But how will I know which ones he already has?

Me: Could you get in touch with his grandmother?

Corella Woman: No. She won’t know. Do you know?

Me: Do I know which five Enid Blyton your grandnephew’s read?

Corella Woman: Yehs.

Me: No.

Corella Woman: Oh.

2. Don’t leave it all to your partner

As well as the season of giving, Christmas is the season of gendered labour. By which I mean the hard work is foisted off on women. For example:

‘I need an Enid Blyton for my grandnephew – he’s got five of them but his grandmother wants him to have more.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Lady being used by her many children as a kind of cat tree: He said he doesn’t care what kind of book it is, as long as it’s about someone important, like a businessman – but funny.

Me: Does he like Richard Branson?

Lady Cat Tree: No – he thinks he’s too educational.

Or this:

Older woman who obviously loathes her husband steadily, and with good reason: Can I show this book to my husband? He’s just outside – he didn’t want to come in.

Me: (bemused) Why didn’t he want to come in?

Steady Loather: He says it’s too busy.

Me: Are you shopping for a friend?

Steady Loather: (bitterly; keenly; coldly) Oh no – it’s for him. He doesn’t trust me to pick for him, but he won’t come in.

3. Accompany your children

A gaggle of children swarm into the children’s section. Small boy, two or three years old, strains for an animal encyclopedia just out of reach until his sister hands it down to him. He throws it flat on the carpet and begins to jump on it.

Swooping in to rescue the book, I reel back, eyes watering from the ripe, rich aroma wafting from the jumping child.

Me: (to sister) Is this little guy your brother?

Sister: Yes.

Me: (blinking through the stench) I think you better take him to find your parents.

Sister: Why?

Me: I think he’s filled his nappy.

Sister: (sniggers) He’s not wearing a nappy!

Bookshops might seem an endless trove, but our range is finite. Some things don’t exist. And some things shouldn’t

4. Be patient

Each year at quarter to nine in the morning – 15 minutes to open – on Christmas Eve, biggest day of the year, as we frantically prepare the shop, there comes a knock on the door. It is never Santa Claus.

It is always a seething customer twirling his keys and wondering what idiot put a door in the way of his urgent shopping, shouting “what time do you open?” in a way that tells us we already should be.

If you’re standing outside a closed bookshop at 10 to the hour, watching booksellers race back and forth with piles of books like frantic ants, take a moment, take a breath, and use your best judgment. The doors will open, you’ll be served with a smile and Christmas will come. It’ll all be over soon.

5. Be reasonable

Bookshops might seem an endless trove, but our range is finite. Some things don’t exist. And some things shouldn’t.

Woman in pearl earrings and a purple tracksuit: Do you have a children’s picture book about the Holocaust? I’m looking for something inspiring.

Me: … No.

Pearl Tracksuit: Have you heard of anything like that? Could you get one in?

Big, florid, deep-voiced man with his polo shirt tucked into his jeans: (lugubriously) Do you have Mark Latham’s new book?

Me: (delighted) No!

6. Be kind

Finally, be kind to your bookseller this Christmas. Partly because they might do what I did and write a book about you – but mainly because they’ll still give you thoughtful advice on what to get for your father-in-law even after cleaning up the unspeakable thing your toddler left in the children’s section.

Like the blank, panopticon gaze of the Elf on the Shelf, Christmas is inescapable. Let’s join hands across the counter and stare it down together.

• Elias Greig is the author of I Can’t Remember the Title But the Cover is Blue, out now through Allen & Unwin