- Title
- The Interim Santa
- Genre
- Comedy
- Premise
- A man hired as an emergency Father Christmas at a garden centre is mistaken for the regional manager during a staff inspection.
- Specific job/task
- He must tour the seasonal display, comment on stock rotation and approve a revised grotto-flow plan without revealing he was booked for two hours in costume.
- Precise setting detail
- The inspection moves through an overheated grotto beside artificial snow, plastic fir trees and a reindeer figure called Clive.
- Mundane system complication
- Nobody wants to challenge him because the beard, clipboard and red coat make him look oddly senior.
- Decision that turns the story
- He decides to keep nodding and gives one firm instruction about moving the chocolate coins away from the exit, which everyone treats as strategic brilliance.