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To help customers enjoy the festive season and relieve some of their Yuletide frustrations, Tesco has hired the UK’s first ever Christmas Tree Lights Untangler for its Tesco Extra store at Wrexham in North Wales.
Anya Mugridge showed off her untangling prowess during a rigorous interview process, which included untangling three metres of Christmas tree lights in under a minute and half.
The job role was created in response to research commissioned by Tesco, which revealed that untangling Christmas tree lights frustrated 89% of Wrexham residents with half of those surveyed so vexed that they would rather buy a new set of lights altogether to avoid the aggravation. Wrexham topped the poll of UK towns most frustrated with their tangled lights, with Gloucester and Norwich coming in joint second place (59%).
Anya said: “Christmas is my favourite time of the year and at home it’s always me that gets to put up the lights, so I’ve definitely got the right experience for the job! Untangling Christmas tree lights can be frustrating but I find listening to music and having a cuppa gets me into the right frame of mind. I’m really looking forward to helping people with one of the more tricky jobs this Christmas.”
Paul Birkenhead, store manager at Tesco Extra Wrexham, said: “Anya was perfect for the job and truly passionate about Christmas, which is an essential requirement. We’re looking to help our customers enjoy the festivities with a series of little, helpful initiatives and with one in six people spending 30 minutes or more trying to untangle Christmas lights each year, we hope that the new service will help relieve some of those festive frustrations that locals in Wrexham experience.”
Across the UK, our frustrations with tangled Christmas tree lights seem to be getting the better of us as the study revealed a third of Brits (34%) are more likely to admit defeat and throw their tangled lights away and buy a new set instead. Conversely, people in Plymouth and Chelmsford seem to have more Christmas cheer and patience, with half of respondents (50%) making the effort to completely fix and untangle their lights themselves.
Untangling Christmas lights is revealed to be one of the most frustrating jobs for half (50%) of us during the festive season, followed by writing Christmas cards (30%) and doing the washing up (29%) on the big day itself.
Anya will be helping locals in the Wrexham Tesco Extra store until December 20. The service is frees and operates on a first come first serve basis.
For those unable to make it to Tesco Wrexham to see the new Christmas Tree Lights Untangler in action, Tesco has worked with Anya to create a ‘how-to’ video to help provide customers with a fuss free formula to untangle lights themselves.
