Showing posts with label retail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label retail. Show all posts

The Dinner Ladies in the Chronic Canteen

"The dinner ladies in the chronic canteen
serve up portions; big, small and green.
They dole out rations of little yellow pills
and smartie-count to pay the bills"

Privy to knowledge that would make others squirm
We know how to be patient and when to be firm.
We sweat in the Summer and freeze in the Winter
but here is darkly comic. It's Irvine Welsh, not Pinter.
Our own peculiarities seem normal by comparison
to our regulars who haunt the place with dead eyes and abandonment.
Our unbecoming uniforms are shabby at their best
(and as there's nothing nice to say, I won't describe the rest).

"The dinner ladies in the chronic canteen
serve up portions; big, small and green.
They dole out rations of little yellow pills
and smartie-count to pay the bills".

For each and every script we cross, the most we can is done.
And amidst abuse, disease and death, that "thank you" is hard won.
We work to bones day in, day out and wake at four in the morning
from drug addled dreams from incidental exposure and professional doubts a-gnawing.
We face each day with optimism and a damn-strong caffiene crutch
to kick those clouding dreams away and whimsy into touch.
When an error costs a life we can't afford to drift along.
This is an "elementary service job"?
You couldn't be more wrong.

"The dinner ladies in the chronic canteen
serve up portions; big, small and green.
They dole out rations of little yellow pills
and smartie-count to pay the bills".