An All Too Familiar Tune

How Many Times Have Heard This One in Meetings, Eh?

Every single time he says it,
I want to set it to music.
“Left shifting,” the Head of Department says.
But I hear “Left Shifter.”
And, of course, there’s Shirley Bassey in my head.
“Left shifter. He’s the one, the one with the righteous touch.
A pious touch.”
And I’ll sing along in my head for a bit,
Because they’re long meetings,
And he uses so very many words,
When all we want to know is what’s going to happen
With the lecturers off sick,
And the others not replaced,
And Shirley’ll be giving it some,
As the HoD oozes his way around the “Left Shifting”,
And it’s funny with the rhymes,
“The minus touch” pleases me, for example,
Because that’s what this is,
Doing more with less,
Working exactly as many hours,
Among fewer staff.
Passing it on down,
From that sloping desk of his,
To the people who can least complain about taking on extra.
But there comes a point, when he’s said it about fifteen times,
When the “left shifting” thing ceases to be funny,
And Shirley is shaking her head and packing up her mic,
And I’m not running through my mental rhyming dictionary anymore,
Because now I’m onto the synonyms for asshole.

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