THE NIGHT SHIFT
H. W. Bryce
(from, probably, the sixties. As a young man, I worked the lobster shift, that shift between the day shift and the night shift. Later, as an adult, I worked the night shift on the Globe and Mail editorial department.)
This is an accurate rendition of the original.
THE NIGHT SHIFT
How well we know the penalties of the night shift,
We’ve paid the highest price!
How well we know, our time with friends is rife,
And good times are like a vice.
– – –
We prepare for work while our friends prepare for fun,
We pull on the overalls as they dance off to greet the sun;
We turn the wheels of industry and they the wheels of dice,
We keep things a-going and condition for them nice;
We’re told that we on night shift do surely pay a price.
We’re told of all we missed last night, the what and who and where—
But never get to do the things for which they’d wished us there.
– – –
Ah, but our friends do rub it in about our short, short shift,* ‘o’ is shrift
Our hours they call grotesque.
How well we know the price of night shift—
We missed last night’s burlesque.
– – –
But never mind nightsiders, the laugh is ours, I say,
For who on day shift gets to stay so late in bed next day?
! ! !
*In the original, shift was typed as shrift
NOTE: I started off in high school at the Meadow Lake Progress.
I took to the Linotype like I had been born to it. No lessons, just
Sit down and type. I didn’t even know how to use a typewriter,
But this strangely different keyboard fit me like a glove. I was very
Happy at this job.
I made a good living for years operating Linotype through the province of
Saskatchewan. I even paid my way through the final years to my degree
– in Ontario – by operating the Linotype.
