The Idler

Preparing Salads for the Dying

I once spent a particularly memorable week minimum wage-slaving as a kitchen porter in a hospital. Having finished university only a few weeks before, I was in dire need of a cash injection.

Despite having a good degree, the usual consultancies wouldn’t give me a look-in. The firm I eventually went to specialised in outsourcing unemployable ingrates to various factories which, despite the soul-grinding menial labour, were financially quite appealing.

Being the new boy though, I was given the lowest of the low to prove I was reliable - a week in the hospital kitchens. Despite being given instructions on how to operate an industrial potato
pealer (I never even knew such things existed) by a woman called Pauline who looked to me as if she had walked straight off the set of The League Of Gentlemen, I thought I would be able to hack it.

Loading up the behemoth (the dish washer) was consistently
entertaining. The dishes could not go straight in and you had to hose off the encrusted remains with a very powerful hose which at times was quite relaxing.

The highlight had to be Terry though, the resident chief porter.
He and Pauline had an oddly sadistic relationship which reminded me of that Dirk Bogarde film The Night Porter.
Although he seemed quite simple, Terry had a hidden intelligence and when Pauline was out the room he would reveal to me his burning hatred of her.

For her part, Pauline enjoyed regaling me with tales of her ongoing education programme for Terry and how the “poor soul hadn’t a clue.”

I’m sure they are both still there to this day, buttering the bread,
preparing salads for dying people and cleaning the potties of the weak-bladdered.

Aaron Bateman