Civil Servant - Richard Dawson

Open your eyes, time to wake up

Shit, shower, brush your teeth, drain your cup

Wolf down a bowl of Ready-Brek

Fasten a tie around your neck

All over the city we arise, arise

For a job we despise, despise, despise

I don’t want to go into work this morning

I don’t think I can deal with the wrath of the general public

And I don’t have the heart to explain to another poor soul

Why it is their Disability Living Allowance will be stopping shortly

Busfulls of meat slumped in our seats

Staring at phone screens and our own feet

Shuffling off at the business park

Let’s linger awhile in the smoking bubble

From every direction we arrive, arrive

With a swipe of the fob, the fob, the fob, the fob

I don’t want to go back to that seething viper’s nest

I can’t listen anymore to the bleating of the terminally depressed

Or the stream of opinions from the creep in the office next to mine

I dream of bashing his skull into a brainy pulp with a Sellotape dispenser

In the staff room, lost in a daze

Shovelling crisps into my face

After an unspeakably awful

Call with a grieving mother

In Wetherspoons on the fruit-machines

Sinking my umpteenth Peroni

Cackling like a hyena

At the nasty jokes of my colleagues

None of whom I can stand

In my bed, I can hear the strangled voices

Of all the people I’ve failed, I’ve failed, I’ve failed

I don’t want to go into work this morning

I just want to lie here and play the new Call of Duty

I finally gathered the courage to ring in sick

I’m not coming into work today

I’m really ill

Not coming into work today

Or for that matter any other day

I’m sick to my soul

I refuse to do this dirty work anymore

I refuse, refuse, refuse, refuse

Refuse, refuse, refuse