Local Barman Will Miss The Covid-19 Unemployment Payment Wage Rise

DUSTING off his old black shirt, black trousers combo, local barman Jason Ryan reminisced about his last 6 months of living the high life, lounging around all day enjoying his work free day, secretly wishing for yet another lockdown to Christmas, 2021.

“Back to this old shite again,” Ryan grumbled, his sphincter spasming from the thoughts of having to work shite hours for shite money in a job that has now become even shitter with the introduction of compulsory facemasks, visors and general customer chaos.

“Great, just 30 hours this week at a tenner an hour,” the 32-year-old checked his roster, rolling his eyes at a split shift on Saturday and Sunday next, his varicose veins already pulsing in his calves, “I can’t wait to see all the old regulars again… oh, no wait, most of them are probably either dead now or too scared to come out near the place – this should be a barrel of fucking laughs”.

Used to the covid-19 pay rise of 350 per week for the past 25 weeks, Ryan welcomed the news the payment was recently cut, making it just about even now with his current weekly wage, not making him feel all that bad.

“Bus, lunch, few pints after work; I’m only working to be able to go to work at this stage,” he added, contemplating slipping on a wet floor or something, anything to get him out of working in Ireland’s new bastard normal, “I can’t wait for customers to not be able to understand me, forcing me to pull down my mask at every order, cleaning everyone’s mess up again and hearing my favourite phrase ‘when yer ready, pal’ again. Hopefully I’ll catch the fucking thing and we have to close”.

Desperate for an out, Ryan applied online for a local meat factory job processing meat.

“It can’t be much worse than this, at least the gardaí won’t be in every two seconds checking if we’re doing our job right,” he concluded, before sending his CV.