From the trenches of the Somme to the wharves of union battles, contempt for “pricks with bird-shit on their shoulders” was the family heirloom—officers and bosses alike, wasting days or getting men killed. The narrator grows up believing this distrust is normal, a personality forged at the kitchen war table.
Decades later, daylight-saving night shift: clocks jump forward, he heads home at honest knock-off time. The supervisor—another set of epaulettes—blocks him, points to the lying wall clock, threatens docked pay. The confrontation isn’t about minutes; it’s the grandfather’s trench and father’s wharf reborn under fluorescents. Hostility wasn’t chosen—it was inherited, burned in long before the words were spoken. Some lessons don’t need daylight to stick.