A deadly regime

Things are going from bad to worse in the staff canteen. Monday, the place was deathly quiet. This may be due to the increase in alleged or suspected cases of pig flu that currently prevail or it might simply be that word has spread concerning the quality of the food which has sunk to an all time low. Being Monday, brown soup was on offer; a non-starter that I couldn't face and thus made the mistake of opting for the inedible escalope of swine with raw potatoes and a sauce. The person in front of me asked what sort of sauce it was. Came the answer, 'white sauce'. I kid you not. Things looked more promising on Tuesday: horsasoupa soup. I'd never heard of horsasoupa soup and had no idea what colour it might be but I liked the way the words tripped of the tongue. It's Greek apparently. However, when the lid was removed from the tureen and the contents revealed I back-tracked hastily....no way was that going to trip off my tongue. I settled for a cup of coffee from the Costa-packet franchise. Which brings us to today and a surprising amount of activity in the food emporium. The soup had a long name which started with Manhattan. I'd lost the will to live before I'd even reached the end of its title and decided that the safest bet would be a jacket potato and salad for which the person on the till attempted to charge me at least twice the going rate. I declined his suggestion and in the confusion the till became jammed. I then learned something very interesting: probably because of the situation with the till or maybe because he too couldn't be bothered, it is apparently possible to negotiate a price for the food based on what you think it's worth. I find this extremely innovative and may return. On the other hand....