A proper lack of backbone?

The boys are all hormonally boisterous. The girls are few and far between. One of them is a little blonde, who if she were fairer would be likened by many to a China Doll. She just has that vulnerable, fragile edge to her petiteness.

I have to confess to being taken aback at being address by her within hours of us being introduced as 'Luv' and 'Luvely'. She sixteen and I'm an awful lot older. I was affronted and in a manner my mother would have admired (at least until she realised it was me doing it) I took umbrage.

It hardly helped her cause that she seemed to expect us to pay her without actually doing any work. Hmm.

Then she discovered the Joy of Gizmo. She saw me with Gizmo and wanted to muscle in, not understanding that I'd grown weary of Gizmo's limited charms. She expressed interest in an only moderately pushy manner. I initiated her into the Secret of Gizmo and left her to it. She redeemed herself mightily and is now the Mistress of Gizmo.

Gizmo is a hand held battery powered device, as you've probably gathered. Gather in your filthy mind, dear reader, before it gallops away over the hills and is far away and out of sight.

Gizmo is a hand held terminal that enables us to perform various stock and merchandising related tasks out on the shop floor. But damn it, she likes it. She's welcome to the wretched thing with its RSI-inducing propensity.

Any hoo, she turned up today looking rather wretched and I initial took it to be the result of more Boyfriend Problems. In fact this evening prior to setting out to work she asked her mother's permission to use the family kitchen and was told "No" and to get out instead. She was slung out without food or work clothes or means of transport to work.

She walked the few miles from the outlying village into town, stopped off at a friend's house to borrow her uniform and came into work with them on and a pair of the friend's much too large regulation black shoes. She'll camp out at her friend's house, borrow a change of underwear and come in tomorrow wearing a spare uniform shirt we've dug out for her. We've waived the requirement that she wear black shoes and let her work in her trainers until her mother notices her absence, when ever that might happen.

There's always someone worse off than you, and a lot of people worse off than me.

Good night.