Poems I have written about people you have never met before (unless you have met them before) leaving the nameless company that I work for. (number 1)

For Natalie who worked her ass off for no thanks at all. (thanks by the way)


There once was a girl who worked in Production
Who made the mistake 'pon her introduction
Of giving her name in all its entirety
To interested members of production society.
"Hullo!" she said as she strode through the door
"I'm here to help you, I'm Natalie - Moore."
And whether the pause, or through some tonal texture
Her colleagues thought "Moore" meant "Please give me extra!"
(It's a terrible thing we made such a glitch
We don't after all give Avril more "Litch"
Julian's not constantly having a Ball
And sometimes [not often] Fiona's just not Wright at all).

When he misheard this the canny John Shaw
Thought to himself surely I'll give Nat more
(Without writing it down then how could he know
That Natalie's surname had more than one 'O'?)
So he piled on the PRAFs with hundreds of orders
From Candlewick, Walker (and 7 from Borders)
And just as she thought he'd start to refrain
Four score or more would come through again.
So the orders came through and up grew the piles
Of film, books and paper, of proofs and new files
Until one Monday morning I just couldn't find her
Under the mountain of books and ring binders.
I said to Fiona: "Just where is our Natalie
I have to confess to not seeing her latterly.
I must say I fear, though I cannot be sure
That good natured Natalie must be no More"

But Natalie Moore was More and Moreover
It was not long before she began to recover.
Inside her cave of paper and stuff
She'd decided that frankly she'd had quite enough.
So from inside the mountain she started to work
'Til she reached such a pace as to go quite beserk.
The mountain it trembled and BLAM! it exploded
In showers of files date and colour coded.
I covered my head from this avalanche of paper
But she tamed it with the aid of some clips and a stapler
And as I trembled with fear and whined so pathetically
She weeded and filed them all alphabetically.
So even though we made such an error
Somehow Natalie coped with the terror

So Natalie apologies for being demanding
We hope you'll forgive us this misunderstanding
Personally I reckon old Shakespeare's to blame
What with his twaddle 'bout "What's in a name?"
A rose may remain always sweet smelling
But much more important is care with your spelling
And that's the Moore-al I suppose of this story
To do things correctly you shouldn't spell poory.

Now 6 months are covered and we have discovered
That though Nat's been covered she somehow recovered
In time to leave a clear desk behind her
She's done a good job...no...more like a blinder.
I think we should realise how much we owe her
What a privilege to work with and get to know her.
But later I guess she'll walk out that door
And our Sad department will be left with no Moore.
(That's Moore with 2 "O"s, not more with just one
As there's definitely more work for us now to be done).