Pret a Jesc

My weekday lunch these days consists of a cheese roll rather than chicken biriyani, and the Pret a Manger chain is usually the beneficiary. This afternoon it was as if I'd travelled not five hundred yards to the local Pret, but five hundred miles to Gdansk. The bright and lively blondes behind the counter all bore names like Marinia, and Davinia, and Gloskzsky; and all had exactly the same heavy European accent so ably taken off in Harry Enfield's Polish cafe sketches.

It's a funny thing, but when I go there in the morning, the staff all appear to be of south asian extraction, but by lunchtime it's the Polish shift. The Pret website states:

"Our starting salary is £7 an hour (after 10 days, including bonus). Many get over £8 an hour and more..."

And that probably explains why Pret is staffed by hard-working foreign labour which is prepared to work for around 300 quid a week, and not by British workers who can sit around on their arses all day and, with a bit of ducking and diving with social services, pull in the similar money without doing a stroke of work. Or am I out of touch? "Jesc" by the way, would - if the accents were in the right place - mean 'eat' in Polish. Photo courtesy of Pret.