The lost generation

Is Generation Lost like this old typewriter? Perfectly functional but unusable?

My very first full day’s work started at 7am, in the cold clinical lighting of a giant underground kitchen. I was using a large butcher’s knife to chop a full-bodied, cold, slimy calamari into tiny dices for the lunch buffet of a prominent 4 star hotel on the outskirts of Paris’ CDG airport.

Fighting nausea, shock and homesickness, I was also being yelled at by the head chef for not cutting small enough dices and not going quick enough. By the time my work experience was done 6 months later, I had brulee-d the tips of my fingers with a crème brulee dish, spilled a lobster into a customer’s lap during an ill-fated understaffed seafood themed night and been told in no uncertain term by a senior male supervisor of the front desk that if he saw another un-made-up rosy cheek or a whisp of unruly hair escaping, he would fire me on the spot.