Rules of engagement

And so Mrs EoTP finishes her first week at her new job. In theory anyway this should be the best part of a job, the new start. After all they've chosen YOU over all the other candidates (and how good does that feel?), you should be happy with the salary for at least three weeks as you accepted the job on those terms (after that you find that 25% of the staff have 50% fewer qualifications than you do and 30% more salary but let that pass for now) and, as you don't really know what is going on in the organisation, you don't know how much a mess you are making of the job so far; you may not realise it for months.

Mrs EoTP needed a lie down at the end of the week with a cold compress and a cold bottle of white wine. We'd forgotten about the hell of the new job.

Clothes.
Best to wear them for the job I find, saves on the snide comments. But you have to have them. Mrs EoTP has had to buy a new wardrobe of clothes to go to work of course, not having had such stuff for many years. Unless you work for some laid back company such as Google there is the small matter of confirming to the dress code. Of course, no one has written the dress code down, especially for women, so you have to interpret it as best you can. So new stuff is needed and quite a lot of it as well - such as a waterproof coat as Mrs EoTP now walks to work. We walked the length and breadth of the Midlands trying to find a suitable coat for walking to work in and staying dry but not looking like a serious hiker ready for a week in Snowdonia. Don't woman wear waterproof coats anymore? How do they stay dry? Do they drive into their workplaces and step out directly into the office? Or are we unusual in that we do actually walk? So there goes the first month's salary on the set up costs for work.

Security
All the doors to the site are locked and controlled electronically. To gain entrance you have to double up to get close to the speaker set low in the wall, press the entry button, state your purpose of the visit whilst the tinny voice says something like 'Snargle, snig, buzz, ganding boing' in reply. The door buzzes and you gain entry. Then you get in but, like the Second World War when all the signposts were taken down in the UK to foil those dastardly Nazi paratroopers, there are no signposts to guide you around the site. I know this because I was asked to deliver the usual 1 kilo of forms to the admin office that you need to sign to prove you are not an illegal immigrant and a Drain On The Economy. I gained entry, 'Snargle, burg, admin, zing, boink', went through the door and got lost. Now I'm all for security but given that I was wearing a T shirt and jeans and carrying a large padded envelope you think someone might have challenged me but no they didn't. I wandered around, smiling and saying hallo to staff who politely smiled back and ignored me. I dropped off the envelope and walked back to the gate by another route and was I challenged? No of course not but lots of other members of staff smiled at me and said hello all over again. Anyway Mrs EoTP finally got her electronic pass by the end of the week so can now get in, although all she did for several days was follow others in through the open gate as they arrived.

Forms
There are so many. Salary, security forms, pension, medical history, values and belief systems, criminal records, birth certificates, wedding certificates, certificates for swimming the length, you name it they want it. Then, when you give them it and they hand you back an officially printed form to say they have had it, they deny they have had it two days later and want it back (again). This happened to me recently in another organisation. I tried to log onto a part of a system that I had legitimate access to and couldn't. The response from IT to my company email was 'You don't exist' which I felt was a little existentialist of them really.

IT
Mrs EoTP has to switch on her three PCs in a certain sequence or they don't work. Why they don't work if you don't follow the sequence no one can explain. You can launch nuclear missiles more easily than this. There are passwords by the box full to remember each different for a separate part of the system.

The stuff they don't tell you

• What to do if the fire alarm goes off. I know it usually consists of standing around in a desultory manner hoping the alarms will turn themselves off in thirty minutes.
• Where all the toilets are - after five months you discover one around the corner after you have been making a 30 minute round trip to the one you were first shown.
• Who actually knows how to make the photocopier work.
• How to turn the heating on or off.
• Where IT are actually located and what they do.
• Why IT always have their 'help' line on voicemail.
• Which Christmas party you should go to. Admins, Finance, Sales, all of them?
• Who will be your enemy and who will be your ally.
• Who really gets things done. Forget the suits and the bosses as they haven't a clue. Find the one person who really keeps the whole creaking structure together. Make them your friend. Stay close to them.
  

And that is just week 1. As you don't know what you don't know then the first six months of a job are hell until you find out what is going on and can ask for help. But then you may never find out.
In my experience at work most people know what it is they do, but don't know what they do does.
I think I need a lie down.

Home alone too.

It's 1 o'clock. There are all sorts of odd noises I've not heard before: a creak from a floorboard across the landing, clocks ticking that I haven't noticed before, odd electrical hums from machinery throughout the house. No other voices, no other sounds. It's all a bit eerie.

No, I'm not awake in the middle of the night unable to sleep and sitting at the computer completing my blog. It's 1pm and I'm all alone in the house - something that very rarely happens to me, it is very strange and it is the future. You see Mrs EoTP has a job. Yes this morning I waved the entire family off into the October sunshine and closed the door on them until late this afternoon.

Mrs EoTP was offered the job two weeks ago and accepted. It's local, within walking distance, the hours are very reasonable and, even more strangely, it's directly connected with her vocational career which I have been doing my best to wreck since we got married by moving us around the country.

I was, of course, delighted that she had fought off all the other candidates to get the position particularly as Mrs EoTP has not had a full time paid job for over 12 years. The salary is modest but what an economic lifeline this will prove to be as I near the end of my part time job in early December.

Of course the maths of job hunting are interesting.
Mrs EoTP: five applications, three interviews, one job offer. That's a 60% interview rate.
Me: thirty six applications, three interviews, zero job offers, that's a 'we don't need to discuss the percentages do we?' rate.
I think I'll get Mrs EoTP to complete my CVs and applications from now on. What ever she is doing is working.

As I am home several days a week naturally it has fallen to me to do much of the work that was done by the one we will now call 'The Breadwinner'. But this morning I have to deal with with tasks of bewildering complexity. I have, in the past, scoffed at Mrs EoTP's inability to use DVD recorders, XBoxes, PlayStations and the like. Now I am faced with the washing machine with a control panel like a 747. And I don't understand it. And then there are all those different detergents depending on what is going to be washed. Whites, coloureds, mixed wash, delicates. 'Honey I've shrunk the washing' I'll be shouting if I don't get this right. There is worse. Shopping and cooking. Shopping I can handle providing I have a precise list of what to get, but in Tescos yesterday I had a crisis - just what is muscovado sugar, where would it be and what does it look like? What would I do with it if I found it? And to make things worse Tesco is expanding the store and have moved many of the aisles. I sailed around the store like the 'Flying Dutchman' doomed to sail the seven seas trying to find stuff (though I did find the wine aisles, tee hee) for hours with the chilled and frozen food forming puddles on the floor as they dripped through the trolley at the checkout.

Cleaning the house. This I can do as it is a low complexity task. A pink duster, some polish and the vacuum cleaner and I'm off. Except there are showers and baths and toilets - I'm sure you don't use the same cloth for all of them. Or do you? Marigold gloves. Not sure they go with the manly image I try to exude. And as for the chemicals, Dr Frankenstein would have have been pushed to have more. There are grime buster liquids, non- scratch creams, eco stuff for toilet bowls, conventional bleach, weapons of mass destruction (no, haven't found them yet but they must be here Dr Blix).

So far this morning I have been working from 0830 to 1pm (with of course a coffee break) and I haven't finished half the house yet - then there is the cooking to be done this evening. OK, I'm cheating tonight because there are pizzas and not even I can mess them up. No wonder Mrs EoTP set off this morning smiling. She may be working but she ain't doing this stuff any more.

Cooking. Not a strong point of mine. Indeed it may not even register on the scale that runs from 'pathetic, microwave a ready meal at one end to Jamie Oliver standards at the other.' The cooker - buttons, red lights, temperature thingies. Oh dear. Maybe this is that extra incentive I need to find a full time job. 'Get work or give the family food poisoning.'

There is one more thing that has just popped into my head. I haven't uttered a word since 0830. I speak more in my sleep than that. I am never quiet for that long and now, having thought about it, I'm no longer sure that I am not speaking out loud or internalising all my thoughts. If anyone answers me then I really am in trouble and this is only day one. In an office you have people around you all day, joint coffee breaks, time to slag off one of your esteemed colleagues. Just when I had adapted to the change of working from home and finding ways of not standing in front of Mrs EoTP when she was trying to cook off they go and leave me alone.

The Postie has just dropped the mail from last month through the door so I'll go and find out what job I was rejected from in September. Maybe if I'm quick I can chat to her for a minute or two, no she's seen me and has run off up the street. Wonder if they do coffee mornings around her - for us househusbands?

Telephone lines

'Go on punk, make my day.'
I make phone calls to complete strangers for my job (part-time job don't get excited, still searching for the Big One). I want to interview them and get information from them. They are busy people (well of course, they are they have jobs ergo they must be busy, busy mustn't they?). They do not want to be interviewed.
We have a problem.
Actually, I have a problem.

I call potential targets out of the blue. I have about thirty seconds to grab their attention, present my pitch before their auto-reject kicks in and years of hardened training makes them tune out and start putting the phone down on me. I have to complete forty interviews over the next six weeks.
I have a problem.

If I was an author I could hone my first sentence over the months, or years, so that you become hooked and want to continue to listen to me. I could make it memorable like 'It is a truth universally acknowledged...' or 'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay..' but someone has beaten me to it and anyway when you are calling to find out their views on coconut futures (or whatever) literary allusions are, frankly, a liability.

So over the last few months I've been working on my techniques and lines so that I can instantly interest my targets and engage them in conversation. And once you do that the chances of securing an interview become measurably better. In theory.

Of course when at work you do not have to bother with this preamble. You can bark on the phone to a hapless underling and demand spreadsheets, data, coffee, chocolate biscuits without explanation. Or, of course, put the phone down on people like me who call out of the blue and who are trying to make a living...

It starts with the telephone stance. I went on a telephone training course years ago that urged you to stand up as you make the call and smile as you dial. That way the unsuspecting target would unconsciously realise that you were a happy, engaging person who they would love to talk to and probably take out to lunch and introduce to their family. Personally it made me feel like one of those cult members dressed in garish robes on the street and ringing little bells. It's meant to give you a sense of dynamism. If I do this at home anyone passing by on the street would see me with a manic grin on my face meandering around the room talking to myself and probably call Social Services.

Here's how not to do it.

'Good morning, lovely morning isn't it, oooh look at that squirrel on my tree, silly me you can't see it. Now I want information from you so I'll be there at 10am tomorrow and have the coffee ready, mine's white with four sugars and I like the custard creams best.'

Or, in a deep, sonorous American accent, 'Coming soon to a phone next to you - Consolidated Hoo Hahs bring you: The Questionnaire - bigger than the questions you were asked last week about corporate staple purchases, longer than the telephone interview trying to sell you a time share in Latvia and far more understandable than the one about mobile telephone rates ... we bring you ... [dramatic pause] ... padded envelope purchases you make annually. In stereo.'

When I started off with the interviews my opening gambit was an explanation that resembled the instructions found in self-assembly furniture booklets. 'Now Mr Porkscrathchings, I work for Consolidated Hoo Hahs you may have read about us recently in the Camarthen Examiner, no you didn't you live in Edinburgh, well there we are, anyway we are a not-for-profit, wholly-owned subsidiary of Global Wing Wang Solutions and we undertake research in a cooperative and...' See what I mean. Your eyes have glazed over and already you are replacing the phone on the handset.

I moved to plan B. 'Hi don't put the phone down I'm not trying to sell you anything I just want two hours of your time to ask you questions, no don't put the phone down, no this isn't a joke, oh he's gone...' Not entirely successful either.

Plan W, the one that works best, and has been honed through many iterations, goes like this: 'My name is Eyes on the Prize, I work for Consolidated Hoo Hahs and we are undertaking research in a number of European Countries of behalf of European padded envelope manufacturers. I wonder whether I could spend a few minutes talking to you about your padded envelope purchases. As a thank you for your participation I'd be happy to send you a copy of the report due next year.' Or something similar. And it seems to work. I generally get a 1 in 8 acceptance rate. Yes that does mean that to achieve forty interviews I have to call about 300 people but then it is money. This doesn't include the dance of the first contact in which you have to negotiate Kevin in Stationery who really doesn't give a rat's breakfast about the research and will not/does not leave a message, the PA who is a more formidable barrier than the Great Wall of China in getting through to the Boss, the 'he'll call you back' (they don't), the follow up call and 'they are now in a strokey beard meeting' and so on.

I had thought about writing a story and then, each time I finished an interview, letting them have just a few lines of the plot so that they would actively want me to call back with the next installment, sort of get them hooked in a literary way. I actually think they could do this on the motorways with the overhead information boards that encourage you to 'Stay alert, have a rest.' Why not put consecutive lines from a story on each board so that drivers and occupants can be amused and entertained on long journeys? I digress.

There are two notable successes that come to mind.
First there is Mr R. the MD of a very successful local company. I rang him up first about 6 months ago and he spent 20 minutes telling me why he will not do interviews. 'I don't do interviews, I don't do interviews, I don't do interviews, you can come tomorrow at 2.30pm'. I saw him for the second time earlier this week with the latest round of research into the use of A4 transparent plastic envelopes and bird feeders.

The other one was Mr K the owner of most of Staffordshire as far as I can tell. Nothing he likes better than to be taking engines apart apparently. Spoke to him for 50 minutes on his mobile - only about 25% of what he said was usable as he had an impressive grasp of English profanities but boy did he know his stuff on padded envelopes.

The final point. If you say you are going to send someone a copy of your report into bird feeders then do it. I now have my regulars for interviews. Now it's a case of 'Hi it's EoTP here' 'Oh yes' they say 'Let's get it over with shall we, what is it this time, staplers, black biro usage, internal envelopes and why there are always 500% more internal envelopes available than could ever be used?'
To which there is only one answer.
'You have to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well do you?'

In response may I say...

'In technology response time is the time a system or functional unit takes to react to a given input (wikipedia.org).'

Or 'The delay experienced in time sharing between request and answer, a delay which increases when the number of users on the system increases.'

Or the total amount of accumulated time EoTP has spent waiting for slack jawed, drooling, swivel eyed, intellectually challenged recruitment executives to actually provide some feedback to one of his job applications. As most never respond at all there is a factor for infinity built in somewhere in the formula.

When I look back over the last seven months without a full time job the one element that stands out amongst all the other ones (there are coloured graphs and pie charts as well a list in ranked order if you'd like to see them) is the time spent waiting. I've already blogged about this several eons ago so to save time I've just cut and pasted the same rant in...no just kidding a whole new rant fresh from the oven is yours for the reading.

The second quote above is quite instructive because it is a truism - if you increase the number of users in a system then the response time will increase. Like encouraging more rail users and wondering why the railway carriages are full or any Post Office queue. Today, and this is true, there is a line of 15 people waiting to post stuff and what do the staff do at my local Post Office - go for a break that's what. So response times increase unless of course you increase the ability of the system to deal with the number of users (such as saying loudly like I did 'How about some more staff then?' My parcel will now be off to Papua New Guinea instead of Peterborough). See what an education does for you, gives you deep insights into capacity management.

Let me put this to you then. You place an advert, you expect shall we say 300 replies. You are a reasonably large recruitment agency being paid an absolute fortune to recruit someone preferably warm and breathing and who can at least write their own name so they can sign their expenses. Do you:
a) tell your IT team to set up an automatic response mechanism to all answer all inbound CVs so that the respondents know that their precious manuscript has actually arrived and spent at least a few nanoseconds in the 'In' box before being sent to the Trash can?
b) Set up a mail merge facility in Word, manually enter the candidates details into an Excel database so you can post out received/hold on/reject letters?
c) Do you say 'Blow this for a game of soldiers let's not bother letting anybody know anything except the three most likely candidates as that way it doesn't eat into our enormous fat fee and our expense account lunch times?'

I think you know where my vote will be cast.

To deal with this tosh this you have to build up a defense mechanism.
The first is to visualise the person responsible for finding the preferred candidate and then thinking up ways of causing them much pain. The early Chinese dynasties have some useful tips I find.

Secondly you begin to know instinctively when the threshold for getting a reply has passed. For those on the volume on-line job search web sites it's the moment you send your CV - for the other positions once 10 days have gone mark the application dead and bury it. The ones that you will almost always hear from are those connected with public bodies as they are open to public scrutiny - however as the closing dates for these jobs are usually three years hence and they really, really like to consider all the candidates very, very carefully just in case you can sue them for discrimination, they tend not to make a decision for about 8 years and by that time we've all moved on and forgotten what is was we applied for.

Bill Bryson says that the only way to start a trend to actually get a response from organisations is to encourage random shooting of those slackers who just don't get back to you. I have to say it's a very compelling argument. Imagine how we'd all be if the emergency services worked that way. Make a 999 call and get a 'We might come, we might not'. That'd be fun.

So rant over for the week. If you have any comments post them below and I'll get back to you. Yeah right.

Present times

We have saved, we have reduced spending to priority goods, we have cancelled holidays, we do not go out. We have paid all our bills. This is what you have to do when you have a much reduced income.

But we are heading into a whole new expenditure minefield, other than the eye watering bill I have just had to pay the garage for a service and necessary cam belt change on our little car (If it had been a slightly bigger bill I could have paid of most of our remaining mortgage instead and bought a timeshare in Spain).

I am talking about Christmas and birthday presents.

The EoTP household is now entering that time of the year when much of the family have their birthdays and, of course, there is Christmas. Now Mrs EoTP and I are not great fans of Christmas and the resulting consumer binge but we do like to buy the family some gifts, as you do. I am always amazed at the figures quoted by the press on the average spend per child at Christmas because it far exceeds the amount we spend. Some kids must be getting some huge presents. We have a simple maxim about money which is 'if you haven't got it you can't spend it.' So we now find ourselves in the dilemma of working out how much we dare spend.

I have to pack in my part time job in mid-December otherwise I won't be able to claim my mortgage protection insurance for 12 months. Yeah I know this is daft but them is the rules. So the much reduced income we currently have will be much reduced again. I asked my kids the other day what would it take for them to feel poor. We had been discussing the impact of redundancy on the family and how we had all coped so far. 'Not having a Christmas' was their answer. Note not holidays, going out, designer clothes and all the other consumer items their friends have but not having a Christmas.

So what do you do?

Basically we do not have the money to splash out or even disturb the surface of the water much. The kids have coped really well over the last 7 months but this looks like one of those totemic events that may be just a little upsetting. As for the rest of the family we really have no choice but to say sorry but this year we just can't afford it.

I'm not looking forward to 25 December at all.

Now another related topic which I feel I have to share to demonstrate the labyrinth difficulties of job hunting .

I applied for a local job about 6 months ago, one that I would have liked to do. As you will have noted from this blog I clearly was not successful but got the rejection letter that stated 'The response to our campaign was overwhelming and the general standard of applications has been very high including a number of applications which were very close matches to our requirements so sling your hook matey and take your pathetic loser butt elsewhere.' Well most of the sentence is accurate anyway. The result is the same anyway 'Nope, not you, go away and go away quickly.' Anyway despite this overwhelming response and this clutch of people who were just fine and dandy for the role, 5 months later it has been re-advertised. So much for those highly qualified, just right people then. Of course I have reapplied. I have to find out whether I must sling my hook again.

On that theme I applied for another job about three months ago, this time based in London. Same response, same sort of words but who wants to work in London anyway? (Wasn't it so much easier in the old days when someone tapped you on the shoulder, said come for a quick bite at the Frog and Spawn, said 'I like your style, you're in.') . Anyway, same thing happened, eight weeks later job is re-advertised, but this time I don't apply as I really wouldn't want to commute to London. This time I get the same rejection letter (same words, different signature and date) for the second time even though I didn't apply. I mean, they really don't want me do they or is this a case of kicking me when I am down and then twisting the metaphorical knife? I feel that now they will be writing to me regularly just to confirm that I really, really, wasn't the right person.

Sometimes you laugh and sometimes you cry.

'I'm busy doing nothing working the whole day through', Bing Crosby

I've just celebrated, though that really isn't the right word, 6 months unemployment. How about mourned the last 6 months of unemployment?

When I lost my job I know that getting another would be tough but I think I believed that after six months I would actually have managed to get another full time position. Well so much for that belief then, another delusion I have been under. And I believed in Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy, snow at Christmas and Al Gore becoming President of the USA. And nothing imminent either so it is going to go on for some time to come. In fact it is quite easy to see how a year can go by without securing another full time position. Anyway the part time job still brings in some cash so, as I may have said before, it could be worse.

The thing is that in the last two weeks I've been busier than any other time during the last 6 months. I have had to work every work day for the last two weeks, plus a Sunday as well, to meet deadlines. In fact I even managed to get past the boundaries of the county on a number of occasions. Sometimes it feels like those scenes in Star Trek when Kirk says 'Shields up' and there is an invisible, impenetrable electronic sort of condom around the Enterprise stopping the aliens getting close. Recently there has been a reverse shield around the county seemingly stopping me get out to talk to the aliens (when you are restricted to a small area of the country you begin to think everyone else is odd, bit like they do in Yorkshire), but out I have been, as far north as Blackburn and to London twice. Marco Polo think on't.

However something odd happened. I started getting grumpy about going out. 'Look to get to Blackburn by 11am I am going to have to leave at 0700 in the morning and to get to London I'll have to catch the 0645 train to arrive on time for my meeting at 0930.' This would be followed by 'I'll be late home tonight, possibly as late as 6pm.'

6pm? When I was working I'd still have hours left in the office at that time and as for early starts, well I would laugh in the face of dawn and tell anyone daft enough to listen that this was my favourite time of day and that I had seen dawn rising all over the UK you layabeds you and didn't you know there were two 5 o'clocks in the day?

But now, now I find myself thinking 'Well I was going to mow the lawn' or 'I was going to go for a walk in sun whilst the weather was still fine'. This Friday I have to be the wrong side of the M1 to travel home and, even though I claim my fee by the hour, found myself thinking that this can't be right I should be home for a Friday afternoon and not fighting my way across the UK at the busiest time of the week.

I put this down to Darwinism as it can't possibly be anything wrong with me. I think it is a sort of adaptation to the circumstances and now, after 6 months, find adapting to work as much as a change as adapting to not working. A survival mechanism has kicked in allowing me to deal with the lack of things to do and with the pressure of work being, largely, removed. The pressure is still there but in other ways like not being able to spend on anything but necessities with the odd (very occasional) luxury item being bought.

We are still dealing with it, we have to, but as the song goes "I'd like to be unhappy but I really don't have the time.' If only it were like that really.

'I still haven't found what I'm looking for', U2

‘So that’s it, your benefits stop at the end of this week Mr Featherstone and you can no longer claim unemployed status.’ The manila folder was placed precisely on the desk lining up with the pen and pencil holder, telephone and picture of a Yorkshire terrier with a red bow around its neck.

Martin looked up and did a double take. He’d only been half listening to the conversation with his ‘Personal Advisor’ in the Job Centre. Every two weeks, since he started signing on four months ago, he had to turn up on a Thursday morning at 9.30 am at the Job Centre and sign several forms to confirm he was still unemployed and actively searching for work. Martin had been working on ten different ways, in his imagination, to deal permanently with the Yorkshire terrier. So far that morning he had considered using it in a rugby match and had idly been considering what was the maximum possible trajectory that could be achieved by Jonny Wilkinson. Usually all he had to do was confirm he was looking for work, sign four forms and leave the building, 5 minutes at the most.

‘What do you mean my benefits are ending?’ said Martin ‘I’ve only been out of work for four months and you made me wait the first month before paying me anything. I know it isn't much but you can see from my records what my financial outgoings are.’

‘It’s new rules Mr Featherbrawn’ said Mrs Fillet (for she was Martin’s Personal Advisor at the Job Centre) ‘Brought in by the Government to discourage slackers...I mean encouraging those searching for work to look that little bit harder.’

‘Yes but’ said Martin ‘I have been looking for work, you’ve seen the CVs that I’ve been sending out. And by the way it's Featherstone. You can’t change my status just like that. If I can no longer sign on as unemployed then I can’t claim my mortgage protection insurance. I’ve got a young baby and a pregnant wife due to give birth again in three months time. I need the money.’

‘Not my rules Mr Featherbrain, just applying them. I see you haven’t applied for any local jobs at all.’

‘Well of course not’ said Martin his voice rising just a little ‘We’ve been over this. I am not a sous chef, or a builder and cannot work a CNC auto lathe with monobloc controls which you suggested I look at last time we spoke. My qualifications are wrong for those sort of jobs. And it's Feather STONE.’

‘Mr Latherstode if you do not apply for these local jobs it’s out of my hands’.

Martin took a deep breath and said ‘Look, I have a degree in particle physics with an MA in molecular biology at a nano level. I then went on to do PhD in nano particulate technology using carbooxylates at a porosity of .00005% to assess their reaction at absolute zero Celsius in zero gravity. I then held a research position at Rutland University for 6 years with one research assistant, who had one GCSE in kitten care, in their research labs working for the world's largest pharma company who then pulled my research grant because they decided that they wanted to develop a world-beating self-heating, pot noodle. I was the only person in the world doing this research. I can tell you anything you want to know about the actions of carbooxylates at absolute zero but I could not lay a brick or make a bloody omelette to save my life! I cannot afford a car and don’t have a driving licence anyway. I am computer literate on Apple Macs only and then provided they are not running an OS later than 7.5 So there is absolutely no point is asking me to weld, lay bricks, or use a CNC what ever that is. I’m applying to every University as it is but they only recruit at certain times of the year. And it is FEATHERSTONE.’

‘Well nothing more I can do. After tomorrow you are off benefits as I said’ snapped Mrs Fillet and got up to leave but then stopped. ‘There might be one thing’ she said ‘it’s brand new, introduced just today, hasn’t been used at all yet anywhere but…’

‘Well what is it?’ demanded Martin, ‘I’ll try anything.’

‘It’s a brand new system just introduced by the Government – based on the American military missile guidance systems used by their fighter pilots in combat apparently. It’s called the Super National Apparatus for Fixing Unemployment or SNAFU for short. Guaranteed to find a job. It is designed for the long-term unemployed but you could be a guinea pig if you want. However there are conditions to its use’ Mrs Fillet added darkly.

‘And they are?’ asked Martin.

‘SNAFU absolutely guarantees 100 percent to find you a job and guarantees the employer a person with exactly the right qualifications to do the job. It costs nothing to use and therefore saves everyone hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of pounds, in recruitment costs. But as it is so expensive to maintain, once a job has been found you have to take it and the employer has to give it to you. No interviews required it is all system based. Now the job could be anywhere but the Government gives very generous relocation grants or meets travelling costs for five years. However, I must repeat, you have take the job and you have to sign a contract first.’

Martin considered this. Shouldn’t be a problem at all. All the research labs were in places that he and his wife would happily relocate to especially with a generous grant. Might even be overseas…

‘Right I’ll do it. Where do I sign?’

For the next four hours Martin sat at a computer, monitor and keyboard in a separate room in the job Centre entering his qualifications, life history, salary aspirations and requirements, work experience and, truth be told, pretty much all of his life into the SNAFU system. He felt exhausted, as if he had had to complete 100 different public authority CVs in one day.

‘Right’ said Mrs Fillet, when he had completed the task, 'Now for the result.' She and all the other members of the Job Centre crowded into the small room as Mrs Fillet hit the ‘submit' button on the screen.

Martin stood up and walked away from the monitor where the hour glass icon continued to spin and rotate.

At last, after ten minutes or so, there was a loud ping and the screen changed to a new window. Mrs Fillet, smiling broadly, pushed her way eagerly to the front to read the message saying, as she moved, ‘Right Mr Botherstroud I will now announce your new position.’ Then she became very still and peered at the screen closely.

‘How odd, how very, very odd’ she muttered.

‘What?’ shouted Martin, ‘what does it say?’

‘It says ‘We have found a position that matches your requirements but we have received a good response and a number of people appear to match the specification more closely. Thank you for your interest in SNAFU and we wish you every success with your future applications.’