Guru

• As security guard my job is to pervert unauthorised people from coming onto the site
• My job involved processing clams
• I am a pubic relations officer
• I am matured
• My interests include cooking dogs and interesting people
• I was responsible for dissatisfied customers
• My role involved coaching and mentioning
• I relieved the conference manager
• I made the deserts
• I am a prooficient typist
• Socially I like to dine out with different backgrounds
• I get well with all types of people
• I was responsible for fraudulent claims
• While working in this role, I had intercourse with a variety of people (Guru thinks this is not a mistake)
  
• Experienced sheet mental worker
• Highly adept at multi-tasting
• Left last four jobs only because the managers were completely unreasonable
  

Dear Guru,
I am 57 and still high energy and of course dynamic! However, I am amazed at how some recruitment agencies and by implication HR functions sail close to the wind.
Since leaving a senior HR role in 2005 I have made a successful living for myself as a project based HR consultant. Occasionally I get tempted to apply for a role or even get headhunted -- amazing for an old has been like me (just joking).
Just recently I applied for an HR director position in my neck of the woods, the requirement was: have you worked at board level, in retail, able to influence and coach, ticked all the boxes. The business was smaller that what I was used to -- hey ho.
Got a telephone call from the consultant - just thought I would phone you Tony rather than e-mail. (nice of him) Have you got Asian experience. "Ne how ma, nee lie war dur chia," I said. Pardon says he. I'm fluent in Mandarin says I, so you could say I have Asian experience....
Is that recent says he? No, I lived in the Far East at the beginning of my career where I taught. I have an affinity with the East and a great understanding of Chinese and Indian culture.
It's not recent then says he. Suppose not says I. That's why I phoned, the client wants recent experience. Must be recent.
Well, I am an experienced HR director and how many people are you going to find with my ability and can speak an eastern language? "My client wants recent Asian experience."
Now just suppose I was the kind of guy who wanted to commit professional suicide I could make a lot of money.
As Confucius say: "Maybe recruitment agency who not think carefully about such things like egg in kettle not possible to get out of hot water because spout too small".

Admidst all the doom and gloom, it comes as a relief to hear that some British industries are thriving. While banks, car manufacturers and pick and mix vendors collapse on a daily basis, Manchester-based shoe and condom maker SSL Industries is bucking the trend.

SSL, which sells Durex condoms and Scholl footwear (an interesting combination which prompts all sorts of unsettling images of rampant hippies, a la 'Joy of Sex') is seeing its annual profits grow by 30%, and made more than £640m last year.

Chief executive Garry Watts said: "As a consequence of this underlying sales growth, continuing cost control and the benefit from favourable currency rates, we continue to expect to announce reported operating profit growth in excess of 30%."

A rather prosaic explanation for the contunuing British attachment to keeping your shoes on during sex.

Eight police officers serving with Scotland's largest force - Strathclyde Police - have given their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms. There is as yet no information on whether they are good Jedi Knights - such as Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda - or Jedis gone bad, like the black plastic garbed heavy breather Darth Vader.

Two civilian staff members are also believers.

The details were obtained in a Freedom of Information request by Jane's Police Review. Editor Chris Herbert says: "The Force appears to be strong in Strathclyde Police with their Jedi police officers and staff.

"Far from living a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, some members of the noble Jedi order have now chosen Glasgow and its surrounding streets as their home."

About 390,000 people listed their religion as Jedi in the 2001 Census for England and Wales. In Scotland the figure was a reported 14,000. The 'religion'even has its own church. The UK Church of the Jedi - which offered sermons on the Force, light sabre training, and meditation techniques - was founded last year by brothers Barney and Daniel Jones.

The Office for National Statistics does not recognise Jedi as a separate category, and incorporates followers of Jedi into the 'atheist' category.

Strathclyde was the only force in the UK to admit it had Jedi officers.

"I popped out three years ago to travel the world in a quest for knowledge and I've returned to Blighty armed with answers. During my sojourn research showed the public wanted me back, which I found jolly touching. And in that time the engineers toiled hard to make the site look better, work harder and be more personal...just like yours truly!"

• Inspect the boss's sandwich every day to make sure it contained no tomatoes.
• Drop off a pet's stool sample at the vet.
• Call around for a used toilet to replace one that had broken in the boss's rental house.
  
• Send fake rejection letters from universities to the boss's daughter as a joke.
• Take a Johnny Mathis album cover to the tailor to find material that matched Johnny's jacket.
• Throw a surprise party for an up-and-coming vice president's dog.
• Look for "anything suspicious looking," after someone had called in a bomb threat.
• Stuff tissue between the boss's upper lip and teeth after he chipped a tooth, and then glue it back together.
• Check the pencils daily to be sure they were sharp enough.
  
• Spray the boss's bald head with sunscreen.

Personnel Today staffers have been tweeting a lot recently, not least in a bid to find out what management books people are reading. Plenty of fellow twitterers were willing to recommend their favourite books. But none of them recommended the latest business book sensation to hit Indian shops - Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf ....

Translated as 'My Struggle', Hitler's book combines politics and autobiography. And poor literary technique. It is generally regarded as a dud, not least by Winston Churchill, who described it as "turgid, verbose [and] shapeless." Although perhaps the final literary critique should come from that well-known dictator, and less well-known book reviewer, Mussolini, who referred to it as "a boring tome that I have never been able to read."

But why the sudden popularity? And why in India, of all places? New Delhi booksellers alone have sold more than 10,000 copies in the past six months.

Mumbai-based Embassy books is one of half a dozen Indian printers dealing with Mein Kampf, and reprints it every quarter. Owner Sohin Lakhani told the Daily Telegraph:

"Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we're happy to sell it to them.
"They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it".

Scary ... but Guru is all about having fun, so check out this clip from The Producers:

Research just out allows the blue one to indulge one of his favourite hobbies - low key xenophobia - and of course bring you the truth behind the latest credit crunch stats.

A survey from OfficeMetrics shows dedicated (read: fearful for their jobs) office workers across the globe are clocking in earlier, although the apathetic UK workforce is still struggling to start work before 9.10am.

From an average start time of 8.57am six months ago, the average worldwide office drone is now clocking at 8.45am.

OfficeMetrics says this can be put down to workers feeling more pressured to make an impression at work in light of the financial difficulties, but points out that when the figures are broken down, country by country, there are some interesting variations.

Indeed.

Guru's Irish cousin, Seamus O'Guru, has long maintained that everyone, at some level, and often without realising it, wants to be Irish. And it seems he's right ....

Even a natural sceptic like Guru cannot fail to be moved by the tale of Yorkshireman Chris Gregory, a 30 year old payroll officer who underwent brain surgery at Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire Hospital. The operation went well and the patient regained consciousness. His wife, Mary, once her initial elation wore off, was rather nonplussed to hear her husband speaking in a thick Irish brogue, and referring to her as "da broid". Gregory, despite never having set foot in Ireland, had, it seemed, somehow managed to kiss the Blarney Stone. Displaying a typically Irish gift of the gab, he then told his wife "You're da fabbest gal oi know" before belting out a heavily accented rendition of Danny Boy.

Alas for Gregory, the leap from Yorkshireman to Irishman was but a temporary one. Within half an hour, his real accent had returned, and doctors declared him to have been a victim of Foreign Accent Syndrome. Better luck next time, begorrah!