Guru

This
week’s guru

Convenience
shopper runs out of work time

As
they say, it’s all a matter of timing. Guru was about to give up on his
attempts to get an interview with Peter Jackson, personnel director of
Walsall-based T&S Stores, which runs the One-stop and Dillons chain of
convenience shops, when he finally got through.

Jackson
is uniquely placed to comment on a matter of great significance: his company is
the only one ever to be prosecuted for breaching the Working Time Regulations.
An outpost in Norwich failed to abide by article 71a, which says employers must
offer night workers free health assessments.

But
without a trace of irony, Jackson said he’d love to help but was up to his
eyes, and would be for the rest of the week, and indeed next week and was
terribly sorry, but just really, really didn’t have the time.

Ministers
play election game

Why
are cabinet ministers like London buses? Because you wait for ages for one to
turn up and then five rush by all in one go. This was the Industrial Society’s
experience last week at the launch of the new New Deal.

As
a gesture towards all the hard work it has put in on the New Deal – a lot of
which got cast aside because unemployment dipped below one million – Tony Blair
decided to hold the launch at the Industrial Society’s HQ. So pleased was the
Government with the New Deal, which has adopted more of a welfare for work
approach, that five ministers turned up, including the PM and Chancellor of the
Exchequer.

Apparently,
the ministers demanded a massive summit table for the press briefing, and just
when the press were about to arrive, rushed to get the best positions as if it
was a game of musical chairs. You couldn’t guess a General Election was
approaching, could you?

Fire
service has pick of the crop

Guru
could now write a book on entertaining performance appraisals following
contributions from his disciples. The best this week come from the Hampshire
Fire and Rescue Service. Such as, “This fire-fighter is able to use his own initiative
when told to do so.”

Howlers
in job applications were good too: “I entered the Army boxing trials but I
passed out before I knew whether I had won or not” or “My mother served the
community for many years and I have seen the pleasure she gets from it”.

But
Guru’s favourite was, “I worked as a trainee butcher, my main tasks were
rolling joints and mincing.”

Drug
smuggler searches for pot of gold

There
are job ads and then there are job ads. A former drugs smuggler has put an
advert in a Canadian newspaper in a bid to find a job.

Sensibly,
Brian O’Dea’s “for hire” advert asks potential employers to overlook the
downside of his criminal past. He acquired considerable business skills running
a global drugs operation which smuggled 75 tons of cannabis into the US in the
1980s. The 33-line advert in the National Post is titled “Former marijuana
smuggler”. O’Dea claims his gang landed and sold more than £69m worth of
marijuana in the US. He was arrested and charged with conspiracy to import
drugs in 1990.

In
his ad, O’Dea said, “Having successfully completed a 10-year sentence,
incident-free, for importing 75 tons of marijuana into the US, I am now seeking
a legal and legitimate means to support myself and family.”

Anyone
in the import and export business might baulk at offering this job candidate a
position but if you want to offer O’Dea a clean break you can visit www.jimcam.sonn.com/employment.jpg