Guru was concerned after discovering that a private investigation firm is advertising in job centres for flirtatious men and women to work as ‘honey trap’ agents.
The company, cunningly called The Honey Trap, offers £30-50 per hour for smart and confident people to ‘detect infidelity in personal relationships and report back to the client’.
Hours are given as between 10am and 9pm, six days per week, including evening and weekend work. The work is advertised in job centres across the UK on the computerised Job Point database.
There is a website for interested parties that explains that employees are required to observe or flirt with a target to test their fidelity.
However, Guru – who knows only too well the forbidden thrill of extra-marital temptation – fears that the service could break up happy relationships as well as expose dishonest partners.
CIPD members should be worried too – the service is based in Harrogate.
Spanish practices sure to turn heads
Strikes to the right of Guru, strikes to the left of Guru, strikes in front of Guru… It could be the beginning of a poem to match Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, but alas it is just Guru skimming the papers over his morning tea.
It seems to Guru that things are just too evenly balanced these days and one side needs to bring in some heavy hitters – and Guru doesn’t mean those of the stature of Bob Crow or Digby Jones.
When he wants to tip the scales, Guru just puts in a quick call to the appropriate celebrity colleague who will then come out in support of his latest, morally unjustified crusade.
Like many of Guru’s strategies, this idea has spread, this time all the way to Spain, where staff walked out of a luxury hotel over a pay dispute.
The venue was supposed to be full of actors who were staying in the San Sebastian hotel during the San Sebastian film festival and a chambermaid took advantage of the presence of Sean Penn, an actor who often champions the underdog, in her fight for justice.
She said if Penn showed solidarity, she would invite him to stay in her flat: “He can come and stay with me instead,” she said. “He can come into my bed if he wants.”
Little in the way of job satisfaction
Antipodean disciples will be sad to learn that ‘leprechaun hurling’ may soon come to an end in New Zealand.
Officials from the Little People of New Zealand organisation (LPNZ) say that four-foot-six Andrew Roigard is demeaning small folk while putting in his hours as the entertainment at Mount Mellick bar at Mount Maunganui on the North Island.
Roigard dons a helmet and boxer shorts and, having smothered himself in vegetable oil, is paid by punters to be launched the length of the bar on a plastic sheet.
The LPNZ also claim Roigard is putting his health at risk because his condition puts immense pressure on his spine, joints and muscles.
Guru would like to point out that Roigard must be maintaining good work-life balance, otherwise the vertically challenged chap would end up lying in a pile of grease on the floor (something that Guru also recommends for a weekend’s entertainment).
The final word on the work-shy fops
Guru was impressed by British Waterways’ HR manager Andrew Johnson’s approach to tackling ‘sickies’, which he outlined in the final limerick of the great absence debate:
Our post-room spotty yoof Roger,
The proverbial work-shy dodger,
His phoning in sick,
Was a regular trick,
Til we threatened to chop off his todger.
Guru would like to thank everyone who sent in their poetic gems and leaves disciples with this advice:
Those that wrote about others who shirk,
And head home from the office to lurk,
Should stop writing in rhyme,
And stop wasting their time,
And get back to doing some work.
