These days, it doesn’t pay to be mainstream

You’ll gather from my various scribblings that I am a rather long-suffering chap, and it has finally dawned on me why: I am too mainstream.

I am white, middle class, and not quite old enough to merit any age discrimination status (when it comes in, that is). I am neither over-weight, nor under-weight. I am neither vegan nor vegetarian. I am not a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual. I am not a new father, as you would have read last week, and I am not a practising religious type.

Basically, this means that I am a member of the forgotten majority, which has to prop up the flexible-working agenda of the terribly-oppressed minorities. What this seems to mean is that I am automatically classed as someone on the cusp of instigating a discriminatory policy, because that’s what we mainstream people do – oppress everyone else.

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Or maybe, just for one moment, we could set the conspiratorial mania aside. Would it be so bad for those whose right to go home for indeterminate periods of time are conferred regularly by the Government, to think of those they leave behind? Shouldn’t they be allowed to work without their schedules being interrupted by an interminable stream of temps and interim managers?

But wait – there is light at the end of the tunnel! I have never watched an episode of Big Brother. Surely this puts me in such a tiny minority that no-one would dare challenge the fully-paid year off I have just decided to take?