THE PRAT IN THE HAT

Around about twenty five years ago, a timid young chap with precious little in the way of practical experience walked for the very first time into yet another office for yet another interview and, despite being third choice for one of two available positions, managed to convince the people inside that he might be worthy of a punt…

Personally, I think that it might have been the hat which actually got the job, and I just happened to come with at as part of the deal, as it were, being, as I was, rather attached to it. After all, my interview technique has always been more than a little useless, what with all the fear and the blind panic and all, and I know for a fact that it didn’t go at all well until it was over and both parties were so much at a loose end that we could think of little to do with the rest of our afternoons so we “might as well have a bit of a chat…”

On such moments destinies turn…

I’ve always hated interviews as a way of choosing employees anyway. Sometimes the better candidates are just lousy at interviews, whereas the confident ones tend to get the job, bugger off for a “better one” a month later, sometimes taking the petty cash along with them as they go.

Perhaps I think that simply because I was always so lousy at them…? After all, everything in life is about “self-interest” and seeing things from your own point of view, isn’t it…?

Later on, and for years afterwards, I was occasionally referred to by at least one of my colleagues as “the prat in the hat” which might have got a little tiresome but did at least prove to me that I did leave an impression that day, and which is why, I think, I got remembered when one of the first choices opted not to take up the opportunity which I so desperately needed at that stage in my life.

In an era when ideas like “loyalty” might have seemed old-fashioned and notions like using jobs as mere stepping stones to a brilliant career seemed to make people rather disinterested in sticking around for long or making any actual effort, even I thought that it might just be a useful starting point for gaining a foothold in the industry, and thought that I might give it six months until something else came along.

Came for six months, stayed for more than a decade… and I’m still not entirely convinced that anything “better” actually came along when the time came for me to leave, in the great scheme of things. Different, yes, but “better…?” Well, it’s hard to say, given how certain things went, but things seem to have turned out okay in the end.

So, at the start of this year, on January the fourth 2013 to be precise, it was exactly twenty five years since I joined the ranks of the “full time employed” for the very first time and left the world of twice daily viewings of “Neighbours” (in the days of Deffnee and Dizz…), too many snack-size Toblerones from the shop positioned far too conveniently across the road, and the surprisingly energetic pastime of a weekly game of Squash behind me forever.

I still have the hat…