The Evil Gerald Online - Job-seeker regrets not lying about being team player

"Yeah," he opines, "I suppose when your woman interviewing me asked if I worked well with other people I should have said yes." It is the evening after yet another failed job interview. He drags on his cigarette, flicking through channels with the remote control of the TV his mother bought last Christmas. For Jonathan Byrne, 21, of Cabinteely, Co Dublin, the search for a job will resume tommorrow. "Or maybe after the bank holiday weekend," he muses.

Stupid Tesco
For tragic Jon, unlike the rest of the population, is physically unable to lie in interviews. "Well, I didn't really want the poxy job anyway, because then I'd have to stop signing on." Harking back to more innocent times, Jon seems to have been raised on a diet of good, down-home honesty by his doting mother, Maureen. It is symptomatic of the current creeping malaise in the job-market that young people feel pressured to give prospective employers the answers they think they want to hear. Jon's affliction has had a crippling effect on his career. "I mean, who wants to work in a stupid Tesco anyway."

When Fionaigh McKenna, duty manager at Tesco Dun Laoghaire, interviewed Jon on her lunch break last Thursday she went through the 'usual drill', asking "where do you see yourself in five years' time?" and "what hours can you work?". Jon, honest as ever, replied "Ireland" and "whenever".

"Whenever"
But when it came to "Are you a team-player" Jon made the ultimate faux pas and admitted"No." He went on to enthuse at length about his penchant for playing computer fighting game, Tekken, alone, in the dark, ON HIS OWN, in the dark until he falls asleep in front of the telly to wake up to the Big Breakfast. He then let it slip that his favourite work environment would be one that involved a computer with an internet connection and "lots of free time during the day".

When it was pointed out to him that his position of Shelf Stacking Operative at Tesco Dun Laoghaire did not involve free time, the internet or computers in any way, shape or form, Jon let out a deep sigh and offhandedly and for no reason other than it was the first thing that popped into his head, mentioned that he had been fired from his last job as night-shift worker at Texaco on the Clonkeen Road for "smoking joints and 'interfering' with stock".

"We'll be in touch"
Hearing this Ms McKenna said she had to "wind up the interview" right there as there had been a flood of applicants for the prestigious position and they at Tesco liked to see all the applicants.

In a later debriefing with her manager, Ms McKenna said she was unhappy with the level of enthusiasm shown by Mr Byrne at her mention of Tesco's thirteen kinds of onions. She noted on Jon's application that when asked if he was prepared to give one hundred and twenty percent, he got agitated by his belief that any percentage over 100 was impossible. "We at Tesco all give 120%," she told her manager. "I just don't think he was Tesco material."

When you think about it, though
We must all of us feel for "Honest" Jon Byrne, surely the last bastion of purity in a world geared towards sell sell sell, lie, cheat and steal and kick him again you bastard. The Evil Gerald wonders: How long will it be before he finds a job that does not require him to lie?

"Yeah, Fás have lined up another interview for next week with Citibank. I wonder if I should tell them about the time I got suspended for stalking a teacher," he wonders.