I saw a post on Fb from a pal of mine who’d lifted an extract from a Douglas Adams story called “The Englishman and the Biscuit”.  Now I have no intention of trying to gazump his tale (his writing far outshines mine) but I suspect I have the edge on him in terms of personal experience.

It would have been about thirty years ago when I worked for the Coal Board that I applied for a job with a Banbury company that made extruded aluminium.  My only previous experience of aluminium extended to trying to bend the stuff to assemble a greenhouse.

No matter. 

I’d been to an earlier long-list interview and had been invited back for a final assessment/selection day.  When I got there it turned out there were just the two of us up for the Cup - me and a rather delicate looking youth some years my junior.

The day would consist of a number of assessments – written exercises, role plays and ability and personality tests, culminating in a final panel interview in the afternoon. 

(I can see your wondering about these plates of sandwiches.  Bear with me.)

We’d undergone the morning’s assessments but were falling behind time; so much so that one of the assessors asked if we wouldn’t mind completing the Personality Questionnaire during a sandwich lunch.

So we carried on filling in the paperwork, he on one side of the table, me on the other, as the plates of dinky-cut sandwiches were placed between us.

After a bit, I reached out for one as I carried on scribbling.  “Mmmm. Cheese” I said to myself.  I took another.

“I wonder what the filling is on the other plate” I thought. I took one.

“Ah. Ham. Lovely”

All the while Nerdy had kept his head down doing his homework.

I took another from the ham plate.  IT WAS CHEESE.

Then the cruel realisation dawned on me that they weren’t plates of ham and cheese.  They were mine and his!

It was then I noticed a look of terror in his eyes as he glanced up.  I knew what he was thinking.

“FUCKING ANIMAL!”

They didn’t retain me for the afternoon interview.