What are they on about?

There's been nothing from the spa bath people. I imagine Mr Tosser and his team totally absorbed in a battery of gruelling factory tests; dropping babies in, perhaps, and seeing if they get thrown out with the bathwater, or sending everyone on a training course, naturally involving total immersion.

Nice but useless headhunter sends an e-mail saying that the role he had in mind for Francis that needed 'senior business building team leadership' changed drastically following the client meeting. It's now shrunk to a much smaller, junior business building role involving a box of Lego in the stationary cupboard.

But at last Francis has been invited to see another company. It's a chocolate firm hoping to team up with a cereal manufacturer for true love, cinema and theatre trips and the opportunity to make lots and lots of chocolate crispies when there's nothing else doing up at the factory of a Friday afternoon.

It's all getting on Francis's nerves.
"I hate having to go through all this, 'Yes, I'm professional. Yes, I can think of no better way to see out my days than by extolling the virtues of your...'" (insert product here).

To cheer him up, I decide to check out a few of the headhunters.

According to its website, the latest headhunter knows ' how important it is to recruit people who understand your business.' The firm can do this ...'Because we are those people.' Which, if true, is amazing. Not only do they interview candidates, they actually mind meld with them, too. No wonder they claim they add value. If inhabiting several bodies simultaneously isn't adding value, I don't know what is. They never stand still, they add. What with having to switch DNA all the time, it's not really surprising.

'The world of retail is changing,' says the second load of blurb, 'and more than ever, it is people who are making the difference'. As opposed to what? The flood of dolphins that swamped the employment market in the 1990s and really took the industry downhill, what with their insistence on jumping through hoops at work and getting paid in dead fish?

'To discover new islands', says the third, 'candidates need to lose sight of the shore'. I think we all know what they're on about. It's those dolphins again. Somebody's just going to have to stop them.

Then I come across a site called 'Doctor Job.' which, with its reassuring pseudo-medical title, will, I feel sure, have answers for every recruitment problem. But no. 'Can you answer Doctor Job's big question?' asks the site. I click. It won't let me on. I know why, though. The question is obviously, 'Why are dolphins still getting more than their fair share of the jobs?' and they're worried I'll go public with the information.

Francis will just have to change his name to Flipper and brush up on his sonar. Set to the right frequency, I gather that a technically adept dolphin can stun a whole school of herring. Now there's something that'll add a je ne sais quoi to his cv. Might help flog the odd spa bath or two, I shouldn't wonder.