Parallel lies

Francis receives his formal job offer by e-mail. His potential employers want him to start straight away. He doesn't. "I'm going to say that I'm on four to six week's notice. Then I can keep looking round for a bit."

There I was, thinking I'd got the hang of employment basics which I had pegged as follows:

Get job. Go into office.
Lose job. Stop going into office.

According to these simple definitions, Francis is now employer, job and notice period free. Yet he's managed to overturn the established order by losing his job while simultaneously still managing to be at work.

I ask him how he's managing to juggle a duel existence in a parallel universe when I'm struggling to keep just the one life ticking along.

He invites me to look at his e-mail address. After over a decade of marriage, you take your pleasures where you can, so I go off for a good stare. Its properties (which in this case must be supernatural ones) state, categorically, that instead of being francis@redundancynightmare.co.uk he's emphatically still francis@oldemployer.com

"It's still on their server," he says, proudly.

It turns out that all the nicer headhunters know he's left, while the nasty ones think he's still there. "Of course, it can be tricky remembering who knows what," he says.

Then, adding significantly to my sense of confusion, he heads off back to the old company for yet another farewell lunch.