If you Google that phrase you get any number of possible movie sources for it, but here in the height of the holiday season, I can offer you two more.
First, back to the studio at BBC News Online where some staffer with time on his/her hands and a page to fill produced last week the surreally pointless headline “Scaffolding collapse: nobody trapped under rubble” and to bring the piece alive, put next to it a video clip of literally no-one being trapped in any way. Job done, I think.
And then similarly to Acas for its newly re-issued guidance on Your First Job. This is clearly aimed at those fresh out of school or Uni, certificates burning a hole in their new pockets and off into the workplace for the first time.
What are Acas’ key messages for this new generation? It’s not high-level stuff, in all honesty, and if people do come out of the UK educational system still needing this sort of thing then frankly we have altogether bigger problems than a shortage of STEM graduates. Hold onto your hats for this, boys and girls, and here we go:
“You should be prepared to learn about the rules that your new workplace has, and to follow them”
“It is important to make sure you are on time in your new job … as many organisations may [may??] have rules about lateness”
For those whose connection with reality is more than usually tenuous, there is this salutary reminder:
“Before you start your new job make sure you know where you’re supposed to be”
And in a particularly brutal piece of expectation management for the starry-eyed entrant to the world of work:
“Your first job may not be your dream job”
To make the guidance particularly accessible to the newer worker, Acas has kindly included a number of common grammatical errors, including the repeated starting of new thoughts or sentences with commas. For those for whom the written word is a bit much there is also an animated video about things that can go wrong on your first day. Oddly this does not include the misfortune of a new starter here a number of years ago who was inadvertently swept into a seminar audience instead of the induction process and spent his first two hours with us on how to deal with grievances. Employers, it may be quiet, but don’t trouble yourselves with this one.
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