The Employment Gambit

My life has been in the hands of statistics recently. I’m one of the 1 in 5 graduates currently out of work. Proper work, not dealing drugs work, or medical testing work, or get paid to build your neighbour’s brick wall and don’t tell the taxman about it (if the Inland Revenue is reading this, then I’m joking. If).

Since I’m applying for jobs at least 3 days out of 5, and maybe 1 in 10 of these jobs I’m actually qualified for, statistically I should eventually find employment, even if I don’t score that job as editor of the Financial Times, or that astronaut thing I keep seeing on Milkround.

Except that isn’t how statistics work. Statistics only tell you how things currently stand: applying for jobs 3 days out of 5, qualified for 1 in 10 means exactly that; there’s no inherent likelihood of finding work. For that you need to delve into the dark and nefarious world of probability.

There is no ancient god of probability, but only because that kind of mathematical thinking is a relatively new development in human history. Love, war, archery, natural imagery, playing the lyre, cheating at stuff, all that has been around for millennia, and there’s normally a pantheistic deity either devoted to it or ready to take it under his/her mantle (in the ancient Greek pantheon Apollo is god of about thirty things. He also has a pretty workmanlike attitude to what he patronises, being the god of both plague and medicine).

It’s easier to pray to some higher being than it is to accept the sheer mathematical cruelty of the world. If gravity had been conceptually realised a bit earlier then we’d have a god of gravity (his name would be Crash, his avatar a man on crutches). If we’d come up with probability sooner I’m certain there would have been a god of probability. It’s the perfect gig for a deity: no heavy lifting like that Atlas guy, no work at all really; you just hang about being capricious and humans will worship you because their brains are hardwired that way. When they occasionally win, it’s because you smiled upon them. When they mostly lose, it’s because... well, that’s probability, folks!

Let’s imagine a god of probability. Let’s call him... I don’t know, Gambit, since he was always third favourite X-Man. Let’s say he looks like this:

*Pant* There are a lot of pictures of Gambit kissing Wolverine online, but I think I found them all.

Back to my job hunting. Firstly I haven’t got a clue what 3/5 x 1/10 equals, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be quite a low fraction. If we take the above sum as true for now, then I’ve got a small probability of being successfully employed any time soon. No problem, right? I just have to keep trying. The more jobs I apply for, the more chance I have of being successful. Just gotta keep on truckin.’ Hell, the only reason I’m here talking to you is because Indeed.com has crashed, and I can’t watch porn in Cafe Nero.


Except that isn’t how probability works either. It’s what our brains are programmed to understand, because they are pattern recognition machines, designed to help us react to environmental changes. Unfortunately mathematics isn’t an environmental change, it’s the ancient Greeks’ way of ruining primary school.

So let’s be generous and say I have a 1 in 10 chance of getting an interview out of every job I apply for. The gambler in me says “no problemo, capitan, you need to apply for ten jobs and bingo-bango, you gonna get at least one.”

This tells us two things: firstly that the gambler in me sounds like a dickweed, secondly that 1/10 is a very misleading series of symbols. What is implied is that 1/10 times 10 equals 1, which is unfortunately guffins. Not true. No dice, to use a gambling term. 1/10 is always 1/10, no matter how many times you try. So no matter how many jobs I apply for, I always have the same small chance of success.

I don’t really have any other options, but you can see why gambling is so insidious. Our brains tell us that the more times we try, the greater our chance of winning, which is patently false. Einstein’s theory of how to win at roulette was to “steal the money from the table while the croupier isn’t looking,” and if one of the leading scientific minds of the last century can’t figure it out, I doubt your can-do attitude and lucky rabbit’s foot is going to do jack when it comes to making mathematics pay out. While I don’t lose anything from multiple job enquiries, if I had to bet something in order to play I’d soon be even broker than I am now (something that is unfortunately possible, since some jerk invented negative figures. This is why nerds are bullied at school).

I don’t believe in god, but prayer to a deity is preferable to the repeat misery of my inbox every morning (Dear Milkround. I DO NOT WANT TO BE A RECRUITMENT CONSULTANT. Please leave me alone).

The best thing about the ancient pantheons (Greeks especially, and those thieving Romans), is that they were almost human, fallible; like Eastenders but with more smiting. They were forever falling in love with humans, playing tricks out of spite, meddling with things they shouldn’t be meddling with. And because they were fallible they were knowable, and therefore worth praying to. They could be cajoled, bargained with, even bribed (Zeus especially was amenable to a flash of boob now and again, the horny old goat).

So that time you almost fell over in the bath but didn’t? That’s the god of gravity smiling upon you, or off having a fag or something. He’s got a lot on his plate, what with all those aeroplanes around nowadays. I need a job, and so my pilgrimage to Cafe Nero has become a trip to Gambit’s temple, my every wheedling cover-letter a sacrifice of sorts (of my dignity, mostly).

And that means I can ignore the basic laws of probability, and not get downhearted. I just need to keep playing the game, keep rolling the dice, and Gambit will take pity on me eventually. And when I get my first paycheck I’ll go out and buy a dozen lottery tickets, so that he knows I am grateful. Infinite is his patience, long are his odds, blessed be unto snake-eyes, Amen.

All about the Benjamins

I’m skint. Bust. Stony- broke. Without adequate funds. Rollin’ without the chedda. I can hear you reaching for your wallets, ready to donate your own cash to alleviate my plight, but you needn’t worry. I have a place to live rent free, and most of my meals supplied, and there’s a big stack of books in the bookcase. To those of you to whom this sounds a bit familiar, you’ve got it in one: I’ve gone to live with the parentals.

After a good few years living as my own man, moving back in with the folks can be a bit of a shock; I already knew it wasn’t really acceptable to drink the milk straight out of the carton while listening to thrash metal and watching porn in the living room, but darn it all if I hadn’t gotten used to it. Of course living in a house with responsible people has some wonderful, nearly forgotten advantages: it sure is easy to read with light-bulbs in all the fittings, and I can walk around barefoot without contracting any interesting infections from the carpets.

Unfortunately, hanging around reading Wilkie Collins books and eating free food is destined to have a negative effect on my trim figure. I’m going to have to venture abroad at some point and to do that, I’ll need petrol for the car. This can be a bit of a bugger because, as I’m sure you are well aware, society seems to rely on money as an exchange mechanism for goods and services. It seems unlikely that my preferred system, in which I am given anything I like in exchange for a wink and a smile, is going to work on the dour gentleman employed at the petrol station at the bottom of the street. So I’m going to have to get some money from somewhere. Let’s have a look at my options:

1.Earn it. This seems to be the accepted method, but also a challenging one. The job market is hardly crying out for literature graduates with moderate to poor computer skills, and so it looks like it’s going to be scut work for me. Alas, the summer is hardly the time to be getting temporary work, as every other returning student in the country tramps the streets looking for dishwashing and labouring opportunities. On the plus side, it gives me the chance to go into a lot of pubs with the stated reason of seeking employment, but assuming I don’t go hired, a conciliatory pint wouldn’t go amiss. Lets say I can get turned down five times by mid afternoon, and I can go home no longer worried about my lack of employment! Although I’d have to get someone to lend me the money for the beer, as pubs tend not to give it out gratis (I have already explored this). Shit.

2.Nick it. For the increasingly desperate, there is always a life of crime. I may have to wait a while before I start targeting family members, lest the link between my recent arrival and sudden poverty prove too obvious. In the meantime I’ll have to liberate funds from someone less close to home. Burglary seems like a lot of effort, and I’m too feeble to mug even the wobbliest of pensioners. That really only leaves armed robbery- now if I can just find a bank with some money left in it.

3.Borrow it. Despite the recent financial crisis, banks seem only too keen to extend the overdraft of stinking student layabouts like myself. The only problem is they eventually come calling for it back- landing me in a situation much like my current one, only with the threat of jail time.

4.Make someone give it to you. This used to be categorised under similar terms to the aforementioned armed robbery, but is now colloquially know as ‘having an accident that wasn’t your fault,’ or even more colloquially as ‘ripping some poor bastard off.’ No gap in the pavement, badly driven forklift or improperly signposted patch of wet floor shall escape my roving eye and clumsy feet. Failing that, who do I know that I can sue?

5.Find it. Obviously the best solution, but one that requires quite a lot of effort. It is unlikely that I’ll walk round a corner and trip over a mountain of platinum, so it’s sofa diving for me.

6.Marry it. I always fancied being a kept man.

If anybody has any other suggestions I would be happy to hear them. Or you can just stick the check in the post.