Get smart and join the spies
David Slack knows where to find a career with great coffee and all the answers.
For some lucky New Zealanders, today will be a morning off. They’ll wake up in their car and think: ‘‘Sunday. Sweet! I can sleep in.’’
But then they’ll remember they need to back out of the driveway first so the owner can get his car past. For a hundred a week that’s a pretty good deal, though: somewhere to park in Auckland every night, plus you get to go inside to use the bathroom before you head off to work.
There are people in Syria who’d do anything to live that life. We forget that when we bang on about a so-called housing crisis.
Some people just can’t stop being negative. If they’re not complaining about a brick and tile in Papatoetoe costing $1.2 million, they’re complaining about people not getting paid enough.
Talk about your glass halfempty. There are plenty of great-paying jobs if you just look around. Chief executive of Fonterra or Westpac. All Black captain. Get something like that, you can easily afford a nice place in Auckland.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: ‘‘when will it be my turn to be chief executive of Westpac?’’ Good question, but I have two words for you: GCSB agent.
Why wait to run a bank when you can be a spy? The Government has big plans for the GCSB, and without going into too much boring detail about the boring new laws, you just need to know this: they’ll be hiring.
Spies make good coin, don’t worry about that. All your internet paid for, you get to travel, and they’re bound to have good coffee. And fruit. I bet they have fresh fruit in the offices. All the good places do these days.
Also, you find out about stuff way before anybody else. TVNZ announced this week that Hilary and that young shaver in the suit are replacing two other people. If you’d been in the GCSB you’d have known about that ages ago. That impresses people at barbecues, don’t you worry.
You can even pretend to be someone else if you want to. It’s right there in the new law. You can pretend to be chief executive of Fonterra or Westpac, or All Black captain and as long as you say you’re doing to it to protect the nation’s security, no one can stop you. Imagine if you could pretend to be anybody at all. I reckon people would start taking you a bit more seriously don’t you?
Imagine if you could pretend to be anybody at all.
The only thing you’ll really have to worry about is bores pinning you down at a barbecue and banging on and on. Like: ‘‘that whole jihadi brides thing was made up.’’ Or: ‘‘you people just pretend the world’s about to blow up whenever you want more powers.’’
Just say to them: ‘‘Isis’’ or ‘‘jihadists’’. That will mostly do the trick, because a lot of people see footage of a beheading and find it difficult to keep on thinking carefully. Seeing something monstrous will do that to you. You may no longer be inclined to compare the number of car crash deaths to the numbers of murders committed by Isis and figure out which is the greater threat, and this is the way the terrorists win.
There will still be some people who keep coming at you at the barbecue, though. They probably hate New Zealand, but don’t get wound up about that. Just say: ‘‘9/11’’
That should shut them up, but sometimes it won’t, and instead they say to you: ‘‘Well, if your friends in the CIA are so good why didn’t they stop those terrorists while they were still in pilot school?’’
You could maybe say back to them: ‘‘Well that was because the CIA were having to fight with their hands tied thanks to Clinton being all PC about human rights but now they’re back to doing things the way they used to.’’
They might reply: ‘‘Oh you mean like the CIA in Afghanistan in the 1980s when they trained the mujahideen to fight and gave them money and they turned into Al Qaeda?’’
At this point you should probably decide that life’s too short. Either ask them how they spell their last name, and make a big show of writing it down very slowly, or say: ‘‘Hey did you hear who’s taking over at Breakfast?