100,000 Interviews – A Genius in his own Mind
by David Palethorpe
Some months ago, a distinguished Teignbridge District Councillor — a man of such vast intellect, boundless confidence, and self-proclaimed professional eminence — made the rather astonishing declaration that, over the course of his illustrious and unparalleled career, he had personally conducted over 100,000 interviews.
Now, I’m not a Human Resources specialist, nor do I hold a framed certificate in corporate exaggeration, but I have been involved in a fair number of interviews for senior positions.
And in my modest experience, a one-hour interview generally requires at least another hour of preparation — reading, note-taking, and occasionally pretending to be impressed.
So, let’s engage in a little arithmetic. If each of these supposedly 100,000 interviews consumed a mere two hours in total, our superhuman councillor has spent at least 200,000 hours in the noble pursuit of interrogating others.
At a conservative estimate of a 37-hour working week (allowing him, of course, a civilised hour for lunch each day and three weeks’ holiday to recuperate from all that interviewing), this titan of industry would have been at it for approximately 5,405 weeks — or, to put it more dramatically, 110 years of continuous, unbroken interview duty.
Even if we are charitable enough to halve the time, it still comes to 55 years. Which means, unless he began his career before he was born, the good councillor must now be somewhere between 75 and 130 years old.
Now, I’m a mere 76 myself and have managed to squeeze a fair bit into those years — marriage, children, grandchildren, three careers, a reasonable education, and a few adventures besides.
The hero of our tale has, I understand, done much the same.
Quite how he found the spare century or so to conduct this Herculean number of interviews, heaven alone knows — assuming, of course, heaven has kept the timesheets.
Unless, perhaps, he is a reincarnated Doctor Who, equipped with a TARDIS and the remarkable ability to occupy two — or possibly three — dimensions simultaneously.
A quality that, given his self-perception, may well be entirely plausible in his own mind.
I’ve no doubt that should he read this; he will conjure up a smooth, plausible, and wholly implausible explanation to justify his claim.
And I suspect that every councillor within earshot will instantly recognise the self-styled oracle to whom this refers.
There are, of course, many reasons to scrutinise the individual in question and to question the veracity, consistency, and sheer theatricality of his statements in the Council Chamber.
But, as my old colleagues down the coal mine used to say with their usual economy of words and precision of thought — it might simply be that:-
“He’s full of shit.”
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