Sideswipe: Breakout

Photo / Supplied

Not a word one can treat lightly in the prison service.

Long time between weddings

June Van Walen of West Harbour reckons the NZ Woman's Weekly front cover referring to the royal wedding as the 'Wedding of the Century', is a little presumptuous. "As the century is only 11 years old there are still 89 years to go before we reach the next century. A number of very important royal weddings could take place over the next 89 years!"

Bad judgment

1) A plastic surgeon in Canada attended a local school's careers day and brought along saline breast implants (which he passed around for the kids to handle).

2) A man was sentenced to 5 months' jail for making survivalist bombs to protect his family after he became alarmed by the movie 2012, which portrays the chaos expected when the world ends.

(Source: News of the Weird.com)

Shelve the urgency factor

Nikki writes: "After interviewing many people over the years for various positions, I have done away with the time limits on the tests ... Anyone can rush through a job, a slap-dash, but I prefer to have something done properly, with care and effort ... That's not to say that when a job requires urgency the person concerned should be able to cope, but normal everyday working conditions do not require urgency every single minute of the day."

A word to the useless

Kip says it's tough to accept failure: "Nobody wants to feel like they failed a test because they ... um ... failed. They'd much rather think the test was flawed. I've worked with plenty of people who are bright as, yet never manage to complete a piece of work on their desk, and that makes them bloody useless."

Forget being a team player

Paul writes: "I had a job interview within Telecom a few years back and was asked to complete fairly lengthy numeric and language tests online. They phoned me back a few days later amazed I had got all the questions right and in the fastest time they had recorded. They said I was in the top 1 per cent of results. But they were looking for more of 'a team player', they said. I moved to Australia not long after and applied for a job paying twice the money. The interview was just a short chat about sports and social life. The money is twice as good and I've achieved amazing sales results. So thank you Telecom!"