Roles

• Agent: JobSearch Agent
• Applicant: Job seeker
• Secretary: Secretary/assistant-type person

(knock)
Agent: Come in...
Applicant: Hi. Is this the JobSearch agency?
Agent: Yes it is. What can I do you for?
Applicant: I was wondering if there were any job openings.
Agent: Well we seem to need six slick thistle sifters.
Applicant: Six slick thistle sifters?
Agent: Yes, six slick thistle sifters to thresh thirty-six thousand thistle thickets and then successfully sieve the sticks from the thistles.
Applicant: Sift sticks from thistles? What sorts of sticks need to be sifted from thistles?
Agent: Sycamore sticks.
Applicant: Sycamore sticks? What silly thistle sifters to sow thistles by sycamores!
Agent: Aha, but thistle thickets sown thickly by sycamores thrive. So the thistles sifters aren't such silly thinkers after all.
Applicant: I see. But surely there should be something safer than sifting thistles with simple sieves. I could thrust thousands of thistles through my thumb by sifting thirty-six thousand thickets of thistles with a sieve.
Agent: (pause) Are you any good at cooking?
Applicant: I frequently fry frogs and thawed freshwater fish for three famous French thespians.
Agent: Fascinating. Can you pluck pheasants?
Applicant: I would prefer to pluck pheasants to sifting thousands of stick-filled thistles with several shifty thistle sifters.
Agent: But plucking pheasants is pretty physical and not quite pleasant.
Applicant: On the contrary, I think plucking pheasants is fairly pleasant.
Agent: Well the present pheasant plucker finds pheasant plucking particularly unpleasant.
Applicant: How many pheasants does the present pheasant plucker pluck?
Agent: A few thousand.
Applicant: A few thousand pheasants! No wonder the present pheasant plucker does not find plucking pleasant. Do you have anything else?
Agent: Well those few thousand freshly plucked pheasants need to be ferried by trucks from France to Finland.
Applicant: Trucks?
Agent: Well particularly, a red lorry with a really weird rear left wheel.
Applicant: Red lorry? Red lorry, yellow lorry it makes little difference. A lorry with a really weird rear wheel will rarely let me ferry those few thousand freshly plucked pheasants from France. It'd be far less fiddlesome to ferry the pheasants from France to Finland by a cheap ship trip.
Agent: Cheap ship trips frequently sit for short sections in thick fog on trips to the south of Finland.
Applicant: Argh! First it was sifting thousands of thistles for silly thistles sifters who sow their thickets in the thick of sycamore saplings, next it was a plucking a few thousand unplucked pheasants that need to then be ferried from France to Finland in a red lorry with a really weird rear left wheel. Do you have any sensible jobs?
Agent: Um... how about mixing boxes of biscuit mix in bins?
Applicant: No!
Agent: Boiling the soiled oil for Awful Ollie's Old Autos?
Applicant: No!
Agent: You sure you don't want to crush cracker crumbs in cardboard crates?
Applicant: No!
Agent: How about bending rubber baby-buggy bumpers?
Applicant: No!
Agent: Sketching stretched stress scratches for an architect?
Applicant: No!!!
Agent: Well, we have one last job but it's a bit specialised...
Applicant: (pause, slightly interested but still wary) What is it?
Agent: Well it involves slicing up sheets of Swiss sweets and sending it to the sick sheik, Caesar the sixth.
Applicant: Sick sheiks can sit and shear Swiss sweets all they like! You won't see me subjecting myself to such silly stuff. That's it! I've had it!
(Applicant leaves in frustration)
 

(Secretary enters)
Agent: Oh well...
Secretary: We have a new job opening in.
Agent: Why thank you. What's it for?
Secretary: A speech pathologist.
Agent: As if anyone these days would make a sufficient speech pathologist.