Interlude: The Head-hunter:
I came up from the tube only two streets away from the address in the Daily Telegraph and my watch read 9:45, with 15 minutes until my interview. I felt that being early could be regarded in the same light as being late so I walked slowly around the block twice and rang the bell at exactly 10:00 o’clock. A smartly dressed middle aged lady opened the door and invited me in. “I’m here about the ink technician job in New York,” I told her. “The one advertised in yesterday’s ‘Telegraph’.” “Of course,” she said. “If you’d like to take a seat, Mr. Jackman will be with you shortly”. Ten minutes later Mr. Jackman came into the office, looked at me and left. I bit down on my tongue and did a few deep breathing exercises to calm down. Since the RAF Assessment I was always on guard. If they were testing my ability to stay cool, I would not disappoint them. After another ten minutes Jackman came back and beckoned me to follow him. He led me to a small bare white-walled room with a tiny table and a wooden chair; there were some papers and a pencil on the table. He indicated for me to sit down. “Standard Tests,” he said. “Twenty minutes.” He left.
I took off my watch and set it in front of me so that I could keep one eye on the time. This was not at all what I had expected; I was back in school, wondering if I’d revised enough, wondering what the questions would be. Only one way to find out. I turned over the paper.
The questions on the paper were what I would call ‘brain teasers’; I wondered why the New York Ink Company wanted to know if I could do brain teasers. I reminded myself that the Ink Company was offering $12,000 a year starting salary. I would show them that I could do brain teasers with the best of them.
What is the next number In this series: 1,2,4,7 ? Easy, skip 1, then 2, then 3, then 4. Answer 11.
What letter comes next: M,T,W,T? Trick question, these are days of the week. Answer F.
Which is odd man out? 4, 8, 12, 13. Easy 13 is prime.
I filled in the numbers until my pencil was worn down, then used the pen I had brought with me. In a lot of cases, especially those with multi-choice answer boxes, I went by intuition and checked the answer I felt was right. It would be stupid to get hung up on one question when I could be answering a dozen in the same amount of time. If my intuition misled me I still had a one in four chance of being right. I checked the clock, lots of time. I finished the last page with a few minutes left so I went looking for Jackman. I found him with the lady I had met at the door. He raised his eyebrows at me. “Are you giving up?” he asked me. “No, I’ve finished them,” I said. He gave me a funny look. “Are you joking? Nobody finishes them!” “Well I did!” Jackman took the papers and scurried away. I looked around and found a chair. I tried to chat with the nice lady but she wouldn’t talk. Ten minutes later Jackman came back, but it was a different Jackman.
“Please come this way, Mr. Daniels,” he said, smiling. “So sorry to keep you waiting. Emma, find Mr. Daniels a coffee, will you?” “Tea would be nice,” I said.
His office was twice the size of Fishburn’s Chief Chemist, and full of leather. I sank so far down into the chair that I worried I would not be able to climb out.
“Your IQ is off the chart,” he said, looking as if this were something special. “But I suppose you know that,” I smiled and nodded, trying to recall what the I and Q stood for. “The chart goes up to 135,” he said. “It goes higher but it’s no longer accurate; there is a different set of questions for the higher levels, but we’ve never needed them until now.”
I recalled from my psychology readings at Leeds that IQ was some sort of a ratio. The ratio of ‘mental age’ to ‘physical age’ sounded right, which meant that if my IQ was 135, my physical age was 24, then my mental age must be 32. I didn’t think that was in any way special, or why it was worth the bother of measuring. I knew several people in their thirties and some of them were barely above the ‘developmentally challenged’ category. Still, if he was happy about it then so was I.
“The Ink Technician job pays $12,000 to start, is that right?” I said, wanting to get some focus to our interview. “My dear Mr. Daniels,” he looked straight at me, “That job is not for you. You’re worth far more than that,” ‘Oh, ho’ I thought, ‘been here before.’
I left with the assurance that he would talk to his New York client and get back to me with a range of options for employment. I would have a choice of jobs? Worth far more than $12,000 per annum? I was still grinning when I got on the Tube back to Harrow. I felt like I was Alice, just back from Wonderland.
I never heard from Jackman again.
A week later I was working on the QC bench when a man I’d seen around but did not know came into the lab. He had a word with one of my colleagues, who pointed at me. The man came over, and beckoned for me to follow him into the factory and in a quiet area by the loading dock he introduced himself. “I’m Trevor,” he said. “I work in the office; I send and receive Faxes for the brass. This came in yesterday.” He handed me a paper. It was a FAX message from the company I’d applied to in New York addressed to Fishburn’s CEO. Paraphrasing the content, it said “One of your lab technicians, Mr. Barry Daniels, has applied for a position with our company. Our man in London speaks very highly of Daniels and suggests we make him a generous offer. We are tempted to do so, but you will then need a replacement and will probably raid us, or our UK affiliate. Let’s stop this before it starts. We won’t poach your techs if you don’t poach ours.” There was no signature.
“I could get fired for showing you this,” Trevor said. “Please don’t do anything to give me away,” “I’m not going to do anything,” I told him. “Don’t worry. I owe you.”
I went to the Harrow Public Library and found out what IQ was all about. It wasn’t about being 32. It meant I was very smart, smarter than most people. No big deal, I’d always known that.