Would you get sent to Mars?

18 February 2015 by Catherine Holdsworth in Business and finance, Current events

We’ve all had jobs we’d rather forget, whether it be working in a rowdy bar cleaning up vomit from the toilets or spending your days in a call centre and getting abuse thrown at you for your whole shift. But these are run-of-the-mill jobs (for most of us) that we have to do so that we can climb the ladder of success to reach the goal of being happy in our careers.

But what is the oddest job? This week, NASA revealed the top ten finalists for their Mars One mission. These will be the first people to live on another planet, permanently. No more chocolate bars, binge watching of Keeping up with the Kardashians or relaxing walks on the beach for these people. They are all on a one-way mission to become Martians and will leave our planet forever. The very idea of this mission has sent the Infinite Ideas office into a panic. We really don’t want to go to Mars, thank you very much, it’s hard enough to psych ourselves to go to London when needs must! Therefore, people that really want to do this are most likely slightly odd themselves and planet Earth will probably not miss them very much. Goodbye and thank you Martians!

However, after the scare of being sent to Mars, we found an equally odd job that might seem really fun. The position of Antarctic postmaster has become available and we think it would be just lovely to spend a few months ‘down south’ playing with penguins and making snow men. Sure, apparently the penguins smell a bit, but so will you if you live in the Antarctic (with no shower for a month, apparently) so you probably will come to really love the smell of ‘eau de penguin’. Though it might be lonely, you can take lots of books with you and, working in the post office, you can get lots of care packages of Dairy Milk and PG Tips sent from your mum. It’s probably very safe as we assume the crime rate in Antarctica is very low (excuse the pun) and there are no polar bears as they are northern dwellers (much like Jon Snow).

So if any of these rather silly jobs appeal to you, we can help you out. Though we will not be joining you on your mission to Mars, we will give you lots of business tips on how to make sure you secure your dream job. Surely the Mars trip will need a leader (though we fear some sort of Lord of the Flies scenario will ensue) and so to help them out, our book, 100+ Management Models by Fons Trompenaars and Piet Hein Coebergh is an excellent resource for an efficient leader. We will be with you in spirit, Mars One.