I’ve come across the advice to write my own job description a few times now. As a sole trader my role includes everything! – marketing, accounting, bookings, stock management, and everything else. I assume it’s a way of encouraging people to identify areas of weakness and celebrate areas of strength. I could use this as an opportunity to be reflective and identify on all the things I’d dearly love to delegate (mainly the accounts) but instead I thought I would entertain myself by imagining recruiting my replacement.
Wanted – an itinerant bringer of joy*.
We require an affable person with an in depth knowledge of board games to ‘tek board games all ovver’** both in Leeds and beyond. The successful applicant does not need to fully understand the concept of: ‘some’, ‘a few’, ‘moderate’ or ‘enough’ with regards to the board games they pack for events. But, a sense of rising panic at the idea of having ‘not enough’, ‘too few’, or ‘insufficient’ games for people to choose from is desirable. This sense of panic should be consolidated by requests for games that they thought about bringing but ultimately left on the shelf.
*the way I was once described by the lovely Rev Heston.
** the way I was described by lovely Gayle Lofthouse off of the radio.
They should show initiative when dealing with hilarious requests from people who have no intention of playing games. E.g. : ‘Have you got strip poker?’ ‘No, but I have a deck of cards if you (insert number of drunk men here) wanted to play together.’
The ideal candidate will have a creative approach to storage solutions. Games are stored in date order, alphabetically and by genre, on bookshelves in the dining room, home office space, spare room, in bags which have come from and are going to events. Not of all these things are true at any given time. However, there is a spreadsheet which is meticulously completed when it is completed.
Leftward leaning applicants are strongly encouraged. They should believe in an ideal world where people truly pay as they can afford, meaning everyone gets to play games together and some people pay more. This enables those who can afford less to still take part. However, this should be balanced by the understanding that capitalism is where we are. The perfect candidate will wrestle with this dichotomy every time someone asks how much it costs to hire them and will make good use of the phrase ‘sliding scale’.
To do lists and note taking skills are a must – preferably they will be attending the interview with a new notebook just for this purpose. It will be a ‘nice’ notebook accompanied by a ‘nice writer’ (this will not be new as reliability when it comes to pens is more important than newness). The desirable applicant will have started making notes immediately while the perfect candidate will have skipped the first page in case their writing is scruffy and they ruin the whole notebook.
Communication skills are key. They will be adept at teaching games in a clear manner without digressing to point out how cute certain cards are or to tell anecdotes about the last time they played that game. This is desirable, rather than essential. While good at teaching, our current employee can not remain on topic for more than a few minutes at a time so any advance on that would be ideal.
Unlike our current employee we are hoping to find someone who has a passion for all things accounting. Tracking mileage, sending and chasing invoices should be a source of delight. At no time should there be a stack of receipts that need matching up with expenses. These will be completed daily and joyfully. A similar approach to emails will be required. Each day will end with an empty inbox. To clarify – all emails should have been actioned – not deleted or placed in a folder ominously labelled ‘later’.
Holiday entitlement: There is of course a holiday allowance but ideally most free time should be spent playing board games, researching board games, talking about board games or, worrying about having too much work on and not enough work simultaneously.
Salary: Negotiable.
Perks: what better perk is there than being an itinerant bringer of joy. Plus you’re self employed so no more working with dicks!
Skirt from Ludo Cherry (you can’t see here but the dots are tiny D20s)
