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Female record shop employee under pressure to be attractive in alternative way

A WOMAN working in an independent record shop is feeling pressured to be extremely attractive in a quirky and unconventional way, she has confirmed. 

Hannah Tomlinson, aged 26, expected the customer base of Vinyl Fantasy to objectify her less than in her previous role at Wetherspoons, only to find herself judged for not wearing black-framed glasses and thick hand-knitted jumpers in mismatched colours.

She said: “I prefer records because analogue has a warmer, fuller, sound. Which is a statement which hopelessly arouses half the hipsters on Bumble in itself.

“However, I find that the clientele is frequently disappointed that I’m blonde and relatively unpierced, and haven’t been shy in requesting me to get cherry-red Doc Martens, pink hair in a daringly spikey cut and a ring through my septum.

“Apparently blonde hair and a pleather River Island jacket doesn’t do it for them, and they’re only interested in tracking down an original Habibi Funk seven-inch if it’s sold to them by a girl in a tartan kilt and vintage roll-neck with a disarmingly offhand attitude.

“I don’t have time to be a manic pixie dream girl for 6Music listeners whose wives are no longer interested in Prefab Sprout B-sides. Anyway, like most independent record shops for the discerning listener, we make 70 per cent of our profits on Taylor Swift.”

Vinyl enthusiast Nathan Muir said: “A girl whose tough, punky exterior belies a yearning heart is as hard to find as Hüsker Dü’s Land Speed Record with the original inserts.”

Guru, wizard, rock star: six suffixes to your job title that make it clear you're a twat

TO stand out in the job market, why not impress on employers that you’re a first-class prick with your job title alone? Any of these should do it: 

Guru

Means ‘worthy of respect’ in Sanskrit; means ‘self-important arsehole’ on your LinkedIn. History shows that, the odd Buddha aside, those announcing themselves as religious leaders rarely have pure motives. Daily motivational posts are a cult which seeks to control by dictating the holy laws of tech sales managers in the EMEA region.

Futurist

Technology is unpredictable. Understanding cloud computing does not mean your guesses of how we will live in 2065 are remotely credible. The only predictions we can be sure of is that deepfake porn will be everywhere and AI sex bots commonplace, and nobody wants you leaning over their cubicle opining that.

Wizard

There is truth in claiming to be something that doesn’t actually exist: nobody’s expecting you to actually cast spells therefore nobody will be disappointed. But robes and a staff are neither cool nor practical, the hat will be snatched off by teenagers on your bus, and you will inevitably be told to f**k off back to f**king Hogwarts. Where, to be fair, you belong.

Guerrilla

No matter how provocative it is to use a Glasgow Wonka Experience meme in a client meeting, it’s not asymmetrical warfare against a vastly more powerful opponent. Drawing parallels between unconventional ways of working and war tactics is a bit much. Che Guevara did not die for marketing to shake up the brand’s image with a sassy Twitter.

Storyteller

All the greats from Catullus to Jane Austen got started by plotting out brand personas and solving BAU challenges, surely? This title permits users to reframe a career of failure as a cautionary tale of lessons learned, like Jesus’s parables if they were all about getting made redundant during a restructure.

Rock star

Many rock stars, from Bono to Billy Corgan, are knobheads so in styling yourself as a vainglorious spotlight-hogger you’re being honest. And it’s a lot easier to use that phrase in a covering letter than to fit into leather trousers. But unless you’re sneaking out of the annual industry expo to OD on speedballs with strippers, you’re a delusional bellend.

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