Seriously scary

On the whole I'm a responsible person. I take things seriously, I do what needs to be done, I bite the bullet. I don't procras-tinate or deny or disappear. I don't create messes for others to clear up. I don't blame my mistakes on other people. I don't say "That's someone else's job".

I keep things ticking over. I get the car repaired. I go to the doctor. I pay the bills. I keep the house insured. I do the food-shopping. I don't sprawl on the sofa all day, slurping beer and watching reality TV.

I'm good at all that small-scale responsibility, looking after myself and my partner, keeping the household going. What I'm not good at, what totally terrifies me, is any large-scale responsibility - anything that involves not just me but large numbers of other people. I run from that as fast as I can. I'm sure it would end in colossal disaster.

I could never have been an airline pilot, or a hospital administrator, or a train driver, or a roller-coaster operator, or the manager of a vast public stadium. The stress of knowing I was personally responsible for the safety of hundreds or thousands of ordinary folk would make me a nervous wreck in weeks.

Even being responsible for a large number of staff - a shop or office manager, say - would freak me out. Knowing they depended on me for their income and job satisfaction. Knowing I depended on them to turn up, to do their jobs properly, to not rob the till or insult the customers. I had opportunities to be a bookshop manager but I always resisted them, preferring to be a humble but contented employee.

So yes, I'm good at responsibility chez nous. Good at oiling squeaky doors and unblocking sinks. But responsibility for hundreds of trusting, vulnerable human beings - that's seriously scary.

Ambition

I've never been ambitious, never been one of those thrusting, go-getting, ladder-climbing individuals who can't rest until they're at the top of every heap and not just one of the toiling masses.

Or rather I've never been ambitious in the job sense of wanting an important, influential position with a fat salary and lots of people under my wing.

I'm sure my parents were always disappointed by my missing ambition gene and wanted to boast that their wonderful son was now Editor of the Daily Trumpet or Chief Executive of Toptome Bookshops. They probably thought I was wasting my potential or shying away from challenges.

But no, the only ambitions I've ever had were the more prosaic ones of just wanting to have a good time, stretch my mind a little, fall in love and earn enough to be comfortable. The prestigious corridors of power never seemed that glamorous to me, more like precarious thrones that other people were always plotting to usurp.

I've always been quite happy as one of the toiling masses, doing low-level jobs that others turn up their noses at. For one thing, I rather like dealing with the general public. I like the constant novelty of personal quirks and eccentricities and general loopiness. I'm fascinated by the strange things that go on in people's heads and how seldom they do what you expect them to do.

I've no wish to hide away in an office all day, shuffling papers, drafting targets and mission statements, monitoring sick leave and dreaming of a bigger BMW.

I remember a bookshop manager I once worked under, who was burning with ambition and desperate to be recognised as the steely-eyed executive he knew himself to be. He was permanently hyper-active, whizzing around like a dervish and introducing a new procedure every half-hour.

He chain-smoked incessantly and always looked as though a pack of wolves was snapping at his heels. This compulsive frenzy alienated the entire staff and we were forever trying to engineer his departure by fair means or foul. How his wife lived with him I can't imagine.

I'm glad I never turned into someone like that. Ambition? A volatile substance I'd rather not handle in case it explodes in my face. I'll leave it for those better equipped to play around with it.

Image courtesy of Time Magazine