Next Thursday we’ll be hosting our second event, Think of The Pay Cheque: Adventures in Bad Jobs. We’ve shared our bad job stories, and now our seven storytellers recount their career histories – for better or worse – and the transferable skills they hope they’ll never have to transfer. Like being a part-time model. Or a dead nurse. We also have the greater pleasure of introducing you to our own Edward Hillary, your host for the evening.

David Slack: Dad told me when I was growing up that there was no future in farming. I realise now he was really saying: "there's no future in farming for you." I got a law degree and became a speech writer. You may have seen my work in Tony Blair's 'people's princess' remarks; Barack Obama's victory night speech; his two inaugural speeches, and Amanda Knox's press statement the day she got out of jail. I exaggerate with ease and am entirely at home with the telling of untruths. I doubt I would have been so accomplished at farming. I am 28 years old, a part-time model, and single.

Ema Tavola: From years of working in retail, I have developed a strong distaste for people and customer service. I have extensive experience with racism and sexism and have developed exceedingly low tolerance for both. I’ve spent the past decade working tirelessly for the social development of my Pacific community; I have developed an inability to assimilate or subscribe to marginalised existence in mainstream contexts. I am a team player, if that team is open-minded, conscious, informed and representative of cultural, geographic and gender balance.

Tim Lambourne: Hello, my name is Tim. I work on a late night television chat show that likes to make fun of people. Politicians mostly. I do this by taking they have said and replaying them out of context. It makes it much easier that way. Before I did this I was a television journalist, before that an autocue operator and before that a barista at BP Connect Bombay. At one stage I had the record for the lowest mystery shopper score ever received by a BP employee. 20 out of 100 if I remember correctly. I can pump petrol, make coffee and write television news stories that successfully over simplify complicated issues and inflame an already angry television audience. Two of these skills are still very useful to me.

Nisha Madhan: I am an actor who spent 3 years on our nation's most beloved/only soap opera before throwing in the towel to follow my plan A dream of being a penniless artist with ridiculous principals. Achievements so far include: 1) Living in Paris and Brussels until I ran out of money. 2) Performing in Burlesque shows as a gorilla in a fruit bikini. 3) Traveling the country with a 13 piece psychedelic-afro-funk band called The Hot Grits. 4) Creating a rendition of Sam Shepard and Patti Smith's play "Cowboy Mouth" - incidentally the one and only play she's ever written and the one and only theatrical experience ever to be in the now extinct Snake Pit gallery on High Street. I am about to dust off my Indian accent for the first time since quitting aforementioned soap opera in a new show by Indian Ink Theatre Company and was recently paid $650 per day to say the line "when you talk like that I just get a little bit moist" (amongst some other real pearlers) on the critically acclaimed TV show The Blue Rose. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can get a group of near strangers together and make them meet each other in an artful way. I think about how to entertain them. Then I think about how to make them feel/think/dream/do something at the same time. I also live in a beautiful big bohemian style warehouse apartment near K road. Together these things combined mean that my most valuable skill to offer is probably throwing a great office party (I will even bring the photocopier).

Transferable skills I hope to never transfer: making a large portion of the nation think that I am a nurse, making beds with hospital corners, ignoring people who are obviously whispering about me while staring directly at me, being fairly good at playing dead.

David Farrier: I am a journalist who works in a TV newsroom. I am good at editing together short stories that briefly touch on the surface of an issue, and that include 2 widely different points of view, both usually incorrect. I worked as a computer technician as a teenager so am excellent at cleaning mice, building 486 computers, playing Quake, and networking with RJ45 cables. I also worked as a data entry technician for Westpac so am good at typing numbers into computers and sitting for long periods of time without free thought.

Jo Holsted: I work at the most culturally diverse radio station in New Zealand as a Technical Producer. That role entails pressing buttons and chatting, though I occasionally push a fader up to evoke an air of know-how and professionalism. I have experience working with small Spanish people and I can write you a disgraceful progress report in two languages. Team player.

Matt Nippert: I am a journalist with a face for radio and a voice for print. Fittingly I work in newspapers, currently at Fairfax's BusinessDay. My current job requires me to attract search warrants, annoy people with lawyers and play bridesmaid at industry award nights. Previous job experience includes scraping mould off giant margarine sculptures at a national restaurant chain and foisting the turgid wonders of management theory onto impressionable Victoria University students. If pushed, I can Think Outside the Box and Synergise Paradigm Shifts, Enabling Customer-Facing Organisations to Move Forward. Please don't push.

And your host, Edward Hillary: I have a varied background in a variety of skills including, but not limited to: motivational speaking, tour guide, market researcher, carpet layer, dog walker and publican. I am capable of BIG things. How big? That is for my employer to decide, and me to realise. People often ask me how i got into the line of work I am in, and I tend to reply "Which line?" because I only see the big picture. Not just the lines that make it up. Work to me is not just a way to earn money but rather a way to carve out my niche in the world. Lets float some ideas around people, ideas don't sink. They float.

THINK OF THE PAY CHEQUE

Thursday 13 June| 7.30pm | Auckland Trades Hall, 147 Great North Road

Tickets available from Under The Radar