ISSUE 19 ARCHIVE - ROB'S WORLD: THE CORPORATE DIVER

Rob Hunt

Being corporate isn’t just about making sure you can’t be held accountable for your actions in the workplace; it’s a way of life. And if we’ve learnt nothing else from the surfers, which is likely, it’s that ways of life extend much further than sex wax and green rooms, they go all the way to the blondness of your hair, the Bob Marley that you listen to, and your credulous belief in twaddle. So how do we apply the corporate way of life to diving? Learn:

First things first, upon arrival you need to whip that boat into shape. It’s inevitable that an enterprise such as this will be bloated with bureaucracy and dramatically haemorrhaging cash. Start with the easy and non-controversial cuts that will make your name in the industry. Two dive guides? Then one is surplus. An engineer? The captain knows how to use a spanner. A captain? That’s why we have GPS. You may not be in a position to be hiring and firing, but you can always accomplish your goal by getting people sacked. If in doubt, just claim that they touched you weird. There’s no way a dive guide could successfully defend that kind of accusation in a court of law, or even in a pub. Or their own front room.

Once that’s out of the way, the priority is profit. Free air?! Since when was air free? Need to use an alternate air source on the dive because you couldn’t afford a proper fill? £350. This may not be your territory, but that shouldn’t stop you from making percentage points on the available resources.

If you’re on a liveaboard boat, and you should be if you want to avoid the scum that are poor, there’s a good chance there’ll be a fridge in which people can store drinks they’ve brought with them. This is where you’ll really come into your own and make that holiday worthwhile. Given the popularity of the fridge, it’s sure that other divers will be quick to bestow upon it a nickname such as “the Nag’s Head”, “the wine cellar” or just “the bar”. Whatever that nickname is, ensure that you apply for copyright, make an official sign for the fridge bearing that name, and subsequently charge ten per cent commission on the face value of all drinks retrieved as recompense for use of your intellectual property.

With the obvious exception of making money, safety is, of course, paramount. It’s imperative that in the event of a dive accident for which you are personally responsible, you ensure that not only do your actions go unpunished, but that you threaten to take your safety expertise to a rival dive boat unless your negligence is rewarded in grandiose financial fashion.

You should already know by now that you are how you dress. Just because you’re on a diving trip doesn’t mean that you can’t turn up in a suit and claim you’ve just got here from work. Even if it’s 6.30am on day four and you’ve just emerged from your cabin.

Clearly your dive equipment will be top of the range and brand new, but this is no time to scrimp on accessories. It’s essential that you equip yourself with a mobile device that is waterproof to at least thirty metres so that you can answer urgent emails and like important Facebook status updates on the dive.

At the end of many dive trips, and almost always on liveaboards, it’s traditional on the last day to tip the boat crew for their hard work. Clearly this is a form of taxation and there’s no reason why you should be forced to relinquish any of the money other people have worked hard to accumulate for you, in order to pay for the services of people who’ve essentially done nothing other than cook, clean, serve, maintain equipment, and provide manual labour, valuable knowledge and safe passage for you on a 24/7 basis.

In the past this would generally be accomplished by simple sleight of hand: you could pretend you’ve already paid; steal money from someone else and pay with that; or assemble a vast legal and accounts team to on the one hand claim you’ve never received any money to pay with, and on the other, to demonstrate to the world the ostentatious nature of the vast profits you’ve made. These days, however, it’s more fashionable to find an obscure and technically legal loophole that enables you to shirk your payments and boast publicly at the same time about how you managed to do it. Claiming all your money is now holed up in UK accounts is the most straightforward way to go about this, and if you can ensure that people lose their jobs as a result, then that’s a bonus. And everyone likes one of those.