I've been changing jobs a lot lately. How often can I change jobs before my resume looks bad?

-- Job Hip-Hop in Greenwood Village

Every 12.4 seconds. I know that sounds like a lot of job changes, but people will always swallow statistics like "Every 12.4 seconds, a panda bear is run over by a hum-vee." So when an interviewer raises an eyebrow, just rattle off, "Every 12.4 seconds, a person you interview changes jobs." The guy on the other side of the desk will probably lean back and nod thoughtfully in response, and you'll be off the hook. Try not to make the number any smaller, because people start to doubt the statistic when it dips below 8 seconds. 12.4 is your best bet.

Of course, you might be wondering how you could manage to change jobs that frequently. It takes some planning, but it is possible. Here's the scoop.

First, make up a resume with the two jobs you've held the longest on it. Then get up real early, like 4 AM, and get a job at Kinko's. They're always hiring. As soon as you've filled out the payroll paperwork, get to work on making a thousand copies of the following: Your resume, your social security card, your driver's license, and your ass. Make sure the photo on the driver's license comes out nice and dark. The resume and identification cards are for the rest of the jobs you'll pick up that day. The copies of the ass are just for fun, and likely to get you fired, which will free you up to pursue your next job.

Walk from store to store, mostly sticking with the ones who have "Now Hiring" signs in the window, since they're the most likely to take you on the spot. In between stores, scatter the papers with your social security card and driver's license around on the street.

Now, it will take about an hour at each job, once you take into account the interview process, the paperwork you have to fill out to get on payroll, and the few milliseconds it takes to march back into the big cheese's office and quit. Changing jobs every hour is nowhere near the 12.4 second goal, but that's where the scattered ID papers come in.

People will pick up these papers and quickly realize that you are a prime candidate for identity theft. They will steal your name and social security number and try to get jobs under your name. Since these people are the types to lose jobs in a hurry, you'll soon have an army of criminals grabbing and losing jobs in your name. With any luck, this operation will be so successful that you will change jobs every 12.4 seconds.

What's the payoff? Besides a mention in the Guiness Book of World Records, and a chance to use every "I quit" fantasy in your imagination, the biggest perk to this stunt is all the W-2s. By February of 2001, you should get a few million W-2 forms in the mail, which, once stapled to your tax forms, should clog the IRS system for months. This will allow the rest of us to wait until July to send in our taxes, and you'll be hailed as a national hero.

Plus, if you can figure out a way to do all this and still collect unemployment, you'll be my personal hero.

I am a retired prostitute and was wondering if you think the IRS will ever catch up to me for all the years I have managed to avoid them? Help!

-- Idiot 247 via the Internet

Your best bet is to hope for "Job Hip-Hop" up there to pull through for all of us and shut the bastards down. What I don't understand, though, is a why a retired prostitute is even asking me this question. Did Clinton teach this society nothing about government workers and sexual favors?

Use your imagination, honey. And if your imagination is failing you, use your Rolodex. I'm sure the press would have a field day if the face of the new "kinder, gentler IRS" were portrayed by an auditor enjoying some French tickler action.

Especially if you can catch him liquidating his assets on film.