There is a new woman in our office. A co-worker, a shimmering human capital person of the female type. This, in itself, it is not unusual, but only last week I attended a course on flirting with women successfully. Since the plastic box that sits on my desk has now decided to throw a hissy-fit and I am for the next half an hour or so unable to do any constructive work, or at least pretend to do so while sending personal e-mails, and as I have seen my new co-worker on the way to the coffee room, I have decided to put my course to good effect. Hey, you pay for these things, you have to see if they work.

Tip One: Act as if you have a type A personality

The supremely confident guy that was giving the course gave us five tips for our money. Correct practice and application of these secret techniques will, for sure, he told us turn us from wimps in to hunters of women. I looked at the other guy in the class, sorry seminar, to see what he was doing. He was hurriedly scribbling notes, so I decided to do the same.

The first secret is to behave like a complete jerk. I’m sorry, but that is how I see people with a type A personality. Overconfident, open shirted, necklace wearing and, in short, aggressively up themselves. Apparently, however, this type of person is extremely attractive to the female of the species, the side of the species that I would like to attract. He told us that you have to walk into the room as if you own it. You have to behave as if all eyes are on you and as if you are enjoying every moment of it. Don’t shrink, bloom!

I wanted to point out to him that if I had that sort of personality I probably wouldn’t be doing this course, but felt that they would be inappropriate at that stage. In any event, I suspected he might shout at me. So I just carried on taking notes.

Tip Two: Make Eye Contact

In order to be able to flirt successfully with women and to attract the women that one would like to attract, apparently, he said that one must make eye contact. That seemed to make sense. It has to special eye contact though. Haughty type a, hunting eye contact. It would wouldn’t it? In order to achieve this the contact must last for no more than three seconds. According to the course instructor that should be about three heartbeats. I estimate that he is correct if I am sitting down struggling with the thought of how to explain the functioning is of the stock market to my superiors, which is painful but not frightening, but in the event that I am forced to talk to a woman, however, I suspect that the number of heartbeats should be around nine.

Tip Three: Isolation Therapy

Isolate her. Get her on her own, he said, so that you can talk to her one to one. Okay So I walked into the coffee room. I made eye contact as we had practiced (the other guy was good at that) and counted nine heartbeats or as near as I could with my pulse racing in my ears then I tried to isolate her, to corner my prey. This was easy, we were the only ones there.

Tip Four: Act as if You are Interested in Her

Act? Of course I’m interested in her. Doesn’t she realize what a type C- personality like myself goes through? A heart rate of at least 181 (standing still) the cold sweats, hyperventilation and a deep sense of shame when she rejects me. This one is easy.It just depends on whether she sees a sweaty heavy breather who is trying to count his pulse rate and glance nonchalantly in her direction as attractive.

Tip Five: Point at Yourself

This one is very tricky. Apparently, psychologists ( or psychiatrists, I never get that right) believe that if one can get the hunted/victim to the point where they are talking about a loved or one of their old boyfriends in happy fashion, one should continue to discuss the subject and at the same time point towards oneself, using two fingers that dexterously indicate the centre of one’s chest. Practice in front of a mirror. It is some sort of transference thing.

At this stage she has poured herself a coffee and I have not been able to speak to her, as I’ve been counting the number of heartbeats during my brief glance in her direction. I moved towards the coffee machine and subtly start to point the two first fingers of my right hand towards my chest.

I decided to take the risk and break the ice.

“Good morning”, I said, in a type A sort of way.

“Hi”, she says. “You okay”?

Surprised, I replied yes, still supremely confident.

“Okay”, she said,”I thought you maybe had heartburn”.

With that she turned out of the room and left. Overall, I would say was a great performance and I have her curiosity. Strange to think that one of her ex-boyfriends used to get heartburn.