Irony Certification Agency

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA: Mr. Jeremy Frost, proprietor of the area’s newly-formed Irony Certification Agency, wears blue overalls. “People expect someone in a nice suit,” he says. “But I want them to see that irony is just a facilities problem. Like a leaky pipe.”

Mr. Frost’s business has been operating for eight months. In that time, he claims to have rendered services to some of the state’s largest employers, including a tech giant and two major insurers. But he’s unable to name names.

“People don’t like to admit they had an irony guy in,” he says. “They see the results. But they don’t like to talk about it.”

That’s something Mr. Frost aims to change. “Getting that first meeting, convincing them I can help them, it’s tough,” he admits. “But once I’m in, I’ve never left a customer disappointed. I figure if I keep doing what I’m doing, people will eventually get comfortable enough to share their irony problems.”

“Irony problems,” according to Mr. Frost, occur when places or objects build up irony over time, and then trigger ironic situations. He explains: “Say there’s a grocery store and they give me a call. I might find a guy to take in—Mike Slipper, for example, or Amanda Fall. I’ll have them walk up and down the aisles. Now, if Mike Slipper slips, or Amanda falls, that’s a pretty good sign we’ve got a source of irony somewhere nearby.”

It’s not always that simple. “I ask myself: what’s the most ironic thing that could happen? Because even a little irony nearby can be enough to set something off, if it’s potentially very ironic. One time an insurer had me visit this guy—he was a little accident-prone, and on a big, big policy. At first, everything checks out, but I’m just not comfortable with his car. It’s more likely to lock with the keys inside when you’re running late, the battery went flat when I tried to drive it to the store to buy batteries… nothing outside normal tolerances, but still, on the high side. Well, then I find out the guy has been writing letters to the paper saying we don’t need seat-belt laws. I can’t tell you the details of how that turned out, but let me just say that insurer saved a ton of money.”

Once Mr. Frost identifies a source of irony, what does he do? “Well, bear in mind, I do Irony Certification, not Irony Disposal. If you’ve got a restaurant on Ebola Avenue, I can check the premises over and tell you whether you’ve got a problem, but I can’t relocate your business.”

This is particularly the case when the source of irony turns out to be a person. “It is awkward, yeah,” he admits. “You have someone who’s been a long-time model employee, she owns a dog named Buster, and suddenly you’re telling her she can’t work in the accounting department any more. It’s not her fault. We still don’t know how the build-up of irony happens. We just know it’s there.”

Mr. Frost is straightforward about the skepticism he receives on the job. “Everyone has an opinion about irony,” he says, a touch wearily. “I do get people coming up to me, saying this isn’t really ironic, or that other thing is. Sometimes, a guy comes up, and three words in, I can tell from his accent where we’re going.” He shrugs. “But it doesn’t bother me. When you’re an Irony Certification Officer working on an irony-laden site, people telling you you’ve got the definition of irony wrong is just part of the job.”