The United States of America

Guy explains how he invented the perpetual alarm clock, and pays homage to the USA.

Transcript

Welcome to the one-hundred-and-ninth episode of The Undercover Intern podcast, coming to you live from the centre of London Luton Airport. I'm your host, Guy Snapdragon, and today is Monday the 3rd of March 2025.

We are sponsored this week by The Maywentery Golf Course. Welcoming men of all abilities since 1923. New Membership applications must now be accompanied by hand-written testimonies from two existing men members outlining your physical, financial and moral credentials, as well as your handwritten answer of no fewer than 7,000 words to the following question: “What makes Maywentery Golf Course special?”. All must be written on coated Italian paper.

Today we’ll be exploring the Protestant work ethic in the USA, including lessons from my six months’ internship there last year with The California Clock Company.

Quote. We know very well that we can always reset the alarm clock or disable the software, but we arrange things so that this option does not seem readily available. If we don’t resort to such tricks, we would have to deal with the whole vast scope of our freedom at every instant, and that would make life extremely difficult. End Quote. That’s from Sarah Bakewell, and it’s just wonderful to get a woman’s perspective. At the California Clock Company, who I will refer to as ‘C3’ from now on, I invented the perpetual alarm clock - patent pending - which as the name suggests is guaranteed to go off every single day at exactly the same time for at least 50 years, or your money back. The clock entirely removes the option to disable the alarm, and hence makes your life much easier.

If forced to summarise what makes the USA uniquely successful, and this is something that their armed customs officials often request from aliens on entry, I would say it’s the unapologetic and voracious accumulation of wealth through hard work, combined with an acceptance that poor people have severe moral imperfections and that poverty itself is the devil incarnate. In these secular times, it is the effective altruists, and by this I don’t mean Sam Bankman Fried but the good ones, who best represent the Protestant work ethic. Looking back on my internship in the USA I think it is the most valuable six months of my life. From my very narrow perspective at the time, the physical and emotional pain seemed excessive. But to that point I had lived a sheltered life of white male thoroughly heterosexual privilege. I needed the pain of American exceptionalism.

I listen back to episode 55 regularly and cringe at my weakness. Regular listeners will recall that this was the episode where I described my journey from London to California. How I arrived at Heathrow Airport to discover that the California Clock Company had not only restricted me to carry-on baggage but had also arranged for me to travel in cargo. Was I grateful that they had paid for my flight to New York? No, you can hear that I was angry to be wrapped in bubble wrap and placed in what turned out to be an airtight wooden container. That dog would not stop barking all the way across the Atlantic. Until it did stop, and that was worse to be honest. Poor thing. Why did we have to share a box? Those bubbles saved my life though, and I’ll never again pop for fun because you never know when you’ll need emergency oxygen.  

Or how about when I was on the verge of quitting because of what I insensitively described in episode 57 as wartime-like food rationing? There’s a myth that all Americans are obese and smell like burnt dollar bills but let me tell you that this does not apply to American interns. Some of the most emaciated people you will ever see. The worst one for me is episode 60 which was essentially just me sobbing and asking listeners to write to Bear Grylls to come and rescue me. Did I really believe that I was a hostage? Clearly I did, but that’s what an extended absence of natural light can do to a privileged white male heterosexual like me. By episode 62 I can hear that I’ve reached acceptance. Episode 64 is one of my all-time favourites, I listen back to it every night before bed. Though inchoate, this was the episode in which I discussed the dangers of freedom and the safety of religious structure, planting the seeds for the perpetual alarm clock.

Another genesis - the geneses … the genesisis? [distant] Lee, could you check that? Another reason behind my perpetual alarm clock idea was knocker-uppers, essentially human alarm clocks who in Industrial Britain woke up factory workers with a tap on the window using long sticks or pea shooters. The best knocker-uppers were able to wake their clients without disturbing the whole neighbourhood. And that is something at which modern-day alarm clocks fail completely. I needed to rectify this for our secular 21st century society where youngsters are often found sharing a bed with three or four others, plus assorted animals, none of whom want to be disturbed. I’d never understood the saying, ‘mother is the necessity of invention’ until I created the perpetual alarm clock. Vibration was essential but not sufficient; inflexibility is the USP for the perpetual alarm clock, my little protest against the tyranny of choice - and I was able to design a product that provided a small piece of certainty in a horribly uncertain world.

The perpetual alarm clock is now sold by all good dentists across the USA, and in most cases installation does not require general anesthesia but rather just a quick shot of Lidocaine. You’ll be back in the malls within three or four hours and can look forward to half a century of a consistent sleep and 81 decibels at 7am Eastern Time every morning. The usual disclaimers apply, such as a moderate risk of tooth loss and the settings cannot be adjusted in any way so do bear this in mind that if you have plans to move to the west coast where your alarm will activate every day at 4am. Rest assured that you can eat normally and the alarm effectively works just like a normal heavy tooth apart from for the ten minutes every day that it vibrates and beeps. It’s not for everyone, and those on night-shifts, those who do a lot of international travel and/or those within 30 or so years of retirement will need to balance the benefits with the costs. That said, you know my thoughts on retirement and I see no reason why somebody in their 90s shouldn’t use this. 

We think that later this year, hopefully in time for Thanksgiving, you will be able to have a perpetual alarm clock installed as part of breast enhancement surgery, though probably just in the right breast to avoid any interference with the heart. It will obviously vibrate but rather than sound, the alarm heats up for ten minutes - we’re aiming for a temperature that will reach that of a steering wheel on the first day of spring after being parked in the sun for a couple of hours, so rather pleasant and not at all painful. Engineers at The California Clock Company are still working on the final design, and then there will be FDA approvals and other bureaucratic nonsense, but we are taking advance orders now. For reasons to do with satellite movements, the perpetual alarm clock will only be available in the USA. I plan to travel over there to get one this year. Even though it’ll go off at noon British Summer Time I’ll use it mainly as a reminder to eat lunch, which I’m prone to skipping. I’ll be going down the dental route rather than the breast route I think.

I would not have invented the perpetual alarm clock in the UK. The California Clock Company would not have invented it without me. It was the combination of my British creativity and United States’ Protestant work ethic that, although somewhat forced upon me, produced something beautiful. For sceptics who think they want the so-called freedom of being able to sleep past 7am I say that choice often leads to anxiety, with non peer-reviewed research suggesting that the perpetual alarm clock reduces anxiety by over 96 percent.

This homage to American Exceptionalism is drawing to a close, but it often takes an outsider to see that that Americans are indeed the chosen people with a special destiny and moral mission in the world. As a nostalgic Brit, I know all too well that world dominance can sadly be irrevocably lost. So I beg you, please keep your military budget larger than the next fifteen nations combined. Please be fearful that all it takes is for those fifteen nations to gang up on you and then find another nation. And then attack you. Pearl Harbor. Be vigilant and never forget about past injustices or underestimate future threats. Never rest America, the world needs you.

Before we go, I just want to flag up that next week’s episode is about and for women, so if you know any please get them to listen.

I’ve been your host, Guy Snapdragon. My producer is Lee Buckingham. Voice Coaching from Nicholas Lyndhurst. Michael Webb is Chief Legal Officer and Legal support comes from Paul Tout and Simon Warwick. Accountancy from Graham Cree. Security from David Jarrett. May you use your time wisely, and may your use of wise be timely.