Last night’s BBC programme, ‘The day the immigrants left’ had me punching the air crying “Welcome to my world” as employers battled with work-shy Brits, writes Charlie Cashdan.

In the programme, employers in a town with high unemployment were persuaded to lay off their migrant workers for two days and give ‘British jobs to British workers’.

So in come the Brits; long-term unemployed allegedly willing to do anything and desperate for work, disgruntled that immigrants had ‘stolen’ their jobs.

They claimed to be just as good as any foreign worker and were fired up to prove their point.

Oh the reality was so revealing; it was just like a typical day in the office for me.  Giving opportunities to unemployed people all over the UK who are ‘desperate’ for work only to be horribly let down in exactly the same way employers were on the programme last night.

One such employer owned a potato packing factory.  First day, one of the three Brits sends a text, A TEXT, to the supervisor saying he won’t be coming into work as he is sick and the other pair turn up half an hour late.  Reason for lateness, child was up all night.  Supervisor explained this wasn’t acceptable; the parent just shrugged and said something like “Well, it was my little boy, what could I do?”

They then moaned about being trained by a foreign worker saying they couldn’t understand him and refuse to pronounce a immigrant’s name, saying they will call him Bob instead.

They make a huge costly mistake spending an hour packing the wrong number of spuds in crates.  The supervisor has words and they try to blame someone else.

Across town at the Indian restaurant, four staff have been offered an opportunity of employment.  On the first day, two of them phone in sick and one sends a message through someone else that he won’t be coming in because his girlfriend is sick.  The one remaining Brit does try quite hard, bless him, but has to keep going out for a fag and doesn’t make it through to the end of the shift.

I hear the same excuses and face the same attitude almost daily.  People beg me for work, find us on job websites and bombard my email with letters (badly written) and CVs.  I give them work and I’m lucky if they even turn up for the first day.

Just last week a young girl got in touch who was long-term unemployed and under pressure from the Jobcentre for not trying hard enough to find work.  She was delighted to be offered well-paid work in an industry she aspired to.

First day she was so late we had to cancel the shift, second day she turned up and then left four hours early (family emergency, gosh how many times have I heard that?!) and I didn’t find out until a week later when the client told me.  Her excuse for not contacting me was the classic – no phone credit.  The fact that she had my email address just made the whole excuse even more pathetic.

Just giving these people money for nothing every week and training them to use a computer is pointless.  What they need is rigorous training in work ethics, old fashioned values and the importance of putting work first.

And before you all say it, I know not everyone on the dole is like this but I’ve been employing hundreds of staff nationally for more than four years and I can’t ignore the pattern. As a country, we have a real problem here and it’s the tax payers who are funding it.