The Intern
When I learned that our department would be getting an intern, I was excited. Though aware of the responsibility involved, I assumed that having an intern, overall, would be fun--much like a puppy that you need to train but also licks your hand endearingly.
This assumption has been proven incorrect. Having an intern is actually inordinately stressful with little to no positive aspects.
Our department’s intern has been at the company for three days and the task of shepherding her around has fallen largely to me. She is sweet, she has a great sense of humor (read: laughs when I say things), and she is a much welcome tomboy in a sea of poufy skirts and pedicures.
All this cannot save her presence from sucking.
She is, surprise surprise, the daughter of a higher-up. It is oddly difficult to look at the face of a CEO with longer hair and better skin without feeling the need to cower, just slightly. There is also the possibility that, over dinner, the intern will tell her father that I do nothing for the company but read Gawker and engage in meaningless banter with the office slacker. It is hard to assign tasks to someone that has the power to fire you and looks like someone else that has the power to fire you.
My position of authority is further compromised by the fact that, as a company bitch, I can’t help but feel camaraderie for a fellow soldier in the field. Though she may be a cadet while I am whatever the hell is marginally higher than a cadet, we’re still wading around in the mud together. Because of this I feel incredibly awkward giving orders, which, in turn, makes the intern feel uncomfortable accepting them. Like puppies, interns need discipline. Otherwise they will piss all over the carpet and/or bite you.
Then there is the problem with all first-time interns. Teaching them how to do something takes longer than just doing it yourself, and there is nothing, nothing that they already know. Copy machine? Mystery. Stapler? Passing acquaintance. “Simple” tasks like cutting and pasting in Excel become a minefield of questions. Why does that number change when you move those numbers? What’s a formula? What’s a sum? Where am I?
I wish that she was a real intern. Then I could make her get my dry cleaning.
39 comments:
Take time with her, & show her how to do it right. Give her a project to do, like re-labeling files and have her fill out repots on what she does every day. The basic mantra for training is Tell, Show, Do & Review. Schedule her to interview all the execs and spend a day in each department if you are that involved. Interns are a special breed. Some will take it seriously, most will work on their final thesis. Some are nice, most think they are better than you and they are going to get a better job and make more money than you, so caution is due here, especially since she is "family".
Shouldn't there be some kind of rule against having company children interning? If she's cool enough I'm sure you can forge an alliance and maybe then she'll tell her parents to promote you. Or at least pay you better.
I got an intern here for the summer. I took him under my wing, but I make sure not to keep him up with all the office stories. Helps that he's French and doesn't understand a lick of English. He gets all the dirty but fun jobs that I'm too jaded to do.
If she played both sides dealing with her father and having a blast with you, surely it will be fun. Beware of the double-cross though.
HA! our new intern is actually more qualified for my job than i am. she has a degree in what our organization actually does, whereas i have a satelite degree in something nominally similar in purpose though completely different when you get down to the nitty gritty. and she's working 2.5 days a work for FREE. and while she is similar to your puppy/intern in her lack of knowledge about the work that we actually do, day-to-day and i must lead her around microsoft office suite like said puppy on a leash, i now feel that asking for my much needed (and deserved) 1-year raise will instantly jeopardize my position as company bitch. because when there's someone who'll do your job for free, and your job is to show them the ropes, it seems imminent that the whole company bitch world will just come crashing down in a symphony of ruin and despair. STUPID INTERNS!
CB, you have the power to be a boss of sorts, and perhaps actually teach her things that would be of use to her, like a much more attractive version of Yoda.
Use your powers wisely. You could totally start some karmic-pay-it-forward thing here. And a positive experience for her could reap rewards for you, particularly if she has nice things to say about you over brunch with daddy....
I just found your blog and i have been laugh all morning reading your posts... I think I am in love. Keep it up. And if the intern gets our of hand, Just roll up the newspaper and smack her on the butt.
CB
Oh great, you get to spend the summer teaching Daddy's Little Princess how to do your job. Do not fool yourself into liking her. Make her work very hard. Make her think you are working very hard. Save as much of your work as possible for when she is around. Do not let her see the blog. If she mentions the word blog ask her what a blog is and have her show you her blog. Make sure you send her on lots of errands at the other end of the office especially on days when she is wearing high heels.Sick her on Silent Man. Sick her on Perky. You can make her hate your job as much as you do without saying you hate your job. Lie and say how much you love it there and tell her you send half your paycheck home every week to your poor family. Update your resume.And of course, have fun.
“I wish that she was a real intern. Then I could make her get my dry cleaning.”
Ah yes, CB, you are succumbing to the brutal hierarchy of the corporate world. My experience has been that most people are idealistic when they start their careers, vowing to never impart the same atrocities if they are ever promoted above the rank of broom closet attendant. Yet, with alarming consistency, given an ounce of power, this proletariat succumbs to the “kick-the-dog syndrome” and falls into the vicious spiral of ruining weekends and forgetting how to actually create substantive work.
Ack! What Fairscape said!
Call me paranoid, but dude. Everything. Fairscape. Said. All that shit. Do all that shit.
I just got my first interns this summer...I'm actually enjoying it. I'm the youngest at our company and therefore closest in age to them so I feel like we bond. I do feel weird giving them jobs, though, mostly because they are so damn efficient that they just make me seem like an uber slacker.
We have this awesomely good looking intern, but he is soooo young. It's a nice diversion though, and thankfully training was not up to me.
Stapler? passing acquaintance!! LOL
Show the puppy the Staple "Re-Move-Er" and watch her really get the deer in the headlights look.
If you had some actual job skills, maybe you could move up in the world.
At the risk of making this all about me, your intern is a bit like a child. It is easier to do it for them, but in the long run they don't learn much.
When you clean your kids rooms for them it is done right. But when you tell them to do it you will find EVERYTHING under the bed. lol.
Once again you have ceased to amaze me. What is the word coming to when an employee does no work and is never reprimanded? The amount of complete waste in the world of business is sickening. I'd guess that your company would be better off without an employee like you. Or probably a third of their workers. If people would just work hard every day then maybe the world wouldn't be at the mercy of these wasteful corporations.
Poor baby.
I suppose going to the management and asking whether it is appropriate to suck up or talk down to this intern would be impossible?
We hire our kids and it has to suck for other employees. I admit to letting them away with stuff I would never allow a "real" employee but on the other hand, they are generally better at the job than other employees at the same level because they understand the no profit/no job relationship.
However, in an office it could be very different. I don't envy you but it would be nice to know what exactly is expected of you in this situation.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, brilliant! Serves you right for forging your boss's signature!
I love intern season. So young and eager and adorable!!! Take this opportunity to really, really slack at your normal job while still doing something productive. Whenever we get a new intern in our department, I introduce them to absolutely EVERYONE. This allows for an opportunity to have nice, long socialization sessions and re-introduce yourself around the company.
I'm also very happy to show them the simple things like making coffee in the airpots and mapping printers to our laptops.
Using the fax/copier/scanner is pretty complicated and can get you away from your desk for an explanation for at least 20 minutes. Interns are "hard work", right?
I do not miss the days of interns. As to the puppy analogy... yeah. Puppies leave poop in their wake for ages. That's all I can say about that.
Ah, nepotism...I wish I had any family worth exploiting for a job...even one as a faux-intern.
Intern sounds like she quit school in third grade. She doesn't understand basic excel commands and formulas? Apparently, the word formula is a mystery in and of itself. That's sad - and pathetic.. which I guess makes your puppy reference somewhat accurate...
You should make her pick up your dry cleaning.
I was an Intern once. Got semen all over my nice blue dress. What a dawg he was.
Amelia Too-many-letters-to-pronounce, I do the biliousness round here. Go write some shite porn you cunt.
Everything you say or do of note will eventually go straight to the ear of her daddy.
Use it to your advantage.
Well...I suppose you will have to be very patient with the intern!! I don't know if I could do it!
Amelia, if you don't like C.B maybe you can find a blog that you do like.
Just saying....
Hey, I like this blog. It is entertaining.
Hahahhaah - I can relate, I am the office puppy.
Clicked your link on another blog. Great stories.
I'll be your intern.
at the risk of offending those commentors who seem so very, very upset by corporate waste, and since any advice i would give here would certainly seem ignorant to all the other seemingly very business-savvy commentors, i will simply say this:
i like your posts about your days at the office. they crack me up. i can't wait to hear all about the intern.
Just got a new intern in the Orifice I'm consulting in to replace the apparantly cluesless one just fired...She has one of those names without vowels so I asked her how to pronounce it. I had to ask her 3 fucking times, how do you say your name?
Excuse me?
Sorry?
What did you say?
The boss (who is actually cool) allowed me to offload any boring, redundant tasks I want on her. I'm just afraid it'll be faster to do it myself.
Oh and although Amelia is right, I'm going to avoid the rush and start hating her now. (Although I won't use the C-word again...)
Okay, I have to confess to be in touch with the Other Side (not the Republicans) as I could be considered to be in a similar position, and ask you this: how about actually explaining something to the Puppy (aka the intern aka Daddy's Girl) and giving her something worthwhile to do?
And before you all laugh at me, point fingers and call me crazy (which would most likely be correct, but that's another story), here's the reasoning.
1) Teaching the Puppy will give you a good reason to not do any actual work that day/week.
2) Treating her with respect and kindness will most likely yield to positive comments about your lovely person over Sunday brunch with the parents, including the Daddy, thus resulting in a positive image of you in the mind of the Big Boss.
3) Taking the time and effort to teach her stuff will later on prove beneficial, as you can tell her to do the boring rutine jobs, and leave you with the fun stuff (like telling us how the introduction to coffee machine went).
Just a thought. ;)
What iiris said....
Looove this blog *smack self*where the heck have i been? Interns, bah! off to read the rest of the blog. and Amelia watch em slacker
So...ah.... how's it going with the paper training?
Grant, your starting to get a little creepy! lol.
"All of this cannot save her presence from sucking".
CB: that is hilarious! I had an intern who was still in high school!!
My boss and I hired an intern a few years ago. Fortunately, he was in between 1st and 2nd year at a top 20 business school, so he had half a brain. He was great -- I had to keep throwing work at him.
I got to make him his offer for his permanent job at The Company.
Intern is now still employed at The Company. Boss and I are not. Boss was fired because VP hated marketing. My position was eliminated because New Boss was stupid. (He told me once to quit using such "big words because people didn't understand them.")
Intern, who is ten years younger than I, but considerably more politically astute, has been promoted to three levels higher than I ever was and is slaying his enemies as he climbs the ladder.
Be careful with interns.
im an intern!
ha, your blog makes me crack up all the time, and all i do all day long is read gawker and jossip and look at fashion blogs. thanks for entertaining me as i go to the copy machine. even one more time. jeeze.
thanks again
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