Interns Behaving Badly
Posted by: Ami Angelowicz
Filed in:
news
3:30PM, Tuesday December 22nd 2009
I felt a swell of pride when I heard about an intern at Grazia magazine after my own heart. This young genius, who was sent out regularly to buy fat-free lattes for the beauty department, revealed a little secret on her last day at the magazine. She had been buying them full-fat lattes all along. I can only imagine the look on their faces as they ran to the bathroom to vomit. This girl is a hero as far as I’m concerned. I hope interns of Anna Wintour types everywhere are listening because I can’t think of anything worse than being an abused intern. In fact, I have a checkered intern past of my own ... [Guardian]
Confession: being lowest worker bee on the totem poll pole really doesn’t work for me. My most demoralizing internship was the one I had at an A-list talent agency. My supervisor was a rich, uptight woman named Chloe whose combination of condescension, arrogance, and ignorance were my worst nightmare. After the glitter of working in the entertainment industry wore off (it only took about three hours or so—until I got my first paper cut), all I wanted to do was get revenge on Chloe. Every day I would go into the swanky office, swallow my pride, fax scripts, file scripts, and refill Chloe’s coffee cup. It was not exactly the foray into superstardom that I imagined.
After about a month of trying to make the best of it, I decided to change my approach: I would try to make the best of destroying Chloe. I began my reign of terror on a Monday morning. I ran out of the elevator straight to Chloe’s desk. “You won’t believe it!” “What?” Chloe responded well to histrionics. “My friend works in the building next door and she said that someone broke into her office and stole her boss’ diamond engagement ring right off of her finger!” “No!!!” Chloe gasped, clasping her left hand to her heart. She had recently gotten engaged and was fond of showing her Harry Winston off to everyone and their dog. For the rest of the week, she demanded to be escorted into and out of the building by security and even moved her desk to a remote corner of the office … no longer near my intern station. That was the moment I knew what it felt like to be a success. And isn’t that what internships are all about? Learning your strengths?
Read on for some more tales of interns behaving very badly. Not that we are advocating that you try any of these things, but if you do, we will secretly praise you.
“At my internship at a film company, I hid under the receptionist’s desk to avoid getting asked to do tasks by the evil assistants. I put on my headphones and hung out under there for hours at a time. The receptionist would give me a little kick if someone was coming. It worked out really well.”
“When I was interning at a record label, I cut out a picture of my douchebag boss’ head and taped it on an inflatable beach ball. My co-workers and I played an invigorating game of keep away for the rest of the day. No one knew who made the beach ball.”
“I was interning in this production office where everyone really liked these granola bars. Every time a shipment would come in, I would put as many granola bars as possible into my bag. The office manager couldn’t understand why we were always out of granola bars.”
“While interning at an entertainment magazine, I started taking a really long time to do transcriptions, so that people would stop asking me to do anything. It totally worked.”
“When I was an intern, I went and removed the microphone parts of all the sales guys’ phones when they were in a meeting. When they came back and made their calls, they could hear the person talking on the other end but couldn’t talk back. It didn’t go well considering they had to call these big wig guys with huge contracts worth millions of dollars. Serves them right for being pompous.”
“When I was an assistant for a big photographer, she would get 90 million Christmas presents from magazine editors, and companies, and assorted vendors. She’d get so many presents that there wouldn’t be room to move in her office. The second year I worked for her during the holidays, it suddenly occurred to me that I could take a few things for myself without her ever noticing. I got a bag, a cashmere sweater, and a ton of beauty products. I figured it was my payback for having to work with her every day. Merry Christmas to me.”
How about you? Have you ever found a creative way to get revenge as an abused intern? Share your story in the comments.
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SherBear
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 03:35 pm: [report]
I am planning on getting an intern next year, if they did any of the above to me I’d fire them on the spot and make sure they never get a job in my industry
powplz
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 03:46 pm: [report]
A woman I used to work for is hiring two interns to help her since my job was removed from her dept. She was such a bad boss that I would wish these things on her ... except that if her interns turn out to be useless there’s a fair chance she’ll try to unload their work(or them!) onto my plate, AGAIN. ugh.
Rosita
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 03:51 pm: [report]
I can only imagine the look on their faces as they ran to the bathroom to vomit.
I don’t want to be the fun-sucker here, but speaking as someone who’s struggled wiht bulimia, that’s really, really not funny.
Fonke_monke
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 03:58 pm: [report]
My artistic internship days are over but I never had to go to such extremes but interning for an art magazine had amazing perks and star studded moments
MuchoMacho
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 04:41 pm: [report]
Don’t be a douche to your interns and they probably won’t act like interns…
MadMax
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 04:59 pm: [report]
MuchoMacho nailed it. Interns react with these atrocious actions in retaliation to their “douche” bosses. I worked in the fashion industry for a little while and one particular lady treated everyone as if they were scumbags (the turnover in that company was unbelievable).
To SherBear: Treat them with respect and they won’t do crazy things to you!
eggsandbacon
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 05:07 pm: [report]
Sure bosses can be nightmares but it is up to the intern to figure out what they want from their time there and do whatever it takes. I did stupid jobs but I also chased down great experience and got a fantastic job offer 48 hours after gradution. Three years of eating humble pie is totally worth it.
vinospizza
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 06:55 pm: [report]
I think maybe the article meant “totem pole” not “totem poll”. Sorry had to point it out!
alliem
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 07:15 pm: [report]
Regardless of how rude your boss is, none of this is okay. It’s called paying your dues. I’ve worked at countless internships. You know going in that you’re not going to do glamorous tasks. Also, internships are a good way to get your foot in the door and in today’s economy, young people need all the chances they can get at securing a job. Goofing off just creates a wasted opportunity to find a career.
That said, there is a blog called DC Interns that is incredibly hilarious and stories like this are funny, just very unprofessional.
raqueleza
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 09:15 pm: [report]
The above is why interns get such a bad reputations. The whole purpose of interning is to get your foot in the door to an industry you want to be in. It’s self-sabotage and a waste of everyone’s time to try to “get back” at your superiors (why these people didn’t just quit is beyond me). Granted, not every boss treats their interns like potential employees, but expressing interest in *gasp* more work than you’re assigned actually shows initiative, which will at least get you a good recommendation and experience in the field. Every single one of my internships I has while in school (and there were a total of four) turned into a job offer, in the publishing/event industry at that! Working your ass off always gets you places.
raqueleza
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 09:18 pm: [report]
Oh, and if the Grazia mag staff can’t tell a full-fat latte from a fat-free one by just tasting it, they’re in sad, sad shape to begin with.
powplz
wrote on December 22 2009 @ 11:07 pm: [report]
@raqueleza - interns might refuse to quit if they’re getting credit, i.e. paying for the internship. Aside from that, dropping the credits from an internship could bring a whole host of other problems if that happens to drop you from full time to part time status.
alexadee
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 12:47 am: [report]
i worked at a coffee place for all of college, and if you were a bitch and you ordered a non-fat sugar free latte, you better believe you were getting your latte with whole milk and extra syrup… and if you’re too dumb to not pick up on it, that’s on you.
ohnoyoudidnt
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 07:28 am: [report]
When I was an intern at a certain magazine, they would send myself and the other interns out to do on the street interviews about a topic that was so dumb I was embarassed to ask people the questions. Because of the number of people they wanted us to interview, I gauged that it would take about 3 or 4 hours to get the job done (it was impossible to stop that many people on the street and get them to answer you b/c they thought you were trying to mug them/sell them something/or just crazy…it’s NYC). After a few weeks, I gave up on actually interviewing people, sat in a restaurant or Starbucks for the three or four hours reading a magazine or talking on the phone, and came back with the answers I made up (which took me all of 10 minutes to do). I wasn’t proud that I did that, and neither was a fellow intern who did the same, but they treated us like crap and it was cold out!
Frederica Bimble
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 08:55 am: [report]
This is childish behaviour. Why? Because someone who is seriously “looking out for number 1” behaves as if they want success - not “getting back at others” or any of those silly actions that people do before they realise they have choices in life and are capable of making their own decisions.
Here’s is what I have learned from “wearing many hats” in the world of work:
1. Treat others (even in private) how YOU would like to be treated. That means if someone treats you badly, you STILL treat them the way YOU would like to be treated. The outcome of this would be either (a) others will have to RISE to your standards (point of reference) or (b) you will end up working some place else because the climate in that particular work place isn’t up to scratch. By behaving in the manner of others who have LOW standards, you are keeping yourself from having a good work environment and you are keeping yourself from growing and becoming better at what you want to achieve in life.
2. Takes risks. Meaning, speak up! Someone is behaving despicably, tell them YOU expect this behaviour from others. This does NOT mean tell them they suck or some other rude words. This means you let others know what YOU expect in YOUR environment. This is changing YOURSELF not attempting the impossible - which is trying to change others. You only have YOURSELF and YOUR expectations and others have THEMSELVES and THEIR expectations. The idea is to either (a) find the middle ground of acceptable behaviour for all parties involved or (b) go some place else that matches your expectations more closely.
3. This is the BIG one. WHAT YOU EXPECT IN YOUR WORLD WILL BE WHAT YOU HAVE. Example: When I was younger - like so many of us in our working lives - I was told “bosses are like this or bosses are like that.” Now then, having no experience to create another point of reference for comparison, I EXPECTED anyone I worked for to behave like a cliched concept of a “BOSS.” I had some like that and it didn’t occur to me that they would behave any differently.
Now, I know that the person running an organisation RELIES on those who are working at there. Those who behave like the tales from this article are “invisible” to better bosses and are keeping themselves from showing their workplace what they have to OFFER.
4. The world does not have to “treat you with respect” in order for YOU to start behaving like a person who has a smidgen of self-worth! Often, those who expect the whole world to “be nice” to them often don’t see that the world IS being nice to them and also treating them exactly the way they are expecting. Example: If a person in a position of “authority” is behaving in a rude manner then quietly standing before them listening intently to them will give you much more information than listening to all the ready-made (from other sources) crap the people in this article have floating around in their heads waiting for their moment to “get back at someone.” What the concept of “getting back at the mean boss” does is put you in a subservient position.
Now, listening to what the other person is saying and if the words are “nasty, mean, horrible, etc. etc.” then you will know that that person is very fragile, indeed.
5. People are naturally attracted to those who appear to know what they are doing. Spitting in someone else’s food, buying some coffee that they didn’t ask for, sabotoging equipment is all behaviour that “BETTER” people will think is petty, dangerous and the mark of an idiot. If you stepped out of yourself and YOU were the person in charge, how would YOU do things differently?
If YOU were the person in charge would YOU trust a person who can’t even get a coffee order correct? That is what it looks like to others.
Frederica Bimble
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 08:58 am: [report]
Number 2, above reads a bit “funny.” That should be: “you expect this _______ behaviour from others.” The way I’d written it in my last post isn’t clear.
SherBear
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 09:20 am: [report]
I am only a couple years out of internships myself…I think the key to happy interns is to give them some challenging tasks. Obviously they do the gopher stuff like answer the phone and filing, but at the end of the internship they should feel like the learned something. I wouldn’t mind handing some work off to a competent college student…maybe I will take a mental break and make some labels
bogart4017
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 10:12 am: [report]
I have never been an intern or worked with interns and i dont know if i could. Seeing people being treated like underlings or peons triggers vigilante behavior in me.
Squidtermz
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 10:19 am: [report]
You’re all getting coal for Christmas!
Lynn
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 10:21 am: [report]
WTF. When I was an intern I sure did a lot of stupid #&@$%. But that’s what being an INTERN is all about. You get your foot in the door and learn as much as you can by watching and listening to everyone around you.
I can’t believe anyone would do something this stupid just because they felt like they were “too good” for the internship jobs. Do you really think they would let someone who is still in school take a stab at something real? And being a terrible worker isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Talk about a false sense of entitlement.
powplz
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 10:37 am: [report]
@bogart - not all internships are like that. I had two, one of which I milked some freelancing out of after I graduated. Then again, both of the places I interned had pulled students from my program before and they knew us as kids who really wanted something worthwhile to dig into.
sadie
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 11:14 am: [report]
I think a lot of this depends on your industry. I get the impression that more glamorous industries deliver worst treatment to their interns. I’ve always worked in the unglamorous tech industry and was treated well as an intern. I liked the people I worked for and never tried to do anything to screw with them.
OTOH, I would simply not tolerate the abusive behavior I see some bosses deliver to their staff. If I was in a position where I felt I was being mistreated at work I would leave, but I wouldn’t waste my time trying to get revenge.
raqueleza
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 11:42 am: [report]
@joyy: understandable with the internships for school credit, however this sort of passive-aggressive behavior is never excusable. Those internships for credit are usually based on a review from your “employer,” and graded thusly. If these girls got caught doing these things or didn’t perform well, there goes 3 credit hours and $3k. Either way, time to grow up and quit acting out.
powplz
wrote on December 23 2009 @ 12:00 pm: [report]
@raqueleza - oh I agree. My college actually prohibited students doing internships for credit to get paid for them, so I took mine seriously, especially since I was essentially going into debt to work for free. My program also required a fair amount of work to be turned into my advisor that my internboss never saw. That, combined with regular evals from the site and work I did for them got rolled into a letter grade (no pass/fail here). Maybe this is just more common when interning in large corporations and certain industries? Who knows.
ThumperTheory
wrote on December 28 2009 @ 08:24 pm: [report]
Pulling a stunt to get back at a truly heinous boss? Funny.
Effing around & actively avoiding work in an industry in which you theoretically want to work? Lame.