Signs Your Summer Internship Is Going Well
1. Your boss eats a hot dog during your interview.
2. Your boss does not wear shoes during your interview.
3. You are one of five
4. concurrent
5. unpaid interns
6. for one person,
7. who is a self-employed “social media consultant.”
8. You are asked to write copy to sell a product for the boss’ side business and
9. the product is a “hangover cure.”
10. But is actually an e-book that costs $2.99
11. and instructs the consumer to take a shower, take Alka-Seltzer, and drink Gatorade
12. (seriously).
13. Your boss fires every intern but you.
14. They get drunk and cry,
15. and he hires two of them back.
16. You finally learn that the point of your internship was to secure free beer and food for a fundraiser
17. so that your boss could meet the minimum donation requirement for his friends to participate in a high-profile charity bicycling event.
18. Your parents drive across the state to come to your stupid party,
19. because they want to support your non-career.
20. You love that their hard-working, warm faces
21. stand out at this hip, brick-walled event space
22. among all these phony “consultants” and “artist-preneurs” and “creatives.”
23. They take a picture of you
24. because they are too earnest to know that this isn’t the good kind of memorable.
Evelyn Garcia still works there. KIDDING. KIDDING. Screw that guy, seriously.
This is like poetry.
Hangover cure e-book? Oh, lord. Did it ever sell?
@Nina B.@twitter You said it. It has a sort of poetic meter, but is well-written, so it doesn’t come off as affected.
Plus, I love her parents and how aware she was that her parents are alright and it’s everyone else who’s pretentious and uninteresting.
forget the hangover cure book. he should be selling a how-to guide for how to get people to work for you for free.
@Mirch No kidding. I was 23 and promised “connections”.
@EvelynGarcia “exposure”
Ugh, artistpreneurs.
You forgot: You are on the floor, in a dress, scrubbing said floor for the party the Mayor is invited to but not you.
Seriously, who does not want to hug your/their parents after reading this.
i left my first internship (unpaid, of course–in journalism, of course) when my boss sent me to buy sidewalk chalk so she could draw revenge runes outside of the door of some art students who burned photos of her in a bonfire
this IS poetry. it reminds me of http://www.theawl.com/2012/05/a-poem-by-sherman-alexie, which is also wonderful.
My internship has been awesome! I may have gotten a couple hundred dollars of swag! And wrote half of one of the magazines!
@Megano! All for no pay or bylines!