Respect the game

Interns are the lowest-hanging branch on the office family tree.

You’re unpaid, your opinions don’t matter and you’re the last to get cake during birthday parties. Even the UPS guy will get a second helping before they hand you some icing on crumbs.

You must respect the game, and it will respect you.

If drug dealers had interns, they would have to file paper away in shoe boxes before they could begin pushing bricks on their own.

It’s essential to always recognize the hierarchy of your office. You are just an intern.

You’re unpaid for a reason — your work is worth absolutely nothing. In the eyes of your superiors you’re just another ape in a tie slamming its fists on an inexpensive Dell keyboard.

Your direct supervisors will most likely be decent people. In my office they are all fairly young. They aren’t too far removed from their days as an intern. They are very helpful, and they leave their doors open for questions at any time.

But in my office there is one room where the door is always closed. He’s my supervisor’s boss’s boss. I could not be more scared of this man.

I never know what he’s doing in there. I’ve never actually seen what the inside of his office looks like, but I can only assume he has a wall of LCD monitors broadcasting closed circuit television and all of the cameras are pointed directly at me.

He documents every awkward interaction I make on Facebook, whether it is a wall post or an unreciprocated winking emoticon on chat. I’m sure he also has a detailed log of every time I’ve been to the bathroom and how long the trip took.

For this reason, I try to look like I’m doing something important all day. I feel as though at any given moment this man will come to my desk and hand me a pink slip.

Infrequently, he will leave his lair. One time I saw him just as he stepped out. He immediately turned around and locked the door before staring me down to the floor.

Which brings up another important rule of the game: never look your superiors in the eye.

Similar to scientific research conducted with chimpanzees, I have found that making eye contact with anyone in my office is seen as a signal of aggression on my part.

Countless cups of coffee have been swatted out of my hands for simply saying “good morning.”

And this isn’t like high school where you can run home crying. You have to sit at your desk while scalding hot coffee sears your thighs until it dries.

So the question you might ask is: “How can an intern even gain the smallest ounce of respect?”

The answer is simple: don’t get fired.

If you can keep the job long enough, the other members of your office might let you sit at the lunch table, or at least at the adjacent one.


E-mail: nicjacob@indiana.edu