Chronicles of a Corporate Intern

So that goes down as one of work's stranger mornings.



I woke up at about 9:00 with a text message from my boss telling me to go into the office today because the CSG team had a special project for me. So in I go.



I get here and plug up my laptop and find two emails from some lady over in CSG. (I still don't know what CSG stands for. Huh.):



The first e-mail is to me and John, the other intern, asking us to come to the CSG area and ask for some guy named Greg. And to make sure we have access to a file (that I didn't have access to.)



The next email simply tells us to bring our laptops.



Then I have a CC'd email from John to his Dad (Who is our Product Dev. Manager) asking for help because he "can't automate this."

Now - at this point I'm thinking "uh-oh", something John wants to automate, that they can't, that they're asking the interns to do. Sounds like bitch work if anything ever was.

Then I have one final email from John, directly to me, no CCs (I always breath when that happens, means I don't have anyone to impress, no professionalism, no show, just a kid talking to another kid. It's all good.). This email says: "Turns out they’ve pretty much finished before I got here and the woman who asked for our help underestimated how fast they were handling it. Odd, eh?"

Oh great. So now I don't know if they need my help, I don't know where CSG, I don't know what's going on. Great.

I e-mail John back expounding this frustration in light-hearted questioning, as always: "Very strange – do they still need me to come over? I don’t even know where this is at, hah"

Then call my daddy and ask where CSG is. It's the "half-walled field cubed downstairs". Information I can work with. I wander down stairs, opting to leave my laptop in my office due to the information received from John, and ask for this "Greg" guy.

A black guy in a sideways tipped baseball cap. It was a really strange sight. There, in the middle of all these geeky, super-white, polo-wearing, suburban-raised computer boys was a black guy in a tipped baseball cap: "Greg".

I walked up, "Hi, I'm Shelley."
"Ahh, you were supposed to help with redactions?"
"Sure."
"We're about done with that, don't worry about it."
"Okay, thanks."

They were going to make us do bloody redactions. I'm so glad I slept in this morning.

But really, it was a rather unprofessional process. I don't want a "special" surprise project of redactions. I don't want to be told to come here and go there when I don't have to. I don't want to be expected to be at the beck and call of someone at 7:45 in the morning who is not my boss, especially when my boss is in New York.

Forget that.

I was hired to do a job and I do it very well. I expect to be treated like a civilized person, not a child. My time is valuable - $15/hour valuable even. So they shouldn't be wasting it.

That hour is going on my time card.