Intern Chick

It was a warm autumn day and I heard the office assistant, Mike, on the phone, finishing up a conversation saying, "Ok. I'll get Intern Chick to do it." What? Mike busily started googling stuff on his computer, printed out a bunch of papers, stapled them together and said, "Intern Chick. Here is your Fun-Pack for the day. I need you to go to the Mandarin Oriental and pick up a CD from a friend of Bradley's (the president)."

I made my way to the plush hotel and called the president for instructions. He told me to go up to the guy's room. Of all the people working in this office, I was the only female. Why in the world would someone pick the only female to go to the hotel room of a strange man by herself? I went to the front desk, gave them the guy's name and made my way up. I knocked on the door and nothing in the world could prepare me for what I was about to walk into. A man answered the door, standing in his boxers and slippers, a red velvet robe draped over him. I stared down at my Fun-Pack, flipping through the pages, praying I was in the wrong place. I followed him in and began taking inventory of the red flags setting off my Creep-O-Meter.

On a small table, I caught a glimpse of the largest bottle of liquor I have ever seen (completely empty) and blunt guts strewn about. That would explain the burping/coughing half dressed man in the middle of the afternoon. I turned the corner of the room to see more alcohol, more blunt wraps, and the largest amount of weed I've ever seen in one place. There were two beds, side by side, one completely made and the other with the sheets and blankets wrapped up and tangled. I blinked my eyes to find, what else, a half dressed woman in that bed! If that wasn't awkward enough, she then held out her hand and introduced herself to me, as if this is perfectly normal. I'd had enough at this point and asked for the CD. Mr. Man here informed me that he didn't have the CD because he didn't know how to burn said CD on his brand new MacBook.

He blew weed seeds off the top of his laptop and asked me to show him how. I looked around for a place to sit and the only place was the other bed. Just me, half dressed man and woman on a Wednesday afternoon, chillin' in a hotel room with enough booze and drugs to get the entire city of New York high as a kite. Nothin' out of the ordinary here.. I opened iTunes and next thing I know, the guy sat down right next to me, I could feel his breath creeping down my neck. I tried to focus and just hurry up and get the CD burnt but since not one single song was labeled (other than Track 1, Track 2, etc) we had to play every one until we found the right ones. I burnt the first one and then he insisted burning another. Let's not forget here that I had no idea why I was burning these CDs or what they were supposed to be, no matter how many times I asked, no one would give me an answer.

As the last CD was burning, the man excused himself to go to the bathroom. As soon as it finished I picked up my things, said goodbye to the woman who was now asleep (or experiencing an overdose, I can't be too sure) and made my way to the door. If I hadn't been creeped out or disgusted enough, the guy was standing over the toilet, peeing, with the door wide open. He looked up at me, smiled and waved goodbye.

The icing on the cake? Two years later, at another internship in publishing, that man was listed as one of our songwriters and guess who answered the phone the one day he called?

I had a sneaking suspicion that something wasn't right but I did what was asked of me and along the way, attempted to clean said desk and filing cabinets.  I started working there in August and by October I was growing tired of the office antics.  Its not that it wasn't fun, because it certainly was and I look back on my time there fondly, but I was so eager to learn, and there was just nothing going on.  It was a Thursday night and I was glad the weekend was approaching.  All day, something just didn't feel right.  There was absolutely no work to be done and so we all just waited.  At the time, we had a consultant come into the office every so often.  I'd heard he was trying to help clean up the company and make it better, and I admired him for that because I saw the potential it had.  But in the other ear, someone was telling me not to trust him, that he was plotting something big, and it was only a matter of time before the bottom dropped out.

Well, that Thursday it did.

First he went into the president's office, and brought along the heads of promotions and marketing.  They were in there for a while, the conversation was barely audible through the paper thin walls and when they came out, something did not look right.  Then, the consultant called in the interns.  We sat on the couch in the office while he stood in front of us.  A while back, someone had told me he wanted to talk to all of the interns and ask them what they wanted out of this internship.  I knew this wasn't that conversation.  He paced back and forth, hands in his pockets, finally he looked up and abruptly said "Frank*, Michael*, and Tom* no longer work here.  I will be taking over with the help of their assistant."  All of us interns just sat there quietly, waiting for more.  We were all wondering the same thing, "what does this mean for us??"  He spoke again, "As of right now, we will be cleaning out the office, and re-working the business model.  We don't know how long this will take, but once we're through, we will call you guys to come back and intern.  Does anyone have any questions?"

Now, I'm no fool.  I only had until December until my internship was finished and I had to go back to school.  And during this period, you must be interning, otherwise the university will purge you and it will be as if you dropped out of school.  Everyone just sat there, dumbfounded I'm sure, but no one was speaking up.  This guy just came up in here and snatched our internship from us after we'd all worked so hard to get it!  I wasn't letting this one go.  Before I knew it, I heard my own voice saying, "Are you serious?  What do you mean, you'll call us to come back?  How long will that be????"  With no emotion he said he didn't know how long, but that he would definitely get into contact with each of us.  He said it shouldn't be that long.  This response wasn't enough for me, I felt like I'd fought so hard for my spot there and I didn't want to watch it go that easily.  So I spoke again, "I understand there is no way for you to know how long this will take, but please, do not give us the run around here.  If we won't be coming back, then just tell us so we can be prepared."  All he said was, "It shouldn't be more than a week."

I walked out of the office enraged.  If they were going to be "cleaning out" the office, why didn't they want interns there?  Isn't that the work no one wants to do??  And one week wouldn't even be enough time to sort of the mess in one filing cabinet, let alone the entire office.  None of it made sense to me and the whole thing sounded slimy.  We all packed up our stuff that night and walked out together.  I e-mailed the president, marketing head, and promotions head later to exchange information and one of them asked for my help in future projects.  

I waited one week.  I called the consultant, no answer.  I e-mailed him, no answer; so I e-mailed again, and still no response.  I knew it was over and set out looking for a new internship.  I was in a bad spot here, it was the end of October by now, and I would only be available to intern for two months, who would want to hire me?  I scoured the internet and started sending e-mails asking people for informational interviews because I thought this would be more likely than finding an internship.  I grew frustrated and angry that this had happened so suddenly.  I e-mailed two of my bosses from the company asking if they knew anyone that needed any intern.  Two days later, I had two interviews set up and I ended up taking a marketing internship at another record label where I worked for the full two months.  It didn't take that long; it was only the first week in November when I started my first day there.

The moral of the story is, expect the unexpected.  I never saw that coming but I didn't let it stop me either.  I spoke up for myself in that office and because I accepted the fact that I would not be returning there, I was able to find another internship.  I maximized the time I had left to intern somewhere else and never gave up.