Monday, June 6, 2011

Interns

We've got two new summer interns at my office last week. It seems like they are both good people and will fit in pretty easily with the rest of the crew. But man, I couldn't help but think of how they must feel right now. It's that first day of work awkwardness. When you arrive at an office twenty minutes earlier than everyone else and people forget you are coming that day so you sit around awkwardly waiting for someone to show you what to do, where to sit, what forms to fill out. Then you fill out the forms, get toured around the office, and you try desperately to figure out which people are going to be worth befriending. Sit around awkwardly again just staring at the papers you just filled out... pretending to pour over them like you even understand half the 401k jargon. "Just looking over these documents here... Looks like I am going to have a loooong, and prosperous career here...this pie chart is showing significant gains in our long term mutual funds and Brightside has given it it's highest ranking. This is really going to be great." Meanwhile you have no clue what Brightside even is, or what that pie chart is telling you.
Then you sit there until the dreaded noon time rolls around and it starts to feel like your first day of classes at college when you don't know who to sit with at lunch. There's the group of kids that are probably too cool for you which have already gone to 3 more parties than you and probably hooked up with more girls than you are going to hook up with in your college career. And there's the one kid that was probably home schooled but sat in front of you in philosophy class which you kinda feel obligated to sit with since you already had a conversation with him before class. Hopefully they take you out to lunch so you don't sit there like an idiot not knowing what the protocol is for lunch. Poor kids. And then someone will inevitably come over around 3 o'clock and ask "everything going alright? All settled in? Going to come back tomorrow?" and the reply will inevitably be an enthusiastic "yeah, its going great so far!... Definitely be back tomorrow!...har de har har" And really they are thinking, "I have no clue what's going on..."
Unfortunately I think I have become the guy who is in his early thirties, who thinks he is cool, but really he just has all the dumb goofy action figures at his desk. F---.

1 comment:

  1. my first day at JK was the worse day ever.. (one guy told me to sit at someone else's desk, then classic JK freaks on me - all before 9am)
    I made it my priority to always be nice to every new person that started after that.. don't you remember how nice i was to you on your first day?!

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