tell us your weird summer intern stories

by Alison Green on September 13, 2018

There was the intern who gave another intern a tattoo in the office conference room; the intern who told a horribly offensive joke at an external meeting; the intern who set up a cot for himself, complete with pillow shams; the intern who was blown away by an electric stapler and thought dragons exist; the intern who desperately wanted to work from a patio, and the infamous interns fired for petitioning for a different dress code.

As another summer internship season draws to a close, we must hear your weirdest/funniest/worst stories about interns. Share in the comments.

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        2. Slartibartfast*

          I have some mildly inappropriate tunes from girl scout camp, God Bless My Underwear comes to mind …

        1. Kuododi*

          I make a chocolate sandwich cookie that’s all soft and fluffy. Then I sandwich about two inches of decadent white home made icing in between the cookies. I’ll fix a double batch and be on my way!!!

          1. Quackeen*

            Hello, new best friend! (I don’t trust people who complain when cake has “too much icing. What even is that?)

            1. Kuododi*

              I hear you!!! We’re talking about oodles of sugar, some butter and cream cheese to bind it all together. Bliss!!!

            2. Belle of the Midwest*

              If people tell you a cake has too much icing, walk away. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.

              3. nym*

                I am one of those people. You need me in your life because I will scrape the icing off my cake and give it to you.

                1. cara*

                  Or, at the very least, we’ll (for I, too, believe in “too much” frosting) opt for a middle piece without gobs of decorations, leaving the more heavily frosted portions to those who will truly enjoy them.

            3. TardyTardis*

              When I was much, much younger, I made a cake for a Cub Scout Jamboree and accidentally doubled the icing recipe. I put it all on anyway, and I think that was the first cake to die that night–apparently this made it waaay more popular than the others.

  2. Bend & Snap*

    We had a couple of doozies during my time at a PR agency.

    1) came in hung over and threw up down a flight of stairs in the office. Carpeted stairs. The smell lingered for days

    2) took a nap under the front desk during business hours

    3) Wore head-to-toe designer gear every day, left her wallet at the reception desk and kept wailing that IT WAS DIOR when it got stolen. Most of us were making peanuts.

    So all in all, not too crazy.

    1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      We had someone nap under their desk during business hours! Is this a thing people do??

      1. knitcrazybooknut*

        We had someone sleep at their desk, get fired, and file for unemployment. He won because nowhere in the employee handbook did it explicitly say, “No sleeping on the job.”

        I am so not kidding.

        1. Quackeen*

          Yup, I can believe it. I had a couple of guys in a class I was running get pissed when I asked them to please not sleep during class because, at the beginning of the day, I had not spelled out in the course overview that sleeping was not allowed.

          1. whingedrinking*

            I had a student once who came to class and slept every. single. day. After day three of this I told him to sleep somewhere else and kicked him out. He complained to my boss, who told me I couldn’t stop someone from “attending” class as long as he wasn’t disruptive. I should have said that he snored.

            1. Annie*

              I realise my situation is very unusual but as a person with narcolepsy who was tortured throughout school and college for it, please have a bit of sympathy. If a healthy adult is randomly falling asleep in the middle of the day on a regular basis, something is wrong.

              1. poolgirl*

                Not in my coworkers case. He admittedly sleeps because he stays up until the wee hours playing video games.

              2. PizzaDog*

                If this were true of the above examples, it’s up to them to advise their boss / professor / doula / whomever, so that they don’t have this type of reaction. The first thought when seeing a student sleeping in class isn’t going to be positive, unfortunately.

              3. whingedrinking*

                You’re absolutely right, and the first thing I did was ask him if he was okay. Students falling asleep in class, even sleeping through the whole thing, is not outside the realm of my experience as either a teacher or a learner, so I let it pass for the first day. After the second, he said he was fine, he just “liked to sleep”. Now, maybe he did have a sleep disorder – maybe it was undiagnosed, or maybe he was embarrassed to admit it – but either way, he wasn’t getting anything out of the class and he was negatively affecting everyone else. Being told that he couldn’t be there should have been an indicator that this wasn’t normal and something needed to be done about it.

        2. Detective Amy Santiago*

          Now I know why my new employee training specified “no sleeping on the job” at least three times.

          1. doreen*

            And mine now says an employee “shall not sleep or give the appearance of sleeping on the job” – because at least one person claimed she wasting sleeping just “resting her eyes” for half an hour.

          2. Environmental Compliance*

            I have an odd mixture of want to know and do not want to know about what happened to cause the ridiculous number of times “do not sleep with a student” was included in the employee manual when I started as a TA…

            1. Harper the Other One*

              There was a professor in my department who was notorious for breaking up with his wife RIGHT before one of his students graduated, and then six months later when the divorce was finalized, what do you know! They were dating.

              This happened MULTIPLE TIMES. But because no one could prove they had any relationship prior to graduation, there was little they could do.

              1. ToS*

                If the exwife was truly motivated, they could disclose the emails with the student that got them the quickie (adultery, no waiting period) divorce to the university’s general counsel or Title IX Coordinator. They track behavior.

            2. The Archnerd*

              I am a grad student, and have femmrecently learned (courtesy of a bit of breakroom gossip with one of the younger professors) just how many of these dudes have had relationships with students or (in the best cases) former students. My own academic advisor met his wife when she was a student of his. I did NOT ask when they got together.

              1. NotTodaySatin*

                I met my husband when he took the first class I ever taught. However, since I was at a junior college and he was returning to school, we’re actually the same age and we didn’t start dating until after he was done with my class. He was in one of the two year track programs and would never take any class I’d teach again (think, he was in industrial basketweaving and I taught freestyle weasel ranching as an elective).

        4. ToS*

          Yes, he won unemployment – not the right to sleep. What we tell people is, if you are sleeping while you are expected to be working, you are, by definition, not doing your job. You cannot “attend” to your work if you are asleep. We have mercy for the occasional nod, or even people who nap (and wake up) during their break in private work areas.

          We are generous with leave, and have good benefits. Some of the more circumspect employees, when warned, have mentioned going for a sleep study with helpful results.

      3. osrapla*

        Ashamed to admit I’ve done this! I stopped after the janitor walked in on me once and I scared him half to death.

        1. AK*

          Not at all ashamed to admit that I have! I had a late night working with teams in different time zones then had an early meeting the next day. By 1pm I thought I would fall asleep standing up! I booked one of our smallest conference rooms for a 30 minute “meeting”, brought my computer and notepad in so no one would be suspicious, and set an alarm for 25 minutes. It was exactly what I needed to get through the day, and I was able to finish the afternoon strong! I was unavailable for less time than a lunch break, no one else needed the room, and I had my desk phone forwarded to my cell in case anything urgent had come up.

          That said, I’d never dream of napping at or under my desk. :)

          1. Kimberly*

            I took a nap during my conference period or lunch a couple of times and so did my teammates. As long as we were up and able to teach on time, it was ok. Teaching is physically stressful. It often happened when we had some type of event the night before that kept us at school late.

          2. Jayn*

            Working as a security guard, one of my early assignments was to spend a couple nights in an empty school with no power. Pretty hard to stay awake in near-total darkness (I eventually developed better coping mechanisms). Kinda glad I got away with it, kinda annoyed that no one noticed when I was 19, alone, and missed my hourly check-in.

          3. Loud Noises*

            Literally the only way I got through the first year of my job in a foreign time zone was going out to my car every lunch break and power napping. It really does work wonders!

          4. Software Engineer*

            I took a nap at work because it was New Years Eve and the office was completely dead…. I had a massive headache, but with my husband and two small children at home I knew that ‘going home sick’ wouldn’t involve much resting. So I booked the casual conference room that had a couch, turned off the lights and drew the shades

            It’s a measure of how dead the office was that nobody cared when I stayed 15 minutes past my booked time. Usually somebody is kicking you out at :01 after

      4. doder mcbungleboo*

        sometimes. i work with people in different timezones and i might come in at 4:30 in the morning for meetings, take a nap for an hour or so, get up at 9 and get back to work.

        occasionally in the afternoons i might take a 10-minute power nap at my desk…beats spending an entire afternoon dead tired and unable to do anything…seriously, it’s a win-win.

          1. Lissa*

            Not gonna lie, under the desk makes me think of an anxious grade one student (because it was me! not ragging on anxious grade one students.)

          2. Anonny*

            I did it once, when the computers all went down and no work was going to get done.

            I like sitting in dark, enclosed spaces. I’m basically a cat.

            2. anycat*

              i did it once after our holiday party that was held at the office. the desk was about 5 feet tall and blocked me. we were all so incredibly drunk (lots of champagne, not a ton of food) that no one noticed.
              ahh.. that’s why i don’t work for small businesses any more.. ;)

            4. WeNamedTheDogIndiana*

              It is entirely possible to lie under my desk such that it is impossible to tell I’m there unless someone literally walks into my cubicle – I’m in a corner. I’ve never slept there (although the thought has certainly occurred), but I have on occasion had a brief lie down in order to recalibrate my spine.

        2. Annoyed*

          Years ago when I had the salon (note… I owned it so I could do “whatever”), if it was a slow day and I had no immediate/soon appointments sometimes I would lock the doors and go sit under a pre-warmed hair dryer and nap.

          I did that off and on for years if I needed a power nap and the circumstances were right.

          Mostly trough this was reeaallyy a *thing* the last couple of years when I was burning out in general.

          There were also days that I just “couldnt” and would just hide out back there so I didnt have to deal with people. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        3. Jerry*

          Same here, I travel ~40% and manage projects across time zones, but like to get some face time when I’m in the office city. If I’m jet lagged or I’ve been awake since 4, I’ll chug a coffee and take a quick one.

      5. Quackeen*

        Not gonna lie, I was walking to work this morning, wondering if I could get away with taking a nap on my office floor today (but I have an office door that closes!)

        I decided against the nap.

        1. DanniellaBee*

          Put a do not disturb sign on your door and turn off the lights. In extreme sleep deprived work weeks I think this is reasonable.

          1. Sally*

            Many years ago, I worked for a bank, and I used to go into a conference room, lock the door, and nap on my lunch hour. …until someone unlocked the door and walked in with a client. They immediately left to find another conference room. So embarrassing!

            1. Mimi Me*

              One of my favorite Office episodes is when the party planning group is taken over by Jim and Dwight and they forget Kelly’s birthday. So they give her the option of a party or a nap under the conference table and she chooses the nap. I would LOVE if my office did that!

            2. Kit Kendrick*

              I’ve done that, usually with white noise on my earbuds and an alarm so I won’t oversleep. If someone else comes in, I just explain that I was on the edge of a headache and was using the darkness and white noise to try and ward off a full migraine. (Which was usually the truth anyway.)

      6. Observer*

        It’s not so surprising when you consider the stories young people get fed. You know, Marissa Meyer sleeping under her desk, cots in law offices supposedly being standard practice, Financial services hours being 100+ hours per week *especially for interns*, etc.

        Of course, all of those stories about people who work their heads off, but it does paint an odd picture.

        1. Book Badger*

          I’m not so sure about cots in law OFFICES, but at my law SCHOOL we had a downstairs bathroom that was not only equipped with toilets, but a full-on shower (towels not included). I don’t know anyone who used it personally, but allegedly it was for when people slept in the library overnight and needed to shower the next morning.

          1. Len F*

            Some office blocks have showers, too. I think the point of it is for people who bicycle to work.

            Either way, an on-campus shower is very useful those of us that attend the Global Game Jam (https://globalgamejam.org/), which is usually held at a university or something similar. At some points in a three-day programming marathon it is still necessary to wash oneself.

      7. Temperance*

        I have occasionally done this, TBH. I know it’s weird – I have a private office and can fully fit under my desk. I only have done it when a serious migraine hits and I don’t have my rescue meds.

        1. DrTheLiz*

          Total sympathy here! When I get a migraine, the best way to guarantee a rescue med will *work* is to take a 30 minute nap. Resets the brain juice, or something. Still won’t help with a 72-hour special, but nothing does and I don’t get them often so… eh.

          1. Oranges*

            Apparently your brain does shrink a bit when sleeping. Current theory is that the spinal fluid is actually washing away “brain waste products” when you sleep. The more you know. The more you have to conclude that the world is weeeeird.

      8. London Calling*

        Yes it is. I had a colleague who came in mega hungover and went to an unoccupied office and slept under the desk for a couple of hours. It helped that he was very popular with everyone including the manager so we all shrugged and said, ‘Well, that’s X,’ and we weren’t in the main office building so no-one else was around to see but still….

      9. RainyDay*

        Someone in my office naps on a couch in the kitchenette/break room several days a week at the end of the day (like 3-5pm). Curled up with her feet on the couch (SHOES ON UGH), the whole thing. Or just sitting there playing on her phone. I’m hoping she’s an intern and just doesn’t understand how the real world works yet.

        It bothers me waaaay more than it should.

        1. Annoyed*

          That would bother me. 1) the shoes thing…agreed…iiiccckkk and 2) if that’s a shared space she’s using more than her fair share…often.

        2. Jess*

          I think that’s a really odd use of a shared space! It seems disrespectful. The sitting playing on her phone is one thing (perfectly usual way to wind down for a little while…but not two hours?!), but napping in a shared spaces means that anyone else using it has to be quiet and impinges on their ability to use the space in a reasonable way.

          I often pop out into our kitchen/staff room area if I need to do something like make a personal call, I’d be very annoyed if someone was napping there and I felt I couldn’t have a conversation at a normal volume.

        3. Bowserkitty*

          I’m not sure what is worse in this case, shoes on OR off….she just shouldn’t be doing that in general…

      10. miss_chevious*

        We had a summer associate who decided it would be a good idea to PUT ON HER PAJAMAS and take a nap ON TOP OF HER DESK one summer. I mean, I’ve dozed in my office occasionally for sure, but I didn’t climb up on top of the desk in my PJs for a snooze. She was not offered a position at the end of the summer.

          1. Rater Z*

            Many years ago, in tghe later 1970’s, I had a midnight guy who would take Thanksgiving night as his floating holiday. I would go in about 8 pm an catch the drivers heading out to deliver their loads. By midnight, I knew it would be dead until after 6 am, so I would clear off a table, pull out my pillow and a blanket, crawl up on the table and go to sleep. If someone would need me, I could wake up and take care of them, but it never happened. Usually I would be woken up around 4 am and told to go home but don’t bother to come in for Friday evening or Saturday morning. I had been there 210-11 years and was the office leader there so nobody was going to bother me. (I was also straight salary no over time pay.)

      12. Cheryl Blossom*

        I’ve snuck into storage closets to cry, but never to nap!
        (I’m no longer at that job, don’t worry.)

      15. Been there, seen that, the T-Shirt doesn't fit*

        The high school age daughter of one of my bosses used to come into her mom’s office after school & nap under the desk until it was time for mom to go home. Scared the hell out of anybody who walked around the desk & found her.

    2. Shmems*

      Ha! My director told us about an intern at his previous job who, on his break, would put on a hooded sweatshirt and sit at his desk snoozing with his head on his arms and a post-it on his back that said “Do Not Disturb”

      1. Frozen Ginger*

        There was one day, within the first year of my first post-college job, where I just literally could not stay awake. I was doing the whole eyes-fluttering and head-nodding thing.
        Thankfully, my department’s pretty lax on things and we all work flex-time. So I took a piece of paper and wrote “Don’t worry; I’m not charging time”, taped it to my desk and took a blissful ten-minute nap.

        1. Tiny Soprano*

          This is me too. I have very low blood pressure combined with the (sometimes useful, sometimes terrible) ability to sleep anywhere, so if I’m sitting down for long periods I can really struggle to stay awake. I’ve completely conked out sitting upright at a desk in the middle of working before, or fallen asleep in the middle of lunch! It even impacts the opera job sometimes (if we’ve been up rehearsing all day and then the director wants us to sit down so they can go through an hour of notes, my body interprets that as nap-time).

          1. Snazzy Hat*

            When I worked retail, I would sometimes get very tired during my 15-minute break, and I was convinced it was because I was hurrying around for hours and then suddenly stopped moving, as though my body went “oh thank goodness! power-down mode!”

          2. TardyTardis*

            I have been at some budget meetings where I literally bit my thumb to stay awake. I do not miss them.

        2. Loud Noises*

          If that happens to me when it’s not my break time I actually go into the bathroom and just sit to have a five-ten minute shut eye. Desperate times…

      2. Office Gumby*

        One day I just. could. not. stay. awake at the Day Job. I hung in there until lunch time, booked out the darkest meeting room we had, and spent the lunch hour napping.

        After that, I realised my car was probably the better place to nap (in spite of daylight), as I didn’t want to risk the optics of someone accidentally walking in on me having a nap on company property (albeit on my own time and not company time).

    3. ElspethGC*

      My dad worked in Malaysia for eight months (helping set up a new oil refinery) and he said it was pretty common for staff to nap when they didn’t have anything to do. I think it’s a cultural thing in that sense – my university has campuses in China and Malaysia that do year-abroad exchanges with the British campus, and you’ll see the East Asian transfer students napping in the uni library pretty often. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was semi-common in businesses as well.

      1. ElspethGC*

        Ugh, I meant to have this as a reply to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock saying “We had someone nap under their desk during business hours! Is this a thing people do??”

        1. Annoyed*

          Mid day naps are pretty commin in lots of places. Actually, and I have not run the numbers, but I think we here in the US/UK/other W. European type countries are in the minority.

          TBH I think with people working insane hours (something I do not allow in my own business, free/family/down time is sacrosanct to me) holding to “no sleeping at work ever” standards from a time when people routinely never worked over 40 hours per week but now easily do 60-80+ on a regular basis is ridonkous.

        2. Say what?*

          Same! I was napping up and down that campus like a narcoleptic cat. I think that’s just a student thing, not a cultural thing in this case.

      3. heyho*

        Ooh – I used to work at a teaching hospital that had a library in it and I would totally going down there and nap on my lunch hour sometimes. (I was non-exempt and had a strict lunch hour that I HAD to take…so why not?) Tons of docs/residents/med students were also sleeping in there, so it wasn’t too weird.

        1. Layla Heimlich*

          I am a librarian at a teaching hospital, and this happens ALL THE TIME. We’re actually happy to have you – our residents and fellows use the library all the time, and we’re kind of tickled that the library is a place you feel comfortable. Many hospital librarians feel that providing a “safe space” for our clinicians is a really important part of our job.

      4. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        I don’t think naps are uncommon—when I worked abroad, we had a two-hour lunch where naps were very common. And of course, hospitals and now law firms have cots and napping/overnight rooms, etc. It’s the very specific “sleeping under the desk” that surprises me, although perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised, as I saw classmates bring sleeping bags and camp out in the library all the time during undergrad finals.

      5. Julia*

        In Japan, some students sleep in class and it’s generally considered acceptable (unless you’re in, like Communicative English or whatever), and my awful co-worker at my last Japanese job would sleep at her desk most afternoons, even though we were definitely not overworked and she usually came in late in the mornings anyway.

      6. Ambulocetus*

        It could be sector-dependent because I’m from and currently work in Malaysia and it’s not common at all for staff in the private sector to nap at work! (apart from some startup-y workplaces that tout bean bags and napping rooms and stuff, but no one really uses this ‘perk’ because work culture-wise it’s frowned upon). The public sector (civil servants) here is heavily stereotyped as lazy; taking naps on-the-job is considered a sign of laziness and incompetence, from my understanding.

      7. Bowserkitty*

        Can concur; a lot of people in my office in Japan do this. It was fascinating to me at first but now I’m used to seeing my boss conked out. As soon as the lunch bell end chimes, he comes back to life completely refreshed.

        I, personally, would develop back/neck pain from this. Not to mention my make-up would smudge, knowing my luck.

    4. H.C.*

      Oh man, if I only had a dollar for every weird intern/worker story during my time in PR agencies (esp to make up for their ridiculously low pay.)

    5. another Hero*

      #2 is relatable tbh. It is only the fact that this is Unacceptable Behavior that keeps me from sleeping under a desk sometimes

    6. Jenny P*

      I had an intern in a public facing position in a children’s drop-in area of a museum take a naps regularly. Visitors complained to security.

  3. Kat Em*

    Do student teachers count? Because I worked with one who randomly mentioned in conversation that she believed dinosaur fossils were planted by atheist scientists to make people stop believing in God.

          1. Anonny*

            She’s gonna run into a kid like I was, and then there’ll be tears. And screaming. Probably from both the kid and the teacher.

            1. LSP*

              Yeah, my son would be taking none of that nonsense. He’s 5 and has been talking about being a scientist since he was 2!

              1. MissPettyAndVindictive*

                A friend’s kid was so keen on dinosaurs he could spell brontosaurus – at 4. Wrote it at the bottom of a picture of one he drew for me. A couple of the letters were backwards, but it was the right spelling!

    3. Bea*

      Bless her heart.

      All those pesky scientists! I applaud her whole new level of over the top beliefs.

      I wonder her thoughts on climate change *grinch grin*

      1. seewhatimean*

        I have just learned that my non-intern long-time-science-employment coworker does not believe that climate change is cause by or affected by anything people do. The same day I learned that our evolutionary development expert believes in intelligent design.

    4. moss boss*

      Can’t wait to hear from all the summer science interns who spend their summers in the badlands burying fossils. I bet they have some good stories too.

      1. Bea*

        Stop…my mind is writing a fantastic tale of these bad baby scientists embarking on their first mission to remove God from the minds of the good folks.

        (Being a Christian myself, I’m even worse than any gaggle of these atheists…I’m an atheist enabler…but free will y’all.)

        1. Thursday Next*

          For some reason I read your last line as “free wifi y’all.” Which also made perfect sense to me.

      4. char*

        Plot twist: the fossils are actually dragon bones that the interns are re-arranging into these fictional “dinosaur” configurations.

    5. Cruciatus*

      I have met a person just like this. I thought one could believe in both, and even mentioned the Scopes Monkey trial, but alas… It’s all a conspiracy. And radiocarbon dating is fake–you put down when you think the item (fossil, whatever) is from, and that’s the date they’ll give you when you’re done. It’s all a sham.

      1. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

        My great-grandfather died firmly believing that dinosaur bones were really elephant bones, and that those pesky scientists were lying to us for the purpose of leading us astray. My great-grandmother is still living, and I’m pretty sure that she holds that same opinion.

          2. Falling Diphthong*

            Spouse used to say “… back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and the internet was dial up” until daughter shot back “I don’t even know what dial up IS.”

                1. ComputerD00D*

                  “Back in the day when I was Cool Kid of the year because my parents baught me a 9600 Baud modem for Christmas…”

                3. TardyTardis*

                  *I* got a 28.8 modem for my anniversary present one year, but that’s because my husband was cool and my son is technically ept.

            2. MissPettyAndVindictive*

              This is great.
              My Dad and some of his friends use the phrase “When Jesus was a lad and played half-back for Israel”
              And my fiance says “In the future when there’s robots” and if you point out that there are already robots he shrieks and accuses you of being a time-traveller. It is very entertaining.

            3. Julia*

              My grad school prof says that about his old research days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and he had to type papers into word processors. Being the mouthy snark that I am, I asked how a T-Rex would type, and he actually gave a demonstration. We’re linguists, by the way.

          3. alice*

            My godson recently asked me if I dinosaurs were alive when I was his age. I bought him a book about dinosaurs and some plastic dinosaur toys for his third birthday. His mum is a bit annoyed with me because he is now obsessed so I think she regards it as my just desserts. I am 25.

              1. amb*

                So I live on a small farm and have a lot of chickens (we sell eggs). I really would like to call it the Tiny Dinosaur Farm, but my hubby has never gotten on board with me.

        2. Bend & Snap*

          My grandmother just found out dinosaurs are real a few years ago. She thought they were made up, like dragons. But she’s 100 but she gets a pass.

          1. Not a Mere Device*

            My mother thought that until she was in her twenties. When she mentioned that (I was in my 40s, it hadn’t come up before) it made me wonder about the generally excellent high school she and I both went to.

      2. CupcakeCounter*

        You must have met my science teach from the Christian school I attended. Great at everything else but I remember him saying “God made it look that old on purpose”. No one could answer my question of but why would he/she/they do that?
        My uncle (a minister) told to to keep remembering that the Bible and other religious texts were written by man and a lot of people are bad at math. Smart man that one. Actually learned Hebrew and Greek so he could read the “originals” himself with King James or any other dudes putting their spin on things. Whether I agree or not I have a lot of respect for that work ethic.

        1. Annoyed*

          My one great-grandmother, a devout southern baptist told me basically the same thing.

          She also told me to learn for myself and not believe what others, including clergy told me things meant/were.

          She was talking about the bible and religion specifically, but it’s a lesson I’ve applied to my whole life: be a rebel like Grandma.

      3. Allornone*

        I had an AP Biology Teacher that did not believe in evolution. That’s right, Advanced Placement Biology teacher, a guy teaching college-level biology.

        Otherwise, he was a wonderful teacher and my liberal-arts butt probably would not have passed the AP Exam without him, but I still could never get over that.

        1. MissPettyAndVindictive*

          How on earth can you be an AP biology teacher and not believe in evolution?!

          I knew someone at school who came from a fairly creationist family, but was extremely good at science, especially biology. I always felt she merged her faith and love of science well – God created the earth waaaay back when, got bored, and essentially the same thing happened that does if you leave half a sandwich in a lunch box and forget about it – stuff grows.
          So yep, we’re all here because God started a science experiment and forgot about it.

          1. Carpe Librarium*

            That’s why everything these days has warnings to store them in a cool, dry place; life on Earth is an excellent example of what happens when you don’t…

        2. RaccoonLady*

          I had a good friend (Southern Baptist preacher’s daughter, now getting her PhD in archaeology!) tell me that she likes to think of the seven days of creation as “God days” and those are much longer than ours…hence all the evolution and billions of years from nothing to mankind! It doesn’t 100% work for my agnostic self but I did liked her way of explaining it and reconciling her very religious upbringing with her very liberal career!

          1. TardyTardis*

            I wonder what she would think of the Egyptian letters complaining about having to pay too much in taxes from around 4000 BC? (seriously, this is not a new thing…).

    6. Ealasaid*

      I had a school librarian tell me she only reads books like the Left Behind series because they’re about what’s really going to happen.
      *headdesk*
      Another person I worked with that year in the school district told me she didn’t know any gay people. I said something like, “well, as far as you know.” Completely blew her mind. I mean, we were in the SF Bay Area. Like, lady, you 100% know at least one gay person. They just haven’t told you.

      2. Rainy*

        When my high school refused to allow a PFLAG chapter because “[High school] doesn’t have any gays” according to the principal, I wrote a letter asking if he was sure about that, because A) there were certainly LGBTQIA students when I was there, and B) I myself, an alumna of [High school], am bisexual.

          1. Rainy*

            He did not respond to any of my letters or emails. Apparently I am so imaginary that letters from me do not exist.

      3. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

        Left Behind…..ugh. As a person who grew up in church during Left Behind’s heyday, anyone who takes those books as gospel truth makes me want to beat my head into a wall.

        1. SusanIvanova*

          Fred Clark on Slacktivist has been deconstructing those books for *years*. He’s evangelical but not fundamentalist, so he gets where they’re coming from and it’s a really interesting insight into their mindsets.

          1. Kitrona*

            And the comment section is pretty good. Not as well moderated as here, but there’s interesting discussions.

            (Full disclosure: That’s how I met my girlfriend, in the Slacktivist comment section. I also run the Discord for the commenters.)

        2. Annoyed*

          I read one once. It was left in a laundry mat. Way before smart phones. I was bored. I didn’t know about them at that point. I swear I was sitting there just slack jawed in disbelief the whole time I was reading it.

        3. tink*

          The first few were an interesting read if you took them at “apocalypse fiction with a biblical slant” face value, but then a whole bunch of people became convinced they were basically non-fiction and I noped right out of that.

      4. whingedrinking*

        Another person I worked with that year in the school district told me she didn’t know any gay people. … I mean, we were in the SF Bay Area.
        …what does she think the whole city is getting up to in June, then? People just really like rainbows?

    8. Likeraccons*

      I learned my lesson that I should bring up dinosaurs on a first date to see if the other person believes they are real. I was a few years in with someone, and had to rethink the whole relationship. It hadn’t come up because we weren’t church going people. That was an eye-opener!

      1. The New Wanderer*

        Fortunately, my date revealed his stance on evolution (didn’t buy it) on the second date, which was obviously the last date. His take was that God planted the fossils to create doubt and only true believers would see the Truth. He also believed the moon landings were a hoax.

        2. Shay*

          I was talking to a guy about how I believed in some conspiracy theories. He was so on board and thought I was awesome, I could just really tell that his opinion of me was going through the roof. I’m thinking conspiracy theory like MKUltra, the US government assassinated MLK, and modern civil rights movements are being spied on and sabotaged by the FBI. He comes out saying the moon landing never happened.

            2. cara*

              Or, “I know, right? If there had *really* been a moon landing, it would be an accepted scientific fact that the moon is hollow!”

      2. Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins*

        I like to tell the story about how in college, I took an archeology class thinking it was going to be all dinosaurs, all the time. Sadly, the dinosaurs were nowhere to be found and I finally realized the difference between Human Archeology and Paleontology about the 3rd week.
        It’s sort of a “Haha, dumb me.” story that masks the true test of compatibility : “Do you believe dinosaurs are real?”

        1. Say what?*

          I feel really sad for you because I would also make this mistake and I would have been deeply disappointed by the lack of dinosaurs. Which is crazy because I feel like I’d enjoy the class a lot if I went in with the expectation that there would be no dinosaurs.

        1. Botanist*

          I’m a Mormon and a scientist- I studied evolution at BYU, the church-owned school. The church’s official stance is that they have no official stance on things like paleontology and the age of the earth.

        2. Renna*

          ???

          I’m Mormon and I assure you that we were never taught anything at church stating that science isn’t real. Some people may have parents with these misguided ideas, but I’m 30 and have been in congregations across the country and abroad (military family). The general belief is that God works through science and the Biblical timeline of 7 days is “whatever a day means to something eternal”. I haven’t met another church member yet who doesn’t believe in dinosaurs. I’m sure they’re out there, I just haven’t met any. They aren’t that common.

          1. That Would be a Good Band Name*

            Not a Mormon, but glad to see someone else mention that “7 days” isn’t necessarily days like we think of them now. I heard that in church at some point growing up and it always stuck with me, but no one else seems to be familiar with the idea and even my family doesn’t remember any of our pastors saying it. I’m guessing it was the one who was also the science teacher at the high school.

          2. Turtlewings*

            Came here to say essentially the same thing, but I wanted to tell you I initially thought you meant you were sure *dinosaurs* were out there and you just haven’t met any. “They aren’t that common” indeed…

        3. Kendra*

          Seconding what Renna said. I am Mormon and not a paleotologist, but it was my dream job when I was about 4 years old.

    10. MuseumChick*

      Oh boy. Not an intern but I once had a co-worker tell me “I think giants existed but I’m still researching it.” I said “Oh, do you mean like *insert medical conditions that cause extremely tall humans?” Her: “No, I mean like what’s in the bible. But like I said, I’m still researching it.”

      1. Lara*

        That’s…actually not amazingly uncommon. Some people equate the “Nephilim” from Genesis with giants thanks to the “David and Goliath” narrative.

        1. Gus*

          Yeah, the King James translation of Genesis 6:4 is “There were giants in the earth in those days.” I don’t think belief in literal giants is a mainstream Christian position, but it’s not entirely out of left field.

      2. Engineer Girl*

        There were definitely groups of people over 8 foot tall. Considering most people at the time were under 5 feet, that would qualify.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          It’s very rare for groups of people to be under 5 ft. The idea of really short Medieval people came out of only gowns and armor for really short people surviving to modern times, which turned out to be due to a bias in what sizes can be used until they wear out.

          2. Batty Twerp*

            Try my family of Welsh mining stock! My mum is 4’9″, my nan and grandad topped out at 4’6″ and 4’11” respectively. We even had “Little Nan”, my great grandma who was barely 4’4″. I’m only just 5′ 2.5″ (I’m proud of that half inch!).

          3. Engineer Girl*

            Julius Caesar was considered very tall at 5’7”. The male Egyptians were around 5’2”.

            Medieval times were thousands of years removed from ancient times so are a poor comparison. Different ethnic group too.

            1. Dove*

              Nutrition, disease, and stress all play a factor, too – on average, people in the modern day are getting *much* more in the way of nutrients and sufficient calories than our ancestors in the medieval era or earlier would have been, and we’re less likely to get vaccine-preventable diseases because. Well. Vaccines. (It turns out that getting sick a lot as a kid tends to result in being shorter on average, since your body’s more focused on not dying and doesn’t have the resources to spare for getting taller.)

          4. UKcastle visiter*

            That isn’t quite right. The idea that medieval people were shorter also came from medieval buildings all over Europe with really low doorways and ceilings. I can personally attest from visiting more than twenty of them that are still standing in multiple countries that they were built for people who were max 5ft4.

        2. The Other Katie*

          There’s no evidence of groups of people over 8 feet tall, either. The tallest historical group of people is probably the modern Dutch, whose average male height is about 6′ (182.5cm).

          1. Engineer Girl*

            This statement isn’t quite true. For example, the Maasai average at 6’4”.
            Many of the studies do averages by country instead of by tribe. This really messes with the data.
            In short, their sample areas are so large that they mess up the averages.

          2. Engineer Girl*

            BTW the Maasai home country of Kenya has an average height of just 5’6”.
            That shows you how incorrect sampling can hide data.

      3. Tuna Casserole*

        Nephilim. Giants who were children of the sons of God and the daughters of men. I had a co-worker who believed that museums were hiding the bones of these giants.

    11. Temperance*

      The church I attended as a child actually pushed the idea that Satan created fossils in order to trick us into not loving God. Yeah, I don’t get it.

      2. alice*

        I never understood why God, if all powerful, could not have created dinosaurs. The bible makes no mention of them but the bible was written by humans (and then a bunch of men decided what to include and what not to include) far after the world was created.

      3. MissPettyAndVindictive*

        Might just be me, but I feel like that is way more effort than Satan would be willing to put in.
        (n.b. I am not of a Judaeo-christian faith, so I don’t know if Satan is represented in the Bible as being like this, but I dunno, what I’ve heard of his characterisation I feel like he’d not want to put that much effort in.)

        1. Loud Noises*

          According to my very religious upbringing he would most definitely put that effort in, but would not have the power. He could only destroy, not create.

    12. LabGirl*

      I work in a lab and had a fellow scientist tell me the same “You know, those are just all made up. They paleontologists find tiny little fragments of bone and then just throw them into a huge plaster mold and say that’s what the bone was originally. It’s all just supposed to fool us.”

      Then, same job, different scientist, laughed at me when evolution came up during a discussion and asked “So you think were descended from monkeys?!?” I calmly replied “No, but I believe we share a common ancestor”. Why do people think that’s OK? I don’t point out and laugh at your belief systems. I’m not even going to get into a discussion of belief systems vs. science!

      1. Annoyed*

        Oh the “descended from monkeys” thing. Also the “why are there still monkeys/apes then” argument. They make me feel stabby with their ignorance (literally) and arrogance in that ignorance.

        1. alice*

          I once made this argument but in my defence I was seven and our teacher had actually told us we were descended from monkeys not that we have a common ancestor.

          1. RUKiddingMe*

            As a seven year old of course that’s a earning experience, plus you had a pretty ill-informed teacher.

            The “why are there still monkeys/apes” question annoys me. Well maybe because not all species are just desperately trying to become human?! I’m almost past the point of feeling the need to educate the ignorant though. Almost. It’s been … oh god … 38 years (!) and these days I’m usually just too tired to even begin correcting people.

            I was allowed to read Coming of Age in Samoa when I was eight. Naturally I didn’t understand the vast majority of it even with my way higher than age/grade level reading ability. I did understand that she was an anthropologist and was studying people who were much different than myself and anyone I knew, and I knew right then that that’s what I wanted to do. The only other thing I ever gave serious consideration to was law school. I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I wanted to be a judge but I figured that actually knowing the law would be if not actually a requirement at least a good idea.

            1. Been there, seen that, the T-Shirt doesn't fit*

              [I wanted to be a judge but I figured that actually knowing the law would be if not actually a requirement at least a good idea.]

              PLEASE tell that to some of the judges I know!

      2. TardyTardis*

        I bet these people all get the newest flu vaccine each year, though–think about why we do that, heh.

    13. BadWolf*

      Actually, this is the best reasoning behind dinosaurs not existing that I’ve come across. I still think it’s weird, but it makes more sense to me than being planted by the devil.

    16. Seespotbitejane*

      I just had dinner with a friend who was raised very fundamentalist and she was furious that she had just learned that a lot of North America used to be underwater and that’s why (for instance) people sometimes find seashell fossils in Kansas. She’s very angry about what else she doesn’t know that she doesn’t know.

      1. alice*

        I admit I didn’t know that and I wasn’t raised fundamentalist I believe in dinosaurs and evolution etc (something I never had to clarify until I moved here, though technically Christian my country is largely secular and non-religious). I am not American though so that is going to be my defence for not knowing that.

      2. poolgirl*

        Usually Fundamentalists explain those as coming from when the earth was flooded…..consistent with their beliefs. Her anger makes me wonder if that is making her question things.

    17. Beancounter in Texas*

      Was she from Texas? Cuz there’s a Creation Evidence Museum of Texas in Glen Rose and a Discovery Center/Creation Emporium in Abilene to “prove” creationism over evolution.

      (We’re not all creationists; just the Bible Belt.)

    18. MissPettyAndVindictive*

      Fiance has family who believe (or at least at the time this happened they did) that, and I have one hell of a story about it.

      Fiance is sitting at a family get together playing Plants versus Zombies on his laptop. Youngest son from said family comes to watch what he is doing. He’s about 6. Asks what the game is. Fiance tells him. And then the conversation goes like this:
      “Wait, what are zombies?”
      “They’re people who died and came back to life. But they aren’t really alive – they came back wrong. They eat brains.”
      “Oh, okay.” *long pause* “….JESUS IS A ZOMBIE”
      “Uh, that isn’t really-”
      “DOES JESUS EAT BRAINS?! MUM, MUM, WHY DIDN’T FATHER SMITH TELL US THAT AT CHURCH?? JESUS IS AWESOME. CAN I EAT BRAINS LIKE JESUS??”

      1. Ego Chamber*

        So I really, really f#cking hate kids (the idea of kids, individual kids, just everything about them squicks me), but then I go and read something like this and my cold, dead, dried-up heart grows 3 sizes.

    19. Julianne (also a teacher)*

      OMG, I have so many student teacher stories (about fellow student teachers, I have not yet had one of my own).

      -The early childhood ST who shared her anti-vax views, as well as her beliefs about how the government is run by the Illuminati and/or lizard people, with her students’ parents.
      -The one who lied to her cooperating teacher about her start date after she forgot to show up for the first two days, and then later to the university about her ending date so she could go to an amusement park with her friends instead of the last day of student teaching.
      -Dude who just randomly failed to show up at least once per week for the first/only month of his student teaching.
      -So many sartorial choices: button down shirt and tie plus filthy sweatpants; jeans with holes on the butt cheek region; skintight clubwear; shorts paired with St. Patrick’s Day novelty socks that had little pints of beer scattered among the shamrocks.

    20. Caitlyn*

      This is not as uncommon as you may think. My mother and stepfather are 7th-day Adventists and sent me to a private religious school for middle school. Our science book opened with a chapter on creationism and espoused that the world is only a few thousand years old (per the bible) and that any scientific “evidence” to the contrary was placed there by Satan to confuse us and turn us away from God. They asserted that dinosaurs and humans co-existed. I honestly think this is part of why Trump is able to so easily sway conservatives into believing the media is out to get them with fake news. Many of them already believe that society is trying to trick them with the “facts” to turn away from God. There is no reasoning with this mentality (because it has no reason). Scary stuff.

  4. sequitur*

    I noticed one of our interns last year falling asleep in an all hands meeting. When I mentioned this to the intern manager, it turned out that the intern had a habit of falling asleep in meetings…including his own one to one meetings with his manager. I felt bad for him in case it was a medical issue that he wasn’t willing or able to articulate, but it’s not a huge surprise that we didn’t offer him a job after he graduated.

    1. Ashlee*

      We had one of those. She was the daughter of a donor. The internship was from June 1st- August 31st. Except she had planned a trip to China and missed all of June. When she finally started, she wore a hoodie everyday (our dress code is business casual) and she would sleep at the curtator’s desk. But no one would say anything because her parents were donors.

      Her older sister also interned for us a few years earlier and ended up getting stitches because she was “popping wheelies” in one of our wheelchairs, flipped backwards and gashed open her head. There was also a son, but he was actually a great intern, did a huge amount of cataloging and sorting while he was here. He did have rainbow colored hair, which we are not supposed to have because a part-timer came in that way one day and was told she couldn’t work until she changed her hair, but again, child of a donor so…

      (Our professional appearance policy states: Extreme forms of dress, hairstyle and makeup are not acceptable. )

      1. Observer*

        Eh, I’m no fan of rainbow hair, and the like. But I don’t think that it’s necessary to ask an unpaid summer intern to get rid of it unless the kid is in a really public facing role.

      1. JanetM*

        If you are tired enough… I once fell asleep while reading out loud. In my defense, I was reading a textbook about plywood. (I was a reader for visually impaired or learning disabled students when I was in college. Also a notetaker for visually impaired students.)

        2. Chinookwind*

          Wow, I thought proofreading procedures on how to watch paint dry ( the application and testing of liquid pipe coating that was half instructions to tell if it is dry enough enough to apply a second coat) was sleep inducing, but a book on plywood beats that. The only reason I didn’t fall asleep is that I petitioned my boss to let me sit outside in the fresh air while proofing the document and he agreed.

        4. Elizabeth the Ginger*

          My mom used to often fall asleep while reading me bedtime stories. Though it was literally *in bed*.

        5. MM*

          I fell asleep during a conference I was running, while typing notes on what people were saying into a Word document that was being projected on the big screen. There was no way for anyone in that room not to notice as my typing devolved. Still one of the worst moments of my professional life.

      2. Hapless Bureaucrat*

        Totally possible. I used to fall asleep while I was standing up, singing. Yes, it was absolutely a medical issue.
        At work, I developed a lot of work-arounds to try and mitigate it but I still had a couple embarrassing moments.
        I will say though, all- hands meetings are dire for everyone. One of the things I love best about my current employer is that we’re have a meeting culture that encourages you to just stand up and move to a wall to keep listening when you need to.

        1. Quackeen*

          When my younger son was about 4, we took the train to the Children’s Museum and had a full day, then took the train back. Walking home at the end up the day, the poor kid was so tired that he was nodding off while walking!

          1. Chicken Little*

            While in basic training for the U.S. Air Force, I fell asleep at attention, during a Very Important Inspection. Woke up just as the officers approached me and they never noticed.

      3. The New Wanderer*

        In high school, I met with my guidance counselor. Her office was very dimly lit and her voice was soft and gravelly. I was sleep deprived (because high school) and while I didn’t fall asleep, I came very close to it. She reported to my parents that I was disinterested in college (the topic we met on) because I was so clearly checked out of the conversation.

      5. Somniloquist*

        I’ve fallen asleep in one on ones. I had an undiagnosed medical issue and it hasn’t been a problem since I got treatment.

        I’m almost positive I got away with it since I would have expected my manager to bring it up or ask me to wake up. I had a habit of making it look like I was taking notes but I was actually asleep.

        1. Episkey*

          Ha! I did this in college/grad school in extremely boring classes when I was super tired. You could go back and look at my notebook and it was all just gibberish because I was 3/4 of the way asleep, but it looked like I was taking notes on the lecture.

          1. Peaches*

            This definitely happened to me in college as well! A few times, I was reviewing my notes later on and there would be a half a sentence, then a pen line dragging down several lines of the page.

            1. Shoes on My Cat*

              Well met fellow line-maker!! That was so me!! Plus the baseball cap and specific row up from the floor so that sleepy head droop looked like attentive note-taking to professor. Erp!

          2. Book Badger*

            I did this sometimes in college/grad school even if the class wasn’t boring. Fascinating results, though, because not only would I write total gibberish, but what words you could make out would be completely nonsensical (like “ghevwxhf bubble moose law? zbrwjdks”).

          3. TardyTardis*

            Unless I was right up where people could see what I was writing, when I was too bored to take real notes I would write outlines of the book I planned to work on next. Trust me, it was *always* way more exciting than what was actually going on.

      6. Red 5*

        I could probably manage it, but I have a sleep disorder that was undiagnosed and untreated for about 20 years so….

        Seriously though, if people run into this kind of thing it could be that the intern actually does have a disorder but their medical professionals aren’t taking it seriously and aren’t helping them, and that’s why they haven’t said. Narcolepsy specifically (not what I have but similar) often starts showing symptoms when you’re a teenager but everybody just assumes teens/early 20’s kids are “lazy” or whatever and they don’t get diagnosed or get treatment for many, many years. The _average_ time to diagnose is something like 15 years.

        That said, it’s still up to the person to manage their own life and cope with their own challenges, so you know, don’t just let them sleep through one-on-ones without mentioning that’s not going to work out well for them.

    3. never going home*

      I had that. I actually had two of them. I was doing 1:1 training and they kept falling asleep!

      I have had a few bouts of my own “nodding off at work” for a couple months at a time over the years, so I understood, but honestly, at least apologize for doing it!

    4. Wendy Darling*

      I had a colleague who kept zoning out and/or falling asleep at inappropriate times and was on a PIP until he was finally diagnosed with narcolepsy. :( Apparently narcolepsy is REALLY rough.

      He ended up having to take a LOT of leave and being moved to a different job at the company because his original job it was just not feasible to be out as much as he was, but the new job ended up being a totally amazing fit for him, so at least that ended reasonably well?

      1. Red 5*

        This is exactly what I brought up in my comment : ) Narcolepsy and hypersomnias are a real beast to deal with, and it’s super hard to find the fine line between what’s reasonable to expect of someone with the disorder and what’s reasonable accommodation. Before I was diagnosed I definitely got in my fair share of trouble with employers.

        It doesn’t help that popular media depictions of narcolepsy are not at all accurate and are almost always played for laughs.

  5. Amber Rose*

    Sigh. Our summer college kids (the closest we get to interns) are always great guys who work really hard, which is awesome, but leaves me lacking weird stories.

    I’m counting on the rest of you to give me a few laughs this morning.

    1. Ruth (UK)*

      Same. I work in university admin and we had a handful of interns over the summer and a work experience kid (15 year old) for a week. However, no wacky stories. The work experience kid was quite shy and the interns were generally good/capable.

      One got the wrong room for a meeting and sat on her own in the room for about 15 minutes until someone came across her, but that’s as wild as it gets.

    2. CMart*

      Honestly. The intern in my group this summer wrote us all thank you notes and delivered them to our desks with cupcakes from her mom’s bakery on her last day to express her appreciation for all the new knowledge and experience she gained. We took her out for fancy lunch to thank her for all her hard, valuable work.

      I can buy my own cupcake. I can’t manufacture 8-12 weeks of silent entertainment watching an inappropriate intern bumble their way through. We need to start hiring less competent people.

      1. Amber Rose*

        Ours stopped by my desk and shook my hand on their last day and thanked me for everything. I told them I was the one thankful for their hard work, and they looked all happy and it was so sweet.

        Maybe we need a “heartwarming stories” open thread one of these days.

        1. Rainy*

          Not an intern, but my partner had a kid in training at his workplace who at the end of his first day, went around and kissed all the women’s hands.

          He did not last.

            1. Rainy*

              Partner’s speculation was that he had a crush on the first woman and then felt stuck and had to do it to everyone else.

          2. pope suburban*

            I would be deeply, deeply afraid that I’d smack the kid in the face on pure reflex. Not because I think that’s okay workplace behavior, not because I think it’s cool, but because OMG what are you doing with my hand get away from that!

          3. Alli525*

            Oh boy. One of the first people I met in college had a habit of doing this in social settings… he sort of fancies himself a Southern gentleman/old soul, but he’s so genuinely pure of heart and well-intentioned (he’s now a priest) that I tried really hard not to be mad at him. He knocked it off after a couple of years, and clearly doesn’t do that anymore (an especially bad look for a priest).

            1. Rainy*

              I had a pasttime as a younger woman where men kissed hands a lot, and it was charming the first 3 times and then I started yanking my hand back when I realized it was going to happen.

        2. Chinookwind*

          I had a couple of engineering interns give me, the admin assistant, thank you gifts when they left. They appreciated that I showed them all sorts of things to “make them a good employee/colleague” (like refilling copier when out of paper and how to tell if the food is for a meeting for anyone to eat) as well as parts of their actual job. It warmed my heart that they saw the value of an admin assistant so early on.

          3. Falling Diphthong*

            How to tell if the food is for a meeting for anyone to eat

            This is such a valuable life skill!!!!

    3. emma*

      SAME. My boss is on the board of directors of a local university so our interns tend to be students of said university and they’re always amazing. :(

      1. Amber Rose*

        We donate our product yearly to the local college and work with them to hire summer students, so we tend to hire kids who have already been using our equipment in class. They come to us pre-trained. It’s very convenient.

    4. DCGirl*

      Two jobs ago, the company hired the college-aged son of one the marketing vice presidents and put him in the finance department. He looked so much like his father we all took to calling him Fred’s Mini Me. Finance was trying to go paperless and needed to scan years and years worth of files. Mini Me got the thankless and mind-numbingly tedious job of scanning files. To his everlasting credit, he came in early and stood at the copy machine and scanned for three hours every morning before moving on to his other assignments. You’d see him there every morning, patiently scanning file after file. This was the same year that another intern (legendarily) flounced into the COO’s office to complain that he wasn’t being given interesting work to do, so Mini Me’s positive attitude and work ethic really stuck out. I’m sure he’s going to do well in life.

      1. Just Employed Here*

        I, too, had a summer worker this year who actually did the boring tasks (scanning papers, filing them, descaling the fancy coffee machine whenever it started complaining, etc.) It was very refreshing to have a temp there who actually did what you asked, without having to be prompted!

        He also understood some of the more complex stuff better than some team members who have been there for years… Sigh.

    5. De Minimis*

      Yeah, I’m the same way, some of the students I’ve worked with have some of the typical habits of people who are just getting used to the working world, but no good stories at all!

      We did have one that kind of ghosted us, but we weren’t planning to have him return anyway.

    6. Dr. Doll*

      Yeah, me too — our students assistants are Da Bomb, almost without exception. Anyone on AAM would be thrilled to hire them. I don’t have good stories but I am okay with an easy, boring work life!

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          This is why “May you be born in interesting times” is a curse. Because living in a Golden Age where the copier never breaks down is unexciting, while struggling through a disaster makes for an engaging narrative. (Tendency I regularly note since it was first pointed out to me–negative restaurant reviews make heavy use of the first person. It’s bad things that happened TO ME. And then they KEPT HAPPENING.)

          I think “an office that provides no fodder for interesting AAM letters” is the dream around here.

      2. De Minimis*

        Yeah, most of ours were great too, we had some of them work with us for most of their college careers, and at least a few of them ended up working full-time with us for years afterward.

      3. Alli525*

        Same here. We’ve had interns so fabulous that I actually get upset that I can’t be a reference for them, because the dept asst is the intern coordinator and their direct supervisor. When they ask me, I do tell them I’m happy to help if they need MORE than one reference from our department.

    7. designbot*

      Agreed. The weirdest one I can think of is entirely attributable to my boss. He is terribly disrespectful to the people around him, never reading the room on when someone’s trying to focus or considering that it may not be a good time to interrupt, and I can see our intern clearly following his example.

    8. This Daydreamer*

      I work at a social service nonprofit, so we get the ones who are eager to help save the world and are ready to wear many hats. Sometimes we get the grad students on the way to being social workers. We always hate to see them move on.

      So y’all are going to have to come up with funny stories to make up for the awesome interns i deal with.

    9. SeluciaMD*

      Mine as well. We get full-time, full-semester unpaid interns from one particular program at a local University and they have all been STELLAR. Seriously – most of them have run circles around our Master’s level interns. We’ve had about 8 over the last three years and we’ve hired every one of them we’ve been able to (and would have gladly hired the others if we’d had any openings.) Frankly, having one of these lovely students in my office every semester makes my job feasible and keeps my stress level manageable. They are THE BEST.

      I have only good stories of how they were wizards with tough projects, worked hard, were fun and well-liked, and were so gracious at the end of their time with us. Our whole office loves these interns and is eager to learn as the new semester draws near what awesome student we’re going to have working for us next.

    10. Been there, seen that, the T-Shirt doesn't fit*

      Well, not really funny, but I worked in the admissions office one summer at university. Also kept a perpetual pitcher of screwdrivers (vodka & orange juice) in my apartment fridge. I never worked sober in the afternoon the entire summer & nobody noticed.

  6. Hiring Mgr*

    Seems strange to pick a group of people who are already at the bottom of the ladder to make fun of but i understand this is amusing for some folks

    1. Namelesscommentator*

      I’m here. If you supervise an intern it’s your job to help them learn. And if they don’t learn – they’re not the ones who did a bad job this summer.

      1. AnonforThis*

        It depends. For instance, there are some basic things an intern should know. My spouse once dealt with a college intern showing up to an internship reeking of pot. I don’t think it reflected badly on him as a supervisor that he didn’t specifically tell the intern “being high at work is bad” before the student did it.

        1. I Herd the Cats*

          We had interns cleaning up after a board meeting late on a Thursday afternoon and at some point I realized they were in the catering kitchen playing quarters (we had solo cups and leftover beer in the fridge from another event.) I didn’t report them to anybody. I have kids their age, I just walked in and said “No! You don’t do that at work!” Hopefully they’ll remember at their next job.

        2. Chinookwind*

          Wait, “being high/drunk at work is bad” is not a regular part of most companies’ on-boarding processes? It has been everywhere I have worked and usually emphasizes that that includes off-site business meetings and parties. I know there is a push on up here to ensure that it is a standard warning with legalization of marijuana less than a month away.

          1. designbot*

            It was part of the onboarding process when I was a cashier at a hardware store. Nobody’s ever mentioned it in an office setting, you’re just supposed to show up already knowing that.

          3. Bea*

            It’s in the handbook nobody ever reads (except me because I’m paranoid about breaking rules and hate asking “is tomorrow a paid holiday…do we work?” kind of stuff)

            I’ve never mentioned it onboarding, it’s a “if you’re dumb enough to try it, you’re too dumb for me to not fire.”

          4. MissPettyAndVindictive*

            When I started my current job I got the line “Please don’t keep a bottle of alcohol in your bottom desk drawer and drink it through the day, cause we have to fire people that do that”

      2. LadyPhoenix*

        What about the one where the OP’s intern made a 9/11 joke out of the blue? Was that their fault?

        Sometimes you can manage an intern to make their reaponsible and accountable… and then we get some of these other interns who—for whatever reason—does what they want and screw things up.

      3. Annie Moose*

        If someone isn’t willing to learn, then yes, they are doing a bad job. Interns are not small children; they’re generally adults (at least 18+ years old). Young adults who might not have a good grasp on the working world, yes, but still adults, who should be capable of listening to instruction when it’s given. If they disregard it, that’s their decision, and any consequences they suffer as a result of their decision are also their fault.

        I was an intern once! I did dumb stuff! I got gently told to stop doing dumb stuff. I learned my lesson and stopped doing dumb stuff.

      4. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        I used to think this, but having had an out of control intern, I now believe that there are people who are unreachable, even when you do your best to assist them.

        1. Lance*

          Oh yes. No matter how hard you work, if someone just isn’t willing to make an effort to work, improve, or change at all, that’s on them, pure and simple.

        2. Zennish*

          Yep. I’ve had, for example, interns who didn’t get that…

          Even if the businesses have very similar sounding names, you still need to mail the package to the right one, every single time.
          Being too high to work does not constitute sick time.
          Refusing to find childcare (for weeks on end) does not constitute sick time.
          “I didn’t know how to dial your extension” (when you also have my email and cell number) is not an acceptable reason for an unexcused absence.
          “I had to do some stuff” is not an acceptable reason for an unexcused absence.

          I don’t do interns any more.

      5. AMac*

        This is not true at all – especially for graduate students. Our internship is considered a long interview. It is not my job to tell people in graduate studies how to be professional and act in a professional setting. If they cannot do that at this point in their life they will not be hired – period.

        1. GreenDoor*

          This is a really horrible attitude. Graduate students are coming off of school…and living with parents….and life on social media. All of which teach some habits that may be acceptable at home or online or in a classroom setting, but which are not acceptable in the workplace. I remember college. I didn’t have a single course specifically telling me that my boss will not hold my hand through every decision, or that “U R Gr8” is not an appropriate way to write business correspondence.

          These are the kinds of things that younger, inexperienced workers need coaching with. That’s what internships are for – an opportunity to learn professional norms.

          1. Cheryl Blossom*

            I remember college. I didn’t have a single course specifically telling me that my boss will not hold my hand through every decision, or that “U R Gr8” is not an appropriate way to write business correspondence.

            I also remember college. My professors didn’t specifically tell me that my bosses wouldn’t hold my hand through decisions, but then again, most of them weren’t hand-holding types. And many of them talked about the appropriate way to email professors, what a LinkedIn should look like, and warned about how your Facebook should be cleaned up because future employers will be looking at it.

            Things I didn’t know going into my first office job and internships: how to use a copier, how to use Outlook calendars, how to navigate office politics, the value of an admin assistant, etc. etc. etc.

            Things I did know going into my first office job and internships: show up when you say you will and call in advance if you can’t, dress in clothes that are neat and clean (and professional, if required), have a good attitude.

            1. Shoes on My Cat*

              +1,000! THIS! Our professors were a mix of tenure-with books out on our profession used by those in our profession- & actual semi-retired professionals including a CEO troubleshooter. The top tier courses included dressing the part, interviews and actual supervised practical experience where the person you shadowed reported back on you and it affected your grade. Senior to JANITORIAL. They were hard core and IF you graduated, job offers out the wazoo.

          2. Mpls*

            By the time a person has made it to graduate school, they are very likely to have rented an apartment, had a roommate, needed some sort of income source (summer job, part time on-campus job, etc.), and had access to social media (and the subsequent warnings and pitfalls) for most of their adolescent and adult lives. They’ll have had experience in the difference between what’s acceptable for a paper or applying to a program/school and what’s better left for friends.

            Internships are for interns to learn about the professional world, but that doesn’t mean that all professional norms need to be explicitly spelled out either.
            The intern is basically a professional student by that point – they should be able to observe and absorb and figure out what is or is not acceptable. The same way they figured out what was acceptable in HS wasn’t applicable in college. Or what was okay for Prof Steve wasn’t cool with Professor Smith.

          3. Clisby Williams*

            How did they get to graduate school without learning these things? Honestly, I’d give the side-eye to a high school graduate who hadn’t figured this stuff out.

          4. Kay*

            Really? Is this an American thing? Because I don’t know a single person who wasn’t at some point working through their university degree or at least savvy enough to pick up the basics of business ettiquette. ESPECIALLY if they’re onto graduate studies. Maybe not things like not always getting feedback, but knowing to use formal language at least at first? I feel like that’s common sense. Also I feel like, and again maybe this is an Australian thing, but my university has a billion resources for professional writing etc. They’re not ‘courses’ but if you wanted to find out there’s tons of information.

            1. Perse's Mom*

              I think it’s perhaps a ‘far too sheltered’ or ‘doesn’t pay attention’ thing. I’m American and I managed to figure out all on my own that I needed to show up on time, not sleep on the furniture, wear clean clothing, and not use text speak in official business emails. Billions of people all over the world have figured this out.

          5. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

            I have never met a grad student who lived at home (I have met one law student who did). Although I’m sure a non-zero number of grad students do, indeed, live at home with their parents, I do not think they’re entitled to the same leeway that applies to undergraduate interns. I really think it’s a disservice to set expectations so low that we assume someone at the graduate level has so little professional capacity that they require a course on how not to write in text-speak for business correspondence.

          6. Random Obsessions*

            Most colleges and universities have career services or similarly titled departments which offer events throughout the year and information on their websites about the working world and professional expectations in addition to the cover letter/resume and interview help.
            While some of the self-marketing tips (e.g. gimmicks for getting the job, un-researched letter/resume advice) may be hacky, not all of it is and students are able to avail themselves to this free of charge since it’s paid for by their student fees.
            At some schools, these services are even offered to alumni during the summer months free of charge.

      6. Triplestep*

        I don’t know. I had an intern during a time when I had wall to wall work and he was not an asset. Just focused on whatever he wanted and not what I’d directed him to do. I would get to work at 7am and send him a bunch of e-mails to keep him busy when he got in at 9am. Once I wandered over to his desk at 9:30 and asked him if he had any questions. He had not turned on his computer yet.

        I don’t’ feel like I needed to tell him that one turns on the computer when one arrives at work (and doesn’t sit idle for a half hour) after his having been there for a month. Was that me doing a bad job as his manager?

        1. GreenDoor*

          I would say…kind of. That intern probably looked around and saw co-workers chit-chatting, taking their time pouring coffee, reading the news….and likely thought that dilly-dallying at the start of the workday is normal and OK. By not correcting him and pointing out that it looks far more impressive to your supervisors if you knuckle under and actually work at work, you kind of let him pick up the bad habits of those around him.

          1. Jadelyn*

            I mean…do people at your work generally take a full half an hour to get coffee and say good morning before they even turn on the computer? Because that’s not at all the norm anywhere I’ve worked. Five minutes, sure. Even ten minutes. But not half an hour.

            Honestly, I’m really not sure why you’re so intent on assuming that interns are all completely clueless children who need a work mommy to hold their hand and tell them simple, basic things like “When you arrive at work, you should turn on your computer,” or “please do not do illegal substances at work,” and then blaming the managers for not being sufficiently hyper-specific about the most basic aspects of having a job. Yes, interns are there to learn, and a lot of it is learning professional behavior norms – but we’re still talking about, at a minimum, 18-20 year olds. If we’re talking grad students, they’re going to be mid-twenties at least. They’re not 12-year-olds, and it’s not unreasonable to expect that they will have some concept of adult behavior like “while you’re at work, you should spend your time doing work” or “don’t do drugs on the job” and not need hand-held on those foundational concepts.

        2. Mimi Me*

          I had a young employee who used to invite her boyfriend to work so she and him could make out.I still remember her expression when I pulled her aside to tell her that this was not okay. She stared at me for a good 30 seconds before saying , “but I love him.” I still don’t know what she expected me to say to that.

          2. EvilQueenRegina*

            My ex coworker B did something similar. She’d wait until everyone in the office she was working in at the time happened to be out, then ring up the boyfriend P (who worked in another department upstairs) and invite him down to make out. She got into trouble for that, and her response was to scream at another coworker E (who happened to have dated that guy when they were 14 years old) who had happened to walk in on it once, accusing her of having reported it. Except it wasn’t E who had done it, and she was at a loss as to why she was being screamed at.

            B was eventually moved into a different office which was less likely to be empty during the day (that had been going to happen anyway for unrelated reasons).

        3. MassMatt*

          I fall somewhere in between the extremes posting here, on one side “if you don’t know how to behave at work as an intern then it’s your problem” and the other “interns are there to learn, maybe no one taught them about sandwiches!”.

          What did you say to the intern who wasn’t turning on his computer or doing what you asked him to do? Did you MANAGE him, saying you need to do x and y? Did you spell out consequences, and follow through? Or did you just roll your eyes, figure he was useless, and ignore him for the rest of the internship? If he was terrible and didn’t improve, why was he kept on?

          All too often postings talk about terrible interns (and employees) yet there seems to be very little managing of them, or consequences for bad behavior. To me this says the issue is less bad interns/employees and more bad/dysfunctional workplaces and managers.

          Managers dislike having uncomfortable conversations, and many employers are absurdly afraid of being sued, but if you can’t tell an intern don’t wear pajamas, and do your work, and fire them if need be, then don’t be surprised by continued ridiculous behavior.

      7. Kay*

        I don’t think that’s true. I’m still new to the workplace and half the stuff that people write about here I would never in a million years do. Some people just lack common sense or clearly don’t understand the basics of a work environment. It has nothing to do with how good supervision is. You shouldn’t need your supervisor to say ‘hey, don’t sleep at your desk in the middle of a work day’. That should be obvious.

    2. lost academic*

      I don’t know that this is about making fun of people, but highlighting things that can and do go wrong with inexperienced workers can be very helpful for those of us as we get older in the future and are less connected with what it’s like to have your first work experience and the things we think Everyone Already Knows – I think it probably helps us be more tolerant and teaching focused rather than reactionary and negative in our own spheres.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        The head-shaking stories are usually ones where either the problem was pointed out, and someone doubled down (which is totally different to observe in a low-ranking worker compared to the CEO), or those in which the behavior really is so bizarre you wonder how they thought of it. Like, after deciding that they needed to set up a cot by their desk to allow for the company’s odd lack of post-lunch napping spaces, they decided that a professional cot should have shams.

      3. Jadelyn*

        It’s also helpful for those of us who’ve never managed interns or really really entry-level staff before, to know some of the pitfalls to potentially expect and have some scripts ready for how to handle it if it comes up (and some examples of how not to handle it).

    3. ExcelJedi*

      Yeah, this one feels like a dud. If it was things WE did as interns, I’d be down, but it doesn’t feel good to laugh at others’ stumbles as they figure out what ‘professionalism’ means.

      1. Det. Charles Boyle*

        I love these stories of interns behaving in nutty or unusual ways. Interns, coworkers, managers — if it’s funny, I want to hear it!

      2. Thursday Next*

        Yes, I was just about to post this–people sharing their own stories of being interns (and a couple of people here have done so) would be different.

        There are some things interns don’t know by virtue of being inexperienced, and it’s good to talk about these so that mid- or late-career people can have some reminders that hey, some things do need to be learned, and that’s just a part of entering the workforce, not a character flaw.

        But there are some stories where it seems like the problem was misogyny, or anti-scientific fervor, and it’s not really fair to interns as a category to say “those darn interns” when the issue wasn’t their lack of experience, but their bigotry.

        1. selina kyle*

          Wonderful points all around but I especially like how you articulated the difference in some of these stories where the issues with the interns are about issues far beyond them BEING the intern.

    4. selina kyle*

      Agreed, it feels mean spirited. Even the ones where the intern in question was full of themselves – it’s the company and their bosses job to help guide them away from that :/

      1. Shay*

        Not so much mean spirited … just a light-hearted look at some folks lacking in common sense (no, I don’t need to tell you that you cannot come to work stoned).

      2. Anna*

        I work directly with the young people who are going out there and making these mistakes. My job is to make sure they make as few of them as possible. I laugh or I would scream. Because you show them, you explain, you demonstrate, you model, you guide, you tutor, you mentor, and sometimes it makes no difference. I literally use these stories to demonstrate to my students what not to do. So call it mean spirited, but those of us in the trenches actually appreciate them.

    5. Not a Blossom*

      There are certain things that people who are old enough to be interns should understand. (Heck, things that people in middle school should be able to understand.) Not knowing office norms is one thing; somehow thinking a home tattoo or sleeping under the front desk is completely different.

      1. GreenDoor*

        But that’s why these stories are helpful. There are some “mistakes” that a manager should forgive but use as a teachable moment….and mistakes that should be grounds for dismisal from the program or take them out of the running for permanent hire. Sometimes it’s hard for a manager to calibrate how much grace to give and these stories and advice help!

    6. Cochrane*

      Not only that, but most of the internships that I was familiar with coming up were all unpaid. If you’re counting on free labor for the price of filling out a few forms, they’re not all going to be winners.

      1. Observer*

        That’s true. But there is a difference, to take an example from up-thread, between overlooking a kid who shows up with rainbow hair in a “business casual” environment and one who “pops wheelies” in a wheelchair – that doesn’t even belong to them!

        1. GreenDoor*

          But the “you get what you pay for” rule doesn’t actually apply here. It’s not that “you’re getting free labor so you shouldn’t be surprised or upset if an intern screws up/acts weird.” There are plenty of people who are willing to do an unpaid internship because they value the opportunity to learn, network, and get real life experience more than they value being paid. For those interns, the company owes them that experience and mentorship in exchange for the unpaid labor – which should include appopriate redirecting or discipline where warranted.

    7. Bea*

      I think as long as they’re light hearted, it’s fine. We all have those moments to look back fondly on.

      I’ll tell stories on myself as a fresh to work file clerk. It’s the same as “kids say the darndest things.”

    8. Moose*

      Just like there are CEOs and senior supervisors who are weird or nightmares, there can be interns or entry-level people that are. All people can be weird. This isn’t about making fun of people because they’re new or at the bottom of the ladder, it’s anonymous stories about weird people.

        1. Moose*

          I don’t think so–there are stories about weird and terrible bosses and coworkers on here all the time. A lot of the comments here are people telling stories about themselves, too! I’ve made my fair share of mistakes and I’d like to think someone got a good story out of it. :)

            1. Mike C.*

              But that’s punching up and an expression of frustration because we cannot do anything about those problems.

              With the interns, we can generally do a whole lot about the problems.

        2. Washi*

          I think summer intern stories tend to be particularly hilarious not so much because of punching down and more because there’s usually more variation in intern quality due to their inexperience and often a less rigorous hiring/firing process since they are temporary. So most interns are on the normal part of the spectrum with some awkward mistakes that don’t really make a good story (“lol my intern was so uncomfortable networking!” is not a story I would expect to see here.) But then you have a few doozies where the other intern qualities combines with an unusual lack of common sense to spectacular result. I’m finding the reaction to these stories to be more “wow, life is a rich tapestry” than mean-spirited punching down.

          1. Lissa*

            I agree. I mean I get that not every thread/post will be for everyone (I always collapse the inevitable top-level comment about popcorn but a lot of people love that type of discussion for instance!) But I don’t see this as any more mean-spirited than anything else really – it’s anonymous stories about anonymous people, and stories that are nasty tend to get called out pretty roundly from what I’ve seen.

        3. Annoyed*

          I get what you’re saying. I don’t think it’s “punching down” though.

          With “punching down” it’s usually aimed at people who are different than what is considered “default” by the larger society (e.g. men/women, caucasian/POC, Christian/any other religion…).

          Women can’t change being women (not getting into a discussion about trans folks…that’s a whole other topic).

          The average person can’t change the color of their skin or their ethnicity. One *can* change their religion but most people don’t.

          With “punching down” those people are targeted for things that can’t be changed.

          Interns will grow up to become regular rank and file employees and some of them may even become CEOs at some point.

          So… it’s not like they’re being targeted for something that can’t ever change.

          1. Mike C.*

            No, it’s still punching down. The current power imbalance is what’s important here, not that the imbalance might go away. Otherwise management dating employees would be perfectly fine (the employee could be promoted some day!).

            1. RUKiddingMe*

              Except that management dating junior staff in real life is a bit different than a bunch of people on a relatively anonymous blog/chat/forum sharing stories without naming names. No one is being actively harmed or put into a power balance/compromise position here.

    10. Cacwgrl*

      We provide extensive safety, ethics, professionalism, etc training to our new hires. 6 weeks worth. We give them very specific dos and don’t as well as a direct link to the ethics lawyers and very specific peer mentor assignments, along with very specific guidance about what is and is not allowed while working for a Federal employer, especially considering what is allowed in this state. If, after all of that, you choose to smoke illegal substances in the main lobby bathroom of the secure building in which you work and the security guard just happens upon you, I’m going to remove you without zero hesitation or regret. If you order a pitcher of beer at a regular lunch, after being coached by your mentor and supervisors to not do, we’re going to remove you for a continued showing of bad judgment. If you leave your access card to a secure building at your desk and instead of calling someone, you walk away from the gate guard and shimmy between two locked gate panels, you are being immedately removed for the security violation and badge judgement and I will use you as an example for what not to do for a long time. We attempt to take lessons learned to improve our hiring and orientation process every season and as long as the newbies continue to make these bad decisions, we will use their bad decisions, anonymously of course, for stories like this. No regrets.

    11. Free Meerkats*

      It’s not like the posters are saying, “Our intern, Delia Mercer, who interned for Tiphaine d’Ath of the Portland Protective Association during the Protector’s War used to take part in Clam Mackenzie rites when she was supposed to be in church.”

      If one recognizes oneself here, either the circumstances were really unique, or one is mistaken.

    12. noot*

      this is the first time on one of these posts that i’ve seen a giant thread of complaints about the topic. changing demographic of the blog?

  7. AnonforThis*

    This was when I was a fellow intern. But once, as a prosecutor’s intern, I had to explain to a fellow prosecutor’s intern why asking out the “cute defendant” was a bad idea. He was not joking, he really wanted to do that.

      1. never going home*

        Once, just once, I want batshit unprofessional behavior on TV shows to get someone fired. And for it not be played as “evil HR”.

        I also want a pony.

        2. Merula*

          It happened on Friends. Monica got fired for accepting a kickback, when she didn’t really understand what was going on or why it was a problem. She got mad about it, but my recollection is that it was presented as a “should have known better” rather than “evil HR”.

        3. Bratmon*

          In Parks and Rec, ben is fired from being Assistant City Manager because he and Leslie bribed a city employee to hide that they were sleeping together.

    3. AMPG*

      I was once on a grand jury (so several weeks in duration) and about halfway through one of my fellow jurors decided she was going to ask out the court reporter. Luckily she dropped that idea pretty quickly.

      1. AnonforThis*

        He was not so bright. He also once wrote a motion response draft but declined to cite the on-point, in jurisdiction, binding precedent because he “wanted to be creative”. I am not sure any of his motion work ended up being usable.

        1. SusanIvanova*

          Oh, no…

          I had that approach to my geometry classes – “there’s an obvious proof? OK, is there a less-obvious one?” But that’s the kind of class where finding alternate approaches is valid! He’d probably have been happier in that kind of career.

    6. chicago123*

      This reminds me of when I was interviewing for jobs the first summer after college. After my first interview, I got an email from a guy at an entry level sales job I had interviewed for asking me out. “I was the guy in the orange pants,” he wrote and “I was out in upstate New York this weekend hiking around the Adirondack mountains on a bachelor party, you came to mind.”…He mentioned that he had begged for my email from “Reese Witherspoon” in HR (name of course changed but he listed her FULL NAME!). I was floored and forwarded the email to the head of HR. Not sure what happened to him but I always laugh at how hilarious misguided that was.

    8. Traffic_Spiral*

      Ooh, legal interns! We had this one kid – not even a summer associate but a high school grad there as a favor to his dad for Reasons – who, in a meeting he had been allowed to sit in on with a potential client, offered to review her file for free.

      I was like: “Kiddo, you know how earlier today I asked you to proofread something, and you missed all the typos, but erroneously changed ‘advice’ to ‘advise?’ Well, here’s an example of that. You are not qualified to ADVISE the client – because you know nothing – and therefore you cannot be offering legal ADVICE. See?”

      Sweet kid, but god, was he useless.

  8. beanie beans*

    At my last job, a public agency, we threw a going away party for our intern when she finished her master’s. Someone asked her what she learned in her 6 months with us, and she responded “That I don’t want want to work for a public agency.”

    2. Environmental Compliance*

      To be fair, I wish I would have learned that as an intern rather than after a few years of working in public agencies. Would’ve saved me a lot of time.

      1. booboo kitty*

        Good for her! I was a director at a summer camp. We had a terrific counselor, first year, was an education major at school. She told me she was leaving after 4 weeks because she came to realize she hated working with kids and was changing her major to business. Better to find out early rather than late.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          One of the most important uses of early work experience.

          Okay, maybe she should have had a diplomatic cover answer, but I can think of lots of relationships where this sort of honesty would have been fine–it doesn’t mean you’re terrible coworkers for not selling public agencies better, but that you did a good job exposing her to the reality of the job.

          1. Lilysparrow*

            Enjoying kids in your family, or babysitting, is completely different from working with classes or groups of children when you have to stick to a schedule or accomplish a specific program or curriculum.

            I love my nieces and nephews. I love my kids. I enjoyed babysitting when I was young. I volunteered for years as a mentor for kids one-on-one or in small groups. Awesome.

            The 6 weeks I worked as an afterschool extracurricular teacher for classes of 15-30 kids? Circle of hell. Never, ever again.

            1. Blue_eyes*

              This. I studied education in college, got a teaching license, got a master’s degree. And THEN realized that I did not want to be a teacher. I wasted at least the first 4-5 years after college pursuing that track and I wish I had realized sooner that getting groups of tiny people to do what I need them to do is not one of my best skills.

              1. MNDragonlady*

                At the college I attended, every education major spent their sophomore January Term in an elementary or secondary school classroom, before they got too far into the classes for the major. I remember thinking what a great idea that was, making sure folks really wanted to teach before they’d spent time and money on coursework. The students weren’t full student teachers, but they did have opportunities to plan and teach lessons alongside the classroom teacher. And I got the impression those 4 weeks were valuable to many prospective education majors.

                1. Lissa*

                  That is SUCH a great idea, and I know they already do stuff like that in some fields, like I know nursing gets you hands-on pretty quickly – but I think they should do this more, considering how many stories I hear about “went to school for years, spend tens of thousands….realized quickly I hated it”.

                  I’m also really curious about the attrition rate, how many found in that term that yeah, teaching wasn’t for them.

                2. memyselfandi*

                  Yes, my niece went back to get her degree in art education after completing an art degree. One of the first things they had her do was get in a classroom. She LOVED it. And, I admit I had my doubts it was right for her. She is on her way to a career she wants after a couple of years of searching for the right fit.

                3. rubyrose*

                  Same thing in my speech pathology major, but the class was second semester of freshman year. It was the primary reason I dropped the major; I figured out I did not have the patience to do the work

              2. Maggie*

                Tutoring middle school was mandatory second semester of freshman year at my college, and what a gift. For all of us it solidified, yes, I want middle school, yes, I want younger students, yes, I want older students, or yes, I want OUT! I still love teaching high school a decade in and still laugh thinking about my friend so immediately changed majors and was absolutely in the wrong major. It is NOT the career for her. She’s FAR too soft spoken to hack it in the world of children, who she mistakenly believed (bless her heart) all listen to people who are older than them on default.

            1. Annoyed*

              Or dislike kids in general but like individual ones on a case by case basis.

              You can find actual joy working with them (3rd-5th grade) to bring them to geade level + in reading and *math, thinking you want to go ahead and get an Ed. degree as the cherry on top of everything else.

              Then you discover what actual teachers do. Nope…

              *Yes I can do 5th grade math. Although with 6th grade math things could get kinda dicey.

          3. Katelyn*

            I’ve been told my whole life I’d make a great teacher, and why hadn’t I gone down that route. My answer is that I love kids, but that one little jerk in the back row who doesn’t want to learn and doesn’t care… ya, one of us wouldn’t make it to the end of the school year alive… so I’m happy to stay in a field where I can deliver trainings as needed to people who need to know the info for their livelihood…

          4. batman*

            The other thing is, working with kids in groups is different than working with them one-on-one. I realized early on that I don’t like trying to keep groups of kids on task (and that I don’t like it), but I’ve been considering jobs that involve working one on one with kids because I enjoy it more and am better at it.

            1. Maggie*

              This is absolutely true. I love facilitating large groups as a teacher but tutoring one-on-one drives me up the wall.

        3. Chinookwind*

          When working on my Education degree, the first student teaching experience (in year 1 or 2 of 4) was to spend a week observing different grades. The specific reason was to make sure you picked the right age level that you can deal with as well that teaching in general is for you. I feel bad for those working on a 2 year after degree that skip that “familiarization step” and go straight into teaching a class.

        4. delta cat*

          Oh, hey, this reminds me of me! The reason I went into a pediatric rehab profession and not teaching is because two years of working at a day camp when I was in high school taught me that I like kids a lot when we’re one-on-one, but in groups? Not so much. (Or as I put it at the time, if handling a group of eight kids playing duck-duck-goose is this frustrating, just *imagine* trying to handle a group of thirty kids learning long division. I am in awe of classroom teachers.)

          1. Falling Diphthong*

            My grandmother was a school librarian, and gave that exact insight about herself–she didn’t like teaching groups, but enjoyed helping kids one on one.

          2. Annoyed*

            In awe. Yes this.

            I am on the roster as a certified sub for the school district in the town in which I live as well as the one next door.

            I can do a week max provided the teacher has left me all pertinent info.

            If I had to “wing it” they might get three hours, again max, out of me before I would have to build a fort under the teacher’s desk and hide.

    6. Amber T*

      To be fair, after interning at a Teapot Designing firm while in college, it made me realize that I did not want to become a Teapot Designer because I found it horribly boring.

      … would not have openly admitted that on my last day with everyone, who were overall pleasant and good people who invested a lot of time showing me the ins and outs of teapot design. It did make dodging questions from them awkward when they happen to move close by and I bump into them frequently (“You’re in rice sculpting now? I thought you were going to college for teapot design! What happened??”)

      1. Elemeno P.*

        Eh, depending on the industry, I think it can be understandable. I’m a technical writer, which is pretty boring most of the time. Our department is fun, but that’s because our work is so serious and tedious. We’ve gotten interns that I could tell were bored out of their minds, so we helped them find the thing they could do for us that would be the most interesting to them and helped them find the thing they wanted to do.

        The vast majority of our interns moved upward in other departments in our company (far away from us), and that’s great! Our boring department offers great experience and connections for those who want to go elsewhere, and it also offers spots to interns who show talent with the work and actually like it. As long as they learn something, it’s all good!

      2. Kes*

        I mean, I think it’s not as bad after the fact to say, if you run into them and they ask why you changed fields, that while you enjoyed working with the people there you realized the work wasn’t for you after all.

        However, at the goodbye party, tact and focusing on what you enjoyed about working there are in order.

      1. Goya de la Mancha*

        Agreed. I personally haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life, but I know there are a lot of things that I DON’T want to do!

    8. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      Although it wasn’t very diplomatic, it’s a fair response. Having information on what you don’t want to do is really helpful, especially because you don’t want someone who doesn’t enjoy (or tolerate) the difficult parts of their employer to be stuck there.

      1. College Career Counselor*

        Exactly. Case in point, I have a student coming to see me tomorrow specifically because he did NOT enjoy his summer internship experience. I look forward to seeing what else he’s interested in and helping him explore that.

      2. Annoyed*

        My family is mainly military and medical. They tried to push me in those directions.

        Military…nope. There’s a reason I’ve almost always worked for myself. I mean I’m ok with rules, I did manage grad school but that’s a lot different than being ordered to do stuff and having little if any recourse if the commander/professor is a dick.

        Medical…icky.

        But I really knew by around age eight (for real) that my passion was anthtopology. For a while I thought I would do archaeology but the realities of that particular field blow.

        I ended up bring primarily a social/cultural anthropologist with my fingers in a few bio anthto pies just for diversity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    9. CMart*

      Ha. Yikes. That’s one thing to confess to a mentor, it’s another thing to announce at a party in your honor.

      I learned a similar lesson from an internship, but when asked “what was your biggest takeaway from your time here?” my answer was “the important of timely account reconciliations” and not “I do not want to work for a privately owned company due to the weird family-owner politics.”

      1. Lance*

        I’m not sure about that. If she wasn’t rude about it, and did good work otherwise, I’d think any decent manager would still give her a good reference.

    11. Ealasaid*

      Hahaha! I had the same experience with my MA internship at a newspaper. Saved me a LOT of time learning I was 100% not newsroom “paying my dues” material. Pretty sure I didn’t actually say that to the people I worked with at that internship, though.

    12. beanie beans*

      Yep, I think everyone awkwardly laughed and didn’t take offense to it. Definitely better to learn that early! But considering her master’s degree was something specifically related to public work, I think we mostly felt bad that she wasn’t sure what to do with this degree that she didn’t want anymore!

    15. Genny*

      One of the things I consciously try to do is encourage people not get slavishly devoted to one idea about what they want to do. I’ve noticed that there can be intense pressure in some fields to go into the federal agency working on that subject matter (this is especially true IME for defense, diplomacy, development, and intelligence). Everyone wants to get one of those coveted positions, and you begin to feel like a freak if you don’t want that too or if you intern in one of those agencies and realize you hate it. I was very openly encouraging my summer intern that it’s okay to not want this when she realized she hated the work we do here.

      1. Annoyed*

        That’s how I was in grad school. I remember the first meeting of one seminar at the very start of grad school where the professor told us that we would probably not do whatever it is we were thinking about doing right then.

        Instead of archaeology I focused mainly on culture then parlayed my anthro and history MAs to a doctorate in sociology which I use doing feminist anthro/socio in the world of DV victim advocacy (in addition to running my export “empire” … I am a tired girl LOL).

        I definitely have the education/background for the work but waaayyyy back then it never would have crossed my mind to be doing what I do. I was gonna be digging up Scythian artifacts and stuff right?

        Boorriinngg… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  9. seashell*

    I was the weird summer intern :(
    I had the internship for most of the year (8 hours/week) at a small office (2 full time employees) and was able to work part time (9 a.m.-3 p.m.) for about a month after the school year ended because I stayed on campus after classes ended. My 21st birthday was on a Thursday night. I woke up in the morning still drunk, did not shower because I had the night before (before I went out!! so I definitely needed another!) and I showed up to work probably reeking of booze and cross eyed. I’m so mortified by this and it’s been 10 years. My very sweet boss came into the closet office where I printed stuff for mailers and said she decided since it was my birthday, she was giving me the day off. My coworker drove my car back to my house. I am dying just thinking about this again. I did NOT get fired, I never did it again, and I worked for her until I graduated, and sobbed on my last day of work lol.

    1. Amber Rose*

      Aww. Your boss was awesome. It’s good to cut interns some slack for stuff like that.

      In one of the first jobs I had after turning 18 I ended up at a bar drinking with a bunch of my managers, and I was definitely still impaired the next morning at work. One of the managers gave me a granola bar and a bottle of water.

    2. Close Enough*

      Ugh, I hear you. I had a bit of a problem with booze in my 20s and once showed up to a Friday 8am job interview still impaired. Had to take a typing test.

      I’m cringing even putting that out there anonymously.

    3. Anon for This*

      If it makes you feel any better, I showed up drunk to work on a Saturday morning when I was in my early twenties. I was a bank teller–which obviously requires a little more caution and responsibility than your typical drunk person is able to provide. I wasn’t fired, but I am still embarrassed about it.

    4. Anonny*

      I feel that your first legal drinking night can be forgiven. Like, you probably don’t have knowledge of your alcohol tolerance and how strong some drinks are. Especially stuff like alcopops and cocktails.

      If you’re not in the US and your first legal drinking night was a few years back, well… slightly less forgivable, but I’d still give leeway. 21 is still young enough to be an idiot.

    5. batman*

      I had a summer internship the summer that I turned 20. It was my first time living truly on my own (meaning not in a dorm) and I was actually living in a city (I grew up in a suburb) and I was in a different metro area than where I was from.
      I managed to get someone else’s old ID so I could get into bars and on my birthday weekend I went out, got really drunk, threw up, and wore the same black pants to work on Monday and was riding up in the elevator with a co-worker I was friendly with and she asked how my weekend was and I told her that! So, yeah. She kind of raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything (she wasn’t my boss, but was kind of a mentor) and it didn’t affect my internship, which I was otherwise good at. But yeah, I was embarrassed after I realized how inappropriate it was.
      Now I just think it’s a funny story. It’s even funnier if I include what actually happened when I went out drinking that weekend…

    6. Pebbles*

      I was not an intern but something like 2nd year into my career after college (so, 24?). I had completed a huge development project upgrading some in-house software tools and project manager took myself, QA, product owner, and a few managers and coworkers to nearby bar to celebrate. Several rounds of shots later (all purchased for me by the managers present) we were done at that place. As we were leaving, another coworker who was involved in the project showed up and took me to another bar to celebrate. We closed that one down. Then he had to go back to work to check on a job before driving me home. The department VP was in coworker’s cube working on his job while we had been out. There I am holding myself up with the cube wall trying to give out “advice” as to what sort of corruption cases to check for and which tools to use. *smh*

      Pure coincidence, but we haven’t done many release parties like that for awhile now… ;)

    7. Bea*

      Oh my. I had to roll in massively hungover when I was 25 after celebrating election night with friends. I admitted to my boss I was sick due to my own bad choices. He patted my back and told me to go home. It was never spoken of again. He knew it wasn’t worth making a big deal out of because it wasn’t a habit by any means.

      1. Anonicat*

        My boss a few years back came into work looking pretty seedy one day, and admitted he’d gone out for a few drinks with an old friend who was back in town the night before. “It turns out, I’m too old to be able to do that anymore.”

  11. Grits McGee*

    When asked to share what he’d been working on at an all-hands meeting, our intern announced that he didn’t have antyhing to do and so he had downloaded the ESPN app on his phone and had gotten through 4 seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Netflix.

    This was particularly egregious because we’re specifically banned from streaming video at work because our network can barely handle doing actual business.

    2. Sheik Yorbuti*

      Who ever was in charge of that intern probably wanted to melt into the floor. What an embarrassing thing for them to say.

      1. Observer*

        I think the embarrassment was well deserved, though. This is as much a “bad manager” story as a bad intern story.

    3. It's Pronounced Bruce*

      As much as this is awful, I have seen so many intern managers over the years give their interns nothing to do while shrugging about being too busy to be more involved. So I kind of enjoy how totally and completely this calls out whoever was in charge of this guy, heh.

      1. designbot*

        Very true, but I’ve also seen people foisted with interns when what they really needed was mid-level staff. In those instances it’s hard for me to blame somebody for not making use of someone who’s generally more of a time-suck than a productive member of staff.

        1. GreenDoor*

          Yep. I’ve been the manager that walked into work on Monday and was told “Oh by the way your new intern will be here at 8:30.” And my reaction was “Intern? What intern?” No time to prepare the rest of the team, find them workspace, come up with an orientation day, or, you know, identify projects for them to work on. And, I especially appreciated not being a part of the interview/hiring process, too.

        2. Former Worst Analyst/Best Intern Ever*

          That reminds me of a story from my own career. A family member got me an amazing internship that I probably would have been considered too young for otherwise. I really wanted to contribute and learn, was trying very hard, but the team lead I was helping just like hated me and hated everything I did for the first couple of weeks. At one point he snapped at me to which I responded something to the effect of “I’m only 17….” To this day, I have never seen someone turn their judgment of me so quickly. It turns out he thought I was my older family member. He had requested a senior analyst and I guess had like ignored all of his email about me? He ended up being a great boss once he figured out what kind of work to assign me.

      2. Mia*

        Yeah, my internship was a lot like this. I didn’t stream TV shows or openly admit to spending my day browsing online and reorganizing my desks, but they expected me to stretch about an hour’s work of tasks throughout a 6 hour shift and always said “no” when I asked if there was anything else I could do.

    4. Wendy Darling*

      I’ve never had an intern but once during the end of his contract one of my team’s temps told me the funny story about how one day he had stayed out partying until after the buses stopped running but then realized he was near our office so he used his work badge to come into the building, took the team room key from my desk, and had a nap on the team room couch until the buses resumed service in the morning.

      I told him that we were going to make a deal: I would agree to not tell his manager about this until AFTER his temp stint was over, and he would agree to never tell me anything like this again.

      We both held up our ends of the deal.

      1. spock*

        Was your problem with the sleeping in general, or that the key was on your desk? I could see the latter being a concern, but if it’s just the napping, I don’t think it’s a huge deal. If they wanted folks out of the office they wouldn’t make the badges work 24/7.

        1. Wendy Darling*

          He shouldn’t have been overnighting in our team room — super unprofessional. The badges worked 24 hours because some of the staff was on-call and might need to come in at night to work, not because it’s cool to sleep in the office because you don’t want to shell out for a taxi/rideshare.

    5. Observer*

      This is actually a good example of a situation where you have to look at what the manager. Even without intensive supervision, this shouldn’t have been possible.

      Also, don’t you guys have an IT department that can do some filtering?

  12. avocado*

    Not an intern, but I walked in on my brand new hire (first real job out of grad school) DIPPING in the office. Luckily his door was closed?

        1. Kaden Lee*

          oh! oh gross. so glad my old plant banned all tobacco use, it would be so gross watching the control room operators spitting into a styrofoam cup.

          1. Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins*

            BLECH! I once was ‘pranked’ by a ‘friend’ and drank dip spit from a coke bottle by mistake. I barfed. I can’t imagine swallowing it on purpose!

          3. Dust Bunny*

            The guys at my high school used to spit in the drinking fountains. Retch.

            (I’m in Texas. You see a lot of jeans pockets with rings worn into them.)

    3. Bea*

      Hmmm…

      I come from a world this is (still gross AF) but not unheard of. Unless he’s supposed to have heavy phone use and I’ll kick his butt myself if he spits in the trash.

      1. avocado*

        No kidding… huh. I wouldn’t have guessed that using chewing tobacco would be acceptable in any office, but just goes to show you that norms really can differ. It is so far outside the bounds of normal here at our (pretty formal) office.

        1. Bea*

          Yep yep. It’s a weird offshoot thing. I can’t imagine it being in a formal setting, even the most fiendish red neck knows better.

    5. Project Manager*

      This is not uncommon at the places where I’ve worked (in Arizona & TX – across at least 4 offices). As a courtesy, folks typically use solid cups (not-opaque). But I would not consider this weird at all (although I do not do it myself).

      1. Lilysparrow*

        My uncle used to carry around a mayonnaise jar to spit in. EWWWWW.

        But not at work – after he retired.

      2. Hapless Bureaucrat*

        One coworker used to use a pop can with the tab pulled off. A-plus for accuracy but ickkkkk.
        As a note: this was decidedly not the norm for the office- or our region. But the guy had been there for decades. He’d been asked not to but the issue had never been forced.

    6. avocado*

      To add a bit to the story – when I entered the office, he got this wide eyed look, asked me to close the door, and then asked me (with his lip full of chewing tobacco), if this was “really bad”. Um… yeah, yeah it is.

  13. Jack Be Nimble*

    There was a whole passel of them this summer! It’s a pretty casual office, but I saw so many teeny-weeny shorts, mostly on the guys. They all wore those tiny, khaki shorts you see on frat guys. I think the logic is, “if my shorts cost as much or more than a pair of dress pants, it follows that my shorts are as much or more appropriate than pants.”

    They were a pretty harmless bunch, otherwise!

      1. Jack Be Nimble*

        I did some Googling, the brand is called “Chubbies” (yes, really). The website a lot of pictures of blonde men on sailboats.

        2. Miso*

          I mean, the very first sentence you get when you google them is “Shorts for your weekend.”

          They couldn’t have made it any easier…

        3. Quackeen*

          Not gonna Google that at work…

          I’ve had to have the “please don’t wear midriff-baring tops” conversation a few times as well as, very sadly, a conversation with a high school intern about why she couldn’t bring her baby to work. :( I like to think I helped all of them gain some good information about workplace norms.

          1. Cacwgrl*

            Oh that’s always a fun one. I had a (very introverted, male) hiring manager pick up an intern specifically to help with a cabling/networking job. He told her to dress comfortably, as in not business dress pants or heels. She chose to dress in very short running shorts, a barely there workout tank and sports bra. He had no idea how to coach that one without getting sued so I had to do it. She has no idea why what she was wearingdidnt meet the minimum for reasonable clothing in the federal workplace. I finally asked her if she wanted to be the person known for dressing very inappropriately or the one that really knew what to do work wise and someone they would want to hire. She finally took a look around and started coming in with non-workout shorts and fitted tees and absolutely rocked the rest of her internship. She wasn’t embarassed but did not seem to get why that wasn’t the best choice for the work we were doing where we were doing it. But they really liked her and asked me to extend a permanent job offer come spring graduation, so at least we made something good of it.

        4. Close Bracket*

          Those are what you call tiny? How old are you? Those might be short compared to modern styles, but men’s shorts in the 80s were shorter than that.

    2. Elle*

      We had a lot of poorly dressed interns this year too. Way, way too many backless shirts and spaghetti straps? And a lot of boat-shoes-as-professional-shoes (our office is on the business side of business casual).

    3. mrs whosit*

      Oh, that reminds me! I’m a teacher and so don’t have interns, but the summer school program I used to work with had high schoolers as TAs. A bunch of the girls wore tiny running shorts that also had slit vents on the back, but definitely mid-cheek. Once I pointed out to one of them that you could see through that gap, and her response was like, “Yeah, so?” which I did not expect.

    4. Jack Be Nimble*

      I can’t believe I forgot to mention, but there was also an intern who was waaaay overdressed every time I saw her! She wore a lot of (lovely) clothes that were more appropriate for a wedding than a workplace. She seemed to own nothing but tea-length satiny skirts, which she wore with conventional Oxford-type blouses.

      She looked good, just really out of place at an informal, undress tech company!

    5. Celeste*

      It doesn’t help that most women’s departments only have really small shorts, unless they’re clingy and end right above the knee. The only shorts I feel comfortable working in are from the men’s section.

      The guys don’t even have that excuse, though.

  14. Submerged Tenths*

    Not exactly interns . . . but the college-aged cast/crew of our summer theater program had drag shows in the dorm. And YouTubed them.

    4. R*

      Ok I feel like I’m missing something because…this one doesn’t sound that bad to me? Of course it wouldn’t be appropriate for the office, but in their dorms and (presumably) off the clock? Did they title the video with the name of your program? Otherwise I don’t really get the issue.

      Is it because they were in drag? If they had filmed a silly video without being in drag and then put it on YouTube would that have been just as bad?

        1. spock*

          I’m not really seeing what’s weird about it either though. Just some college students having a harmless good time.

    5. Jadelyn*

      Yeah, but to be fair, that’s theater people. It’s a whole other breed. (And I say that lovingly, as someone who was theater-adjacent through a bunch of my friends in college.)

      1. AMPG*

        Yeah, I was also theater-adjacent in college, and this sounds like a pretty typical bonding experience among the theater crowd.

  15. Annie Moose*

    We had an intern last year who was a trip.

    For context, I work for a consulting company with about 100 employees; we typically have a half-dozen or so interns running around in the summer. So we’re quite used to them, and for the most part, they’re very professional, hard workers, willing to learn professional norms, etc. And they almost always come back every year, throughout college, and it’s very common for them to accept full-time positions, so once they’ve been around a couple years, we know them well and they’re trusted to do employee-level work.

    This guy, though. Let’s call him Jack.

    To start with, Jack believed he was an expert at everything, despite being a relatively new college student with zero work experience. While he knew enough to keep his mouth shut around full-time employees, he did not have the sense to shut up around interns who’d been there much longer than him, refusing guidance or training from them (even though they were specifically showing him the ropes!) and insisting he could do everything on his own. (spoiler: he couldn’t)

    But perhaps his incompetence could be overlooked, if not for his other fine qualities. Jack repeatedly randomly took time off without telling his manager ahead of time. Jack once changed in the parking lot from jeans and a T-shirt to dress pants, dress shirt, and suit jacket. And Jack repeatedly fell asleep in client meetings. No, he did not have a medical reason. No, he didn’t stop even after being warned in very serious terms multiple times. So Jack holds the honor of one of the only interns we actually had to fire, instead of just letting them work out their time and not inviting them back.

    As a fun postscript, about a week after being fired by our sternest, most forbidding manager, Jack showed up at a job fair where the same manager and our recruiting team had a booth, and tried to invite himself out to lunch with them. Needless to say, they declined.

      1. Annie Moose*

        I’ve heard some stories from another intern who attends the same university, and your suspicion is very likely true!!

  16. Butter Makes Things Better*

    I was really impressed with one of our magazine interns because she managed to get invited to sit in on a top editors-only cover story meeting with the editor-in-chief and then made insightful comments that earned genuine, on-the-spot praise from the EIC. Unbeknownst to me, that praise went to her head and she sat in on a slew of other lower-level meetings and telling those (non-EIC) editors how things should run. Mind you, she had no paid experience to back up her monologuing. And of course this came with zero self-awareness, zero self-doubt and zero ability to read the rooms. She became one of the most despised interns to ever walk the halls and was turned away for an entry-level job soon after. Because I had advocated for her before I learned all this, she kept in touch with me for years. I could never bring myself to tell her what had gone wrong for her. (Always felt bad about that; it could have been useful info for her.)

    1. Tardigrade*

      One of my current coworkers is very much like this intern, with no reason to be, and I wish we’d had some kind of intern system to either weed her out or correct the behavior.

      1. Butter Makes Things Better*

        Ugh. I wonder if any of the suggestions from AAM or the other posters for the Cersei letter from earlier this week (the trainee who kept bragging about her skills) could help in your situation? Is your coworker equally reviled in your office?

        Your story makes me wish I hadn’t been reticent to weigh in, because it could’ve helped out her future colleagues. She wasn’t my intern, which was a vote for not saying anything, but I’m pretty sure she asked me for feedback after the fact, so I did have an entry point.

        1. Tardigrade*

          I know at least one person can’t stand it when she behaves this way, but she’s not as egregious as your given example.

          And I wouldn’t know how to tell someone that they are such a blowhard and nobody will thank them for it…probably why I’m not in management.

  17. NoMoreMrFixit*

    Many eons ago I worked as a computer programmer. We got in a summer intern who was a spoiled rich kid. He decided one day that he had partied too hard on the weekend and needed a nap in the middle of a Monday morning. Foolishly he decided to do this at our shared desk since I was going to be off doing something else for the morning. So I quickly blasted out a program that lurked for 10 minutes then proceeded to screech a loud whooping alert and wandered off to admire the fireworks from across the office.

    He had his feet up and a manual in his lap to make it look like he was reading something dry and technical. When the alarm went off he woke up violently and the book went flying in an arc and landed in our manager’s office while my intern dove at the computer and furiously pounded on the keyboard to try and shut up the noise.

    Somehow I managed to keep a straight face through all of this. Afterwards he admitted he was in the wrong and never tried a stunt like that again.

      1. Richard Evans*

        This guy wasn’t an intern…he had worked there full-time for a couple of years but he got the bright idea that, since he couldn’t see the wall clock from his desk, he would just put an alarm clock in front of him. Thee were three of us, plus the two owners, in the same room so perhaps four or five times a week, one of us would set the alarm while he was out of the room. We didn’t set it for a few minutes from then, but several hours. It might be ten in the morning but the alarm wouldn’t go off until two, three or even four in the afternoon. He had some choice words for us — even the bosses would be laughing.

  18. Gen*

    I had one work experience person who had a crying fit, full on terrified for her life because- we wanted her to sit at desk by a window. Why was this a problem? There was a tree outside the window and the intern was deathly afraid of slothes. Yep, slothes. We’re in the north of England, if there are any slothes within ten miles of our location they’re in a zoo. Someone tried to reason with her but it was ineffective so we just let her sit away from the windows.

    At the height of the payday loans boom in the UK we had a student employee who’d taken out many payday loans, each to pay for the previous one so he had massive debts. He managed to get an advance from management for his monthly train ticket then bought a life sized plastic sheep on payday only to freak out when he didn’t receive his pay, because it had already been advanced to him.

      1. Gen*

        He’d just got his own place and had bought it as cool decor for his living room. I’m pretty sure it was intended by the manufacturer as a garden ornament or something.

          1. Anonicat*

            I was going to suggest he was a homesick New Zealander, so…

            (Look, they destroy on the rugby field, sheep jokes are our only consolation.)

        3. Moose*

          I have to admit that I misread this at first and thought it said BROUGHT, like he brought a life-sized plastic sheep with him to the office on payday, and I was floored.

    3. AnonforThis*

      Your intern in the UK was afraid there would somehow be an animal native to South and Central America in a tree puts it the window. What?

      I also have to question being terrified of a creature that is famous for being slow moving and therefore, very very easy to get away from.

      1. Amber T*

        Have you seen their faces though? And their claws? I’m with the whole there’s-a-snowballs-chance-in-hell that one will turn up in the tree, but sloths look creepy.

        1. Kit*

          I will argue this to the death. Sloths are adorable. :P (They’re my favorite. Although I’ll admit the two-fingered ones can have kind of weird/gross noses. Three-fingered ones are the cutest.)

          1. Amber T*

            I’m dying over this! This is hysterical, with Gen’s reply below of the intern’s fear being exactly why I find them unsettling. Agree to disagree :) I have a friend who thinks penguins are weird, while I find them cute as cute can be!

            1. As Close As Breakfast*

              For some reason this exchange prompted me to Google ‘Sloth Penguin’. I do not regret it.

            2. Kitrona*

              Agree to disagree. You can have my share of penguins and I’ll have your share of sloths. :)

              (I’m super excited, my girlfriend’s taking me to the zoo to see sloths when it’s not “surface of the sun” hot out!)

          2. Faultier*

            Did you know that in German, the word for “sloth” means “lazy animal” (Faultier)? Isn’t that awesome?

      2. Gen*

        Yes exactly, we were all so confused. If she’d named a native animal we probably wouldn’t have questioned it much but slothes? Really? There was about half an hour of people asking ‘do you mean something else?’ because she was young and words can get mixed up sometimes but no it was definitely slothes. She said it was their faces and the claws that scared her, and no amount of ‘there are no slothes here’ helped.

          2. Jay_B*

            This made me laugh so hard at my desk – I am trying to be quiet in my cube so basically I turned into a wheezing, crying mess picturing you swinging slowly from a branch in your shag rug jumpsuit!

        4. AngryTreeSpirit*

          I mean, we have a 50 year old senior level planner who insists that her backyard is full of brown recluses. There are no brown recluses in California. I’m not quite sure how to tell her.

      4. Quackeen*

        “I also have to question being terrified of a creature that is famous for being slow moving and therefore, very very easy to get away from.”

        I just laugh-choked on my almonds.

      5. many bells down*

        My ex once freaked out at a zoo because there was only a railing between us and a sloth, and he thought she’d viciously defend her baby. I’m like … it’s a sloth. By the time it gets out of the tree we can be in another time zone.

        1. Indigo a la mode*

          My ex and I were at the Smithsonian Zoo a few years back and he pointed out that the enclosure seemed like it’d be pretty easy for the sloth to escape from. Well, okay, but you’d also have like three days’ notice that it’s trying to escape.

          “IT’S MAKING A BREAK FOR IT!” *slow, tiny step*

    5. Jadelyn*

      On the one hand, people can’t control their phobias, so if this rose to that level – and it sounds like it might have – it’s not just her choosing to be unreasonable about it. Do I know, logically, that it’s highly unlikely that electrical towers and power lines will collapse and fall on me? Yes. Would I still be an absolute wreck if my employer tried to have me work outdoors too close to a set of power lines? Ye gods, yes. I can tell myself all day long, “It’s not going to fall on you, you have a better chance of being literally hit by lightening than having an electrical tower fall on you, shut up brain!” and my heart will still be pounding, I’ll still be shaking and fighting back tears. You can’t really “reason away” phobias.

      On the other hand…if trees provoke that level of fear in her, I can’t help but wonder how she functioned in the real world where there are, you know, trees everywhere?

      1. Lilysparrow*

        And windows.

        She wasn’t being asked to work in a tree, or near a tree. She was given a desk where she could see a tree outside, with a solid barrier between. I hope at some point she realized this was a real problem and got help.

        1. Roja*

          I was thinking the same thing. If your phobia is a big enough deal that you start sobbing at work because you’re near a window… in a country where the animal doesn’t even exist, no less… that’s the time for therapy. And I don’t say that to be unkind, because phobias are horrible, but because that’s no kind of life to live. I hope she got help.

      2. Nonenglishspeaker*

        That’s what I’ve wanted to comment. I have an animal phobia, and I’ve worked with someone who was afraid of stickers… well, it was more extreme disgust than fear.
        I agree being unable to sit next to trees raises a few questions about this intern’s everyday life, but the fact that a phobia is irrational itself isn’t enough to end it…

      3. Kay*

        Phobia or no phobia, its hard to be sympathetic for a person who is crying about a tree that is OUTSIDE the office she just happens to look out, being scared of an animal that unless there was a sloth escape from the zoo, would be pretty much impossible to even appear in the tree.

    6. Observer*

      Poor kid.

      I hope someone was able, at some point, to get her to see that this was something she needed to get some help for.

    7. wendelenn*

      Didn’t some letter a couple weeks ago feature a sloth purse that many AAM commenters then proceeded to buy up the stock of?

        1. Kitrona*

          …. Ok, I know what the next thing is I’m making for my etsy shop….

          (my email is in my handle if anyone’s curious)

    9. Kay*

      That… Is a whole new level of weird. That’s kind of like me crying at work because my window overlooks a river and I’m scared of crocodiles. And that’s still more reasonable because at least crocodiles are native to Australia thought I live WAY too south to ever see one.

  19. I Herd the Cats*

    We have a full floor, a large open office with individual offices on the perimeter. The offices are clearly assigned to VIPs with their names on the doors, but those people are on travel a lot during the summer. There are also some empty cubicles.

    Each summer I have the same conversation with the interns: they can’t randomly go into other people’s empty, assigned offices to work and make phone calls. This happened after one Senior VP came in and found the intern sitting with his feet propped up on the desk, making calls.

    1. Moose*

      Haha, I once worked an internship where there was no designated intern space or empty desks, but people traveled a lot. Every day I’d get my laptop from my supervisor’s cubicle and wander around looking for an empty office to sit in for the day. (That’s what I was instructed to do.) More than once I thought I’d found someone who was out that day, only for the person to come in late and be like “Um, why are you at my desk?” That was fun.

      1. Frinkfrink*

        I had the same problem as a temp at one place, many years ago. I was there for 6 weeks and nobody assigned me a desk, so I got shuffled to whichever desk was free that day. Somebody unbent enough to give me an inbox that I could keep my stuff in as I moved from desk to desk. One day I got put in a higher-up’s office and they explained she was on vacation so I assumed she’d be gone the next day as well and left my stuff there, and had to duck shamefacedly into the office the next day to retrieve my inbox.

      2. Bored IT Guy*

        I was on a project once, about 80% of my work was in the filed, but for the 20% that I was in the office, I didn’t have an assigned desk. If someone on our team was on vacation, I could use their desk, but most of the time I sat at a table at the end of the hall. Which was slightly inconvenient around lunchtime, because it was also the lunch table.

    2. bluephone*

      LOL there was an early It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where Mac and Charlie do this. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

    3. The Archnerd*

      I am currently a grad student working in a lab. Grad students are put in a few large rooms that have been converted into open spaces (8 to 15 desks apiece). I started out as an intern, and interns are usually put in the lab rooms proper. It took me forever to get used to the shared office, because the lab room was bigger, better-lit, you could make a bit of noise without disturbing 10 people, and I wasn’t used tôt he norms so the shared office stressed me out.

      So, for the first few weeks of my officially going from intern to grad student, I kept using the lab. Until the head admin told me to “please come by my office, we need to talk”. Which, of course, had me panicking a bit. What it turned out to be, though, was her asking me to at least put a bit of a mess on my desk even if I wasn’t going to use it much, because office space was highly sought-out she couldn’t “defend my territory” for me. She didn’t want to deal with the drama of another team’s grad student “stealing” the desk and the professors getting involved.

  20. Fake Eleanor*

    I don’t know if this puts me into “weird summer intern” territory, but I definitely embarrassed myself as an intern once by saying the exact wrong thing.
    I was working at a government agency the summer after my sophomore year of college. I was 20 years old, doing pretty well, having a good time, getting to know my coworkers. Near the end of the internship, I mentioned off-hand to a woman who had become something of a mentor to me that I would be leaving soon, to which she said, “we’ll have to celebrate. We’ll buy you some candy and wine.”
    Now, I had about 8 months until my 21st birthday, so without thinking, I said, “candy sounds great, but let’s hold off around 8 months on the wine.”
    I didn’t realize what I had implied until she awkwardly tried to congratulate me. To this day, I wonder if she ever realized that I was not, in fact, pregnant. Absolutely the most mortified I have ever been, but I certainly learned to think before I speak!

    1. Hey Karma, Over here.*

      oh.my.god! That’s hilarious. But you didn’t follow up with, “because it will be my birthday.” Or you didn’t even realize until later why she reacted that way?

      1. Fake Eleanor*

        I basically realized two hours later, at which point I was deep into my own work. It was bad. I’m not the most socially adept person at the best of times, so this was kind of my worst nightmare.
        I spent the last week of my internship aggressively mentioning that I was 20 and…doing things pregnant people generally shouldn’t? Trying to be seen eating raw fish and drinking coffee? Not sure exactly what my plan of attack there was.

        2. never going home*

          You’ve probably turned into a self-deprecating “that time I forgot people can be under-21 story” for that person, btw.

          Back before we ended our internship program, a few coworkers liked to take the interns out for a celebration of the internship ending at a place that served alcohol. I had to ask several times if all our interns were over-21 because, if not, we should find another venue. This frequently had not occurred to them.

          1. Lisa*

            This happened at #oldjob at a megacorp – we had a summer intern who was lucky enough to be brought along to a huge internal multi-day event, the kind where people fly in from other countries, and it’s a planning-and-inspiration conference by day, with private catered dinners every night. 99.99% of people who work at this company are over 21 so no one thinks to put any kind of protocols in place for checking IDs. One of our team managers, a very by-the-book rule-follower, was horrified to learn on the second day of the conference that her intern who had been helping himself to free beer all evening was actually only about 19 years old. She had to pull him aside to tell him he was not to drink at company events while under 21.

        4. Quackeen*

          I absolutely love your plan of attack, especially because it meant you had to brush up on things pregnant women should and should not do. I am just imagining you shopping for soft cheeses and mentioning cleaning the cat box.

    3. Bea*

      LOL

      I can relate. My first boss constantly forgot I was under 21 and tried giving me wine often. BUT I was her younger sisters friend and the friend was 4 years older so it was even more confusing for her

  21. Whose fault?*

    Intern needed H1B sponsorship and a job offer to stay in the US. Boss offered her this chance, making it very clear that she would have to transition to Teapot Management from Teapot Research as that was the only work we had available. She had never done Teapot Management before but she agreed. I vouched for her to get her into an intensive Teapot Management training in a nearby city with a great trainer. She ended up dropping out of the training because it was too far away, even though when I asked her later what she had done during that time period, she said “absolutely nothing”. Now she whimpers and looks scared whenever I bring up Teapot Management. Or anything else, actually. We only give her menial tasks (sort these fliers) because we don’t understand what she’s actually willing to do without whimpering. Well, the real culprit here is not the intern but my boss, who apparently got a “highly skilled” visa for someone without the skills we need and then approved her dropping out of the training. Not sure what to do with her but sure hope she gets better.

    1. Kes*

      Wow, I can’t believe you guys kept her when she dropped out of the training for the job she was told she needed to do, and is now doing basically nothing and your boss is okay with that?? I feel like most offices would just let her go for that.

    2. Temperance*

      YIKES. H1Bs are only available for highly skilled workers, and for positions not able to be filled by American citizens and those with work permits. Your org might be wading into some immigration-fraudy waters with these actions.

  22. Ella*

    my office had an intern once who was ultimately let go for issues around lack of professionalism. After he was let go, we discovered his twitter account where he’d spent weeks complaining that gender-based pay inequality wasn’t real because he (an intern) was being paid less than us (his managers, all women, who had all been with the company for 5+years at that point.)

    This wasn’t even an unpaid internship! He was making more than minimum wage in an entry level internship as his first job out of college! But apparently him not making manager money as an intern proved “reverse sexism” was real and alive, somehow.

    1. Butter Makes Things Better*

      Amazing. Internships are for learning, but you can’t teach an intern not to interpret things incorrectly when the relevant info (hello, tweetstorm) occurs outside of work!

  23. What's with today, today?*

    This isn’t weird but I interned two summers for an advertising agency when I was in high school. We specialized in doing movie premieres and advance showings in Oklahoma City. I got to run the advance screenings for The Horse Whisperer (three of them actually, I ended up watching that three-hour movie three times), Mulan and Something About Mary. We also did an advance screening of Disturbing Behavior, which was a teen thriller starring a very young Katie Holmes, we needed a lot of teens at the screening, so I got to bring my entire cheerleading squad. We got to skip practice that day and go to the movie for free. It was fun. But the coolest thing was my boss got to go to Florida for the Armageddon press junket to work as personal assistant to the late Michael Clarke Duncan. She hit it off with him and he offered her a job as her full-time assistant. She couldn’t take it with her family life, but that was pretty neat.

  24. Bea*

    This is simply fascinating because I’ll never deal with interns.

    I want to meet someone who believes in dragons. We will be the best of friends.

    1. SlightlyOffTopic*

      I had a date ask me what I liked to read; I said historical non-fiction and he got excited and said, “so you read a lot about dragons, huh?”
      Hrm…

    2. Salyan*

      If you don’t believe in dragons,
      It is curiously true
      That the dragons you disparage
      Choose to not believe in you.

      ~ Jack Prelutsky

  25. alldogsarepuppies*

    TBH the stapler/dragon intern sounds like he might be a squib? Grew up in the wizard world but couldn’t cut it so is now trying to survive amongst muggles except doesn’t know about technology BUT knows about dragons.

    Prove me wrong.

      1. Bea*

        You can’t unlearn what you know! Hiding the truth is hard and why most can’t hack it undercover, Boyle! You should know!

    4. Thursday Next*

      I like the cut of your jib.

      IIRC, that intern had lots of other…quirky ideas. He wasn’t a Mr. Weasley figure, staring in open-eyed wonder at the spark plugs all around him.

    5. justforthis*

      You’d think they’d have programs to integrate them into our society. Arthur Weasley would love that job….

    6. motherofdragons*

      Either that or Arthur Weasley in the flesh! Curious that he’s the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office, but doesn’t know how a telephone (excuse me, “fellytone”) works…bless him.

    7. GingerHR*

      In fairness to him, we *do* still have knights in England.
      The dragons are all hiding out in a hill in Wales though. And one’s been spotted in a loch in Scotland, tricking tourists…

  26. Moose*

    This is long, but. One fateful summer, we hired two interns who, in their interviews, seemed excited and competent. One in particular seemed a little socially awkward, but that’s not uncommon in our industry. He was calm and spoke well about his past experiences. We were impressed and excited to hire him.

    When he started…well, he wasn’t an entirely different person, but he displayed none of the calmness or competence that we saw in the interview. Any question–most of them totally valid–was prefaced with “I’m so sorry to bother you,” whether in person, over email, or in a Google chat. He’d literally back away meekly like a small animal moving away from a predator with a bunch of “sorry agains!” I’ve never had an intern act like this (I am a lot of things, but scary is not one of them, ha ha). It was annoying and strange, but I chalked it up to nerves at starting a new position. I responded to every question with a smile, and said “don’t worry, you aren’t bothering me, thanks for checking,” etc. every time, thinking that eventually he’d relax.

    One day I sent him a project that required a specific program. I showed him the program on my computer and how to use it. Later I walked by his desk and saw him looking at the file, so I figured he was working on it and didn’t think anything else of it.

    He worked on it for the next two days or so. At one point I stopped by and asked him how it was going, and he said “great!” and left it at that. At the end of the second day, I got an email from him that said, “Turns out intern laptops don’t have X Program, so I just did this in Y Program instead. Here it is!” with a file attached. It was, of course, unusable, because it needed to be done in a specific program, which I went over with him. My interpretation of the situation was that he was so worried about bothering me with questions that rather than tell me he couldn’t do the project, he panicked and tried to do it a different way. I wrote back something along the lines of “This needed to be done in the specific program like I told you, so now I’ll need to redo this on my computer. It’s not your fault that you don’t have the program, but you need to tell me these things and ask questions so we don’t waste time and have issues.”

    I wish I’d talked to him about it in person, but I wrote the email while surprised and frankly a little mad. He responded with a very apologetic email, and at that point I didn’t want to say the same things in person for fear of beating a dead horse. He worked on a few other projects and everything went fine. I figured we were past it.

    THEN…only about two weeks later. I sent him a project that should have been straightforward. I knew he had the program that it needed to be done in, because it was the one he’d erroneously used on the other project. I told him to use that program, he said great and got started. A few hours later he sent me the project and said “Turns out intern computers don’t have that program, so here’s all the changes that need to be made” with a list of changes written in an email. Um.

    At this point I walked over to him and said “Hey, I thought you had that program, you’ve used it before.” He said “I guess none of the intern computers have it anymore.” I asked him to open the file; when he double-clicked it, it automatically opened in a different program. I took his mouse, right-clicked, went to “Open with…” and lo and behold, there was the program he said he no longer had!

    1: he’s a young person in the 21st century, so he should know how to look for programs, but that’s the least wild thing about this. 2: when the file wouldn’t open in the right program, why would you assume it had been MAGICALLY DELETED FROM ALL INTERN COMPUTERS instead of there just being an issue?! and 3: after I specifically told him he had to tell me things like this right away, he did the Exact Same Thing, only two weeks later.

    You’d think this is the worst it could get. But no. When I showed him that he still indeed had the program, he looked me right in the eye and said, “Oh. Well, can’t you just do it now?”

    Anyway, that was my worst intern.

    1. Amcb13*

      As a teacher, I can attest that computer-savvy is not NEARLY as generational as we assume it is. I have teenage students who could probably build a computer and write an OS from scratch, and I have teenage students whose minds are blown when I show them the keyboard shortcuts for cutting and pasting. In some ways I think that those of us who remember older, crummier systems are often more comfortable poking around until we figure something out, because young people now probably started out on fairly intuitive mobile interfaces where there isn’t a lot to be done if something glitches out.

      1. Moose*

        That’s a fair point. Still, that was the least egregious part of this. If he had told me when he first tried to start the project “I can’t find that program on my computer anymore” and I’d gone over and shown him it was still there, I would have chuckled internally but forgotten about it. Instead he assumed it was magically deleted from all (not just his) computers and told me to do it myself.

        1. Jadelyn*

          The fact that he still wanted you to do it, after you’d showed him he had the software, is what pushes it into headdesk territory for me. The rest, while annoying, I can chalk up to ignorance. That last is just laziness.

          1. Moose*

            For sure. It made me think oh, you’re not just having issues with the computer, you put zero effort into doing this correctly and now expect me to do it for you again.

          3. Kes*

            Yeah, the rest of it can be read as ignorance/fear of bringing up issues or asking questions, which, while not great, is potentially understandable in an intern. But the ‘Can’t you just do it?’ really takes it to another level

            1. Moose*

              It was such a bizarre switch, too. Like, for him to go from apologizing every minute and seeming so nervous to brazenly not wanting to do things. It made me wonder if he just, like, lost interest or motivation after I reprimanded him for not asking the first time.

      2. Amber T*

        Agreed. I’ll google and poke around for a while and usually I can figure things out, but most things are so “user friendly” that when there are problems, they seem way more difficult to find sometimes.

        Also – I fully admit that I have no idea how to work Macs. I grew up a PC user, and I remember sitting in my college library, using a Mac (since that was the only computer available) and it took me a good while to figure out how to log out (this was pre-iPhone days so I couldn’t discretely look it up, and I didn’t want to completely out myself as an idiot by searching “how to log out of Mac” on the very computer I was using).

      3. mcr-red*

        I think you are on to something there. My oldest is terrified to poke around until she figures something out, because she’s afraid she will somehow break it.

      4. many bells down*

        Also, I think sometimes it’s not that THEY don’t know, but they assume WE don’t know. So they can tell a lie and think they’ll get away with it. I’ve seen this a lot with student plagiarism; they think adults aren’t savvy enough to run a simple Google search to discover they’ve stolen their entire assignment from the internet. Or that 17 other students haven’t done EXACTLY the same thing already.

        1. Moose*

          Yeah, I don’t think he was outright lying either time, like “I’ll pretend I don’t have it so I don’t have to do this.” But along those lines, it seemed more of a “Well I can’t figure this out, and I don’t care enough to try to figure it out, so I’m just going to do less work and assume she’ll do the rest.”

      5. Anonny*

        I’m both of these. I can build a computer, install OS, break into computers with lost passwords, all kinds of stuff like that… and I only learned about the copy and paste keyboard shortcuts like, a month ago.

      6. Julia*

        I worked in my private, top-tier university’s computer room for a bit, and part of my job was to make sure the computers were switched off at the end of the day. Every time, there were several students who left the computers on with their personal files open, still logged in, and at least person who thought that if they switched off the monitor, they had shut down the PC.

    2. Kathleen_A*

      That is pretty lame, and I don’t want to act like I’m trying to outdo you, but we had an intern – a legal intern who had several years of post-secondary education under his belt – who didn’t understand how to cut and paste in Word. (Full story a few posts down.) What’s the deal with computer illiteracy among people who ought to have zero issues with computer literacy? So strange.

      2. Book Badger*

        One of my fellow legal clinic students had no idea how to do ANY keyboard shortcuts. As in, to cut and paste, he’d carefully go to the Edit drop-down and select “cut,” then go again and select “paste,” instead of just ctrl+x and ctrl+v (or command-x command+v when he was on his Mac). He knew they existed but had never bothered to learn them.

        He was three years older than me and married with a kid, and watching him write anything was supremely frustrating.

    3. Moose*

      Real quick want to emphasize that what kills me about this is not the computer illiteracy part, but the not telling me that he couldn’t do the project, then just making up a different project to do instead or telling me to do it myself. That’s the kicker here.

    4. Myrin*

      That’s curiously bizarre! How did his internship end, if you don’t mind me asking? (As in, did you give him something like an exit interview where you went over your concerns? Did he ever acknowledge that he understood his behaviour was out of the norm? Anything?)

      1. Moose*

        After the second instance, I sat down with him and had a serious talk. Basically explained that he needed to tell me or ask questions if he ran into issues, and not just try to do things in a random way, because if I gave him instructions they were for a reason and projects needed to be done the way I explained. I asked him if there was a reason he felt he couldn’t tell me things and he said no, and apologized, and promised not to do it again. He seemed upset at being reprimanded but didn’t say so, and after that meeting he didn’t do anything else like that. To be fair, though, I didn’t really trust him with any high-stakes projects and kept his assignments pretty low-priority. He finished out the internship and I haven’t heard from him or anything about him since!

    5. Lorna D*

      There is some bizarre behavior here definintely worthy of a “worst intern I had” title but…

      “he’s a young person in the 21st century, so he should know how to look for programs”

      I grew up in extreme poverty in the US. I didn’t always live in a home, let alone somewhere with a computer. There are all kinds of things that older generations have assumed someone my age *should* know, and I’ve been written off as lazy, stupid, or not passionate about things because I just didn’t have access to things that most people my age would have had access to, so I balk a lot at this statement.

      1. Moose*

        Like I said in a few other responses, if that was the only thing, I probably wouldn’t even remember this story. I didn’t mean to emphasize the computer part. It was not telling me about issues, ignoring my instructions, and telling me to do it myself instead of just fixing his mistake that were the issues.

      2. Observer*

        It sounds like you’ve done pretty well for yourself despite the rough beginning, so kudos to you!

        But, even without this kind of poverty, that’s just not a big enough deal to merit mention. ESPECIALLY with all of the rest of it.

    6. Dear liza dear liza*

      I feel your pain. I’ve had amazing student workers, I’ve had decent student workers, and I’ve had student workers who seem to completely lack problem solving skills and basic curiosity. In camp #3, I give them a task and hours later, I find out it wasn’t done because of Minor Obstacle. And of course, the student worker doesn’t ask me about it, so Minor Obstacle becomes Total Roadblock for them.

    7. Lynn Whitehat*

      TO A POINT, I think the reticence about asking questions is part of adjusting to the work world. Class assignments are designed to be self-contained and clear. And if anything is ambiguous the first year a new assignment is used, you better believe it will be clarified for next year. So if you ask a lot of questions, you are definitely wrong–either missing what is clearly written in the assignment, or going out of your way to misread things that should be clear in context. “Professor? What planet will this bridge be built on? I need to know how much gravity there is.” “…. Earth.” By about the third question, the teacher is telling you “just… use your best judgement” through gritted teeth.

      Work assignments are more ambiguous and open-ended, in general. They’ve often never been done before, and definitely not by a hundred people all doing the identical assignment. So it can take a while to learn that asking questions is normal and appropriate, not a sign that you’re oblivious or deliberately trying to be difficult.

      This guy took it too far, though.

      1. NoMoreFirstTimeCommenter*

        I tend to ask lots and lots of questions, because I’m quick to notice gaps and logic issues in instructions, and it’s important to me to do things right and follow all the rules. Not all bosses like it.

    8. LadyCop*

      In all fairness…being young doesn’t in any way ensure computer literacy. It’s obviously not the norm, but people of all ages really struggle with simple computer tasks, and as much as it’s simple for us to right click and “Open with” there are a bulk of people who wouldn’t even know that option existed.

      I mean I literally spend way too much time telling people information that is readily available on a sign, or from a quick Googling…but no one reads signs, and no one thinks to Google things.

  27. Urdnot Bakara*

    A colleague of mine recently mentioned (offhandedly) that a couple of years ago they had to fire all the interns. That was before I worked here but now I’m wondering if those were the interns who asked for the dress code change.

      1. Urdnot Bakara*

        There are no more details, unfortunately! We were getting a meal together as a team and some of my department superiors were reminiscing about people who used to work here in the past. My colleague responded to one of the stories with, “That was the year we had to fire all the interns.” I looked at her and said, “You had to fire all the interns?” And she looked at me like she was going to respond but then someone else started talking and I didn’t want to be pushy and ask again/talk over someone. This was like two months ago now so it would be weird if I brought it up again, although I desperately want to solve this mystery!

        1. Kelsi*

          Lol you are more patient than I! I would have been back on that story as soon as I remembered. “Hey X, I know this is weird but you were starting to tell a story awhile back about the year you had to fire all the interns, and I’m still dying to know what happened!”

        2. Observer*

          Well, now you have the perfect reason. “I was just reading this piece about crazy intern experiences, and it reminded me of our conversation.” Very normal and natural.

  28. Youth*

    Most of the people in my position are part-timers who come in only when there’s work to be done. There are some part-timers who sometimes go for weeks without getting work.

    Last year during a meeting, our supervisor told us that one of the higher-ups had proposed bringing in an intern to help us with out workload. He asked what we thought about that proposal. Our response was basically a salty, “What workload?”

    They did not hire an intern.

  29. Evil HR Person*

    This wasn’t the interns’ fault. Someone in my company, way up high, decided that we needed to be nice to this one company and allow them to send us 2 interns. My company is in Florida and the company in question is in Alaska. So these interns were from Alaska, and they were coming down to Florida in the middle of the summer. It had bad idea written all over it, but the interns were on board, so I figured “whatevs.” It’s not like we hadn’t had Alaskan interns before (we had) who had to take days off to acclimate (they did) and one was borderline heat stricken (because of course!).

    Because the interns didn’t have a place to live, we were going to put them up in my higher-up’s guest house. 4 weeks before the interns were set to arrive, I was told that the guest house was no longer available because it was up for sale, and that I’d have to find another place for them to stay. Okaaay…. I went on VRBO and found a nice 2 bed/2 bath apartment for the interns to share, and paid the rental in full so I could secure it (although, NO ONE comes to my side of Florida in the summer, so I found the rental pretty easily).

    Two weeks before the interns were set to arrive, the deal with the Alaskan company fell through and I was left trying to recover the partial rental fee. Thankfully, the owner was very understanding and processed the refund to its full extent under the agreement (50%), and then I sent a strongly-worded letter to the other company to reimburse us for the rest. They did.

  30. Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves*

    The university I worked for would graduate students who failed their exams (to improve their stats for a program that should have been shut down) and then give them internships when they couldn’t pass the licensing exam. One memorable intern was confused for a homeless man by a client and I completely understand the mistake. I don’t think they actually made him do any work that year.

  31. Kathleen_A*

    Our legal team had an intern who was…well, let’s just say that he wasn’t their best and brightest…but one of us had to show him how to copy and paste in Word. This was only 6-8 years ago, so Word wasn’t exactly shiny and new, and he was a young man, so one would have thought he’d have been creating Word documents since preschool.

    But no. Or if so, he apparently didn’t copy and paste when he created them.

    1. Dee*

      I once had a coworker who managed to paste a copy of a folder *inside* the copy on the server, rather than overwriting it. So instead of backing up her work, she was creating this giant Matryoshka doll of a folder inside a folder inside a folder…

      1. Jadelyn*

        Okay, that outdoes my temp who thought the folder on the drive was “full” once the list of files reached the bottom of the explorer window he was viewing it in. He created a second folder and started to put documents in there as well, but he did comment to me about it so I was able to merge them and explain how scroll bars work before he did too much damage.

      2. Lou*

        When I took my first job after college I inherited a ridiculous electronic folder system. My predecessor had saved FOUR copies of the ENTIRE electronic folder system in various places. Some of it was nested, Matryoshka-like, and there was at least one duplicate copy also in a different location on the desktop. Took me three months of dedicated work to untangle that.

        This system was also weird in other ways including two copies of almost every document, one in Corel WordPerfect and one in MS Word, and incomprehensible 8 character file names because they’d never been updated after the conversion to more modern operating systems (I suspect the department had first gotten a computer in the late 70s)

      3. Free Meerkats*

        I think he became my coworker later. He was also the one who, when our site ran out of licenses for Word (we had one license for each person onsite), was discovered to have 15 instances of Word running on his computer because he started a new one every time he opened a document; and never closed any of them. I don’t think this is possible anymore with more modern versions of Windows.

    2. never going home*

      I have a coworker for the last, oh, 4 years, who every few months or so, I have to show how to do the same exact thing to move files around. She’s very nice, so I don’t mind too much, but it does get exasperating how she completely forgets that I’ve already shown her how to do this at least 10 times.

      I have no faith she knows how to copy/paste, considering some of the other stuff I’ve had to show her.

      1. iglwif*

        I used to have a co-worker like that. (Not an intern.) She also routinely freaked out about files, file directories, and/or Outlook folders that had “disappeared”, and it always turned out that she had inadvertently moved the missing thing into a different place and not noticed.

        Which is a thing that has happened to me, has probably happened to most people at least once, no shame! … but the fact that it happened at least once a month and she flipped her lid about it *every single time* made me tired.

    3. Anonygoose*

      I learned most of what I know about Word and other common computer programs in the working world, despite having been using it since I was literally 5 years old. Most schools don’t actually teach any computer skills beyond maybe typing (if that). I wish we had a class showing us the basics of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. – everything I know I either had to teach myself or have someone I work with show me.

      1. NoMoreFirstTimeCommenter*

        Yes, schools don’t necessarily teach this stuff. People tend to presume that people who were born in a world full of computers, automatically know how to use them. Still for some reason, though several generations have been born in a world full of cars, driving instruction is still a thing…

      2. Mrs. Emerson Peabody*

        The first real job I had out of college (a company with 500+ employees) only used Wang. Trying to open files from clients who used Word or Word Perfect could turn into an hours -long saga. Yes, I am an Old.

      3. Ego Chamber*

        “Most schools don’t actually teach any computer skills beyond maybe typing (if that).”

        They don’t? What the hell. I was in high school in the late 90s/early 00s and we had a mandatory “Computer lab” class every semester that was just to teach us Word, Excel and Powerpoint. In senior year we got to choose a self-directed study project—some kids learned how to code enough to make a little slot machine program, others spent the whole semester trying to teach Dragon Naturally Speaking to understand their voices, and I got Microsoft certified in Word.

        I went to a public school, in a very small town, and I’m kind of mad this isn’t done anymore. Do they still teach typing at any point, or is it just assumed all the littles know how to do that now? (I started typing classes in 4th grade, after our school got a computer lab courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.)

        1. Narcoleptic Juliet*

          My middle school had a mandatory “Computer class,” too, but it was completely useless. This was in the mid 90s, and the class was taught on Commodore 64s. When we complained that the computers were too old to be useful for learning about using modern computers, the teacher told us our argument was invalid because we were older than the Commodores.

    4. CMart*

      I’m in a role for “new grads”, though as a career changer I’m ~10 years older than the others who were hired alongside me. I work with them every so often and it’s nearly universal that while they at least know about copy/paste, they’re either doing it as a right-click operation, or using the mouse to navigate through the menus to do it.

      Nearly to a person their minds have been blown when I introduced keyboard shortcuts.

      I’ve started asking if they took “computer” classes at some point in their education and so far the answer has been “no”, and I think that’s where this disconnect is coming from. When I was in middle school in the mid-90’s we did keyboarding/typing, MS Office, and “world wide web” skills classes. I think nowadays they’re just left to figure it out on their own.

  32. Paralegal, Part Deux*

    Do law clerks count? If so, we had a law clerk bring a dead alligator to the office on his way to the place to process the meat.

          1. Paralegal, Part Deux*

            My aunt’s SIL was 8 mos. pregnant and got chased by a gator. She only got away due to an neighbor seeing her and driving his truck down to where she was. She crawled on and escaped.

            Getting a license for gator season is done like a lottery here.

    2. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      Law clerks definitely count!

      …. Also, how does one store/process a dead alligator?

      1. Delta Delta*

        I’m guessing the alligator was on its way to the processing place (could range from slaughterhouse to “guy with a garage and willingness to cut up an alligator”). I’d further guess the dead gator was in the back of a pickup truck.

      2. Paralegal, Part Deux*

        He took it to a place that cuts all the meat out like one would a cow or other livestock, and you put it in the freezer like any other kind of meat. It tastes like chicken.

        1. Anonymouse*

          The alligator skin is sold to Italian fashion designers.

          And the alligator internal organs are sold to the Chinese for herbal medicines.

          In my high school graduating class of 100, two of my classmates make their living as alligator trappers. Class reunions are …. interesting.

          And both of those guys did intern with alligator trappers when they were in high school. (Returning briefly to the topic.)

          1. KayEss*

            I imagine “bad alligator trapping intern” stories involve a lot more ER visits than what we’re seeing here.

            1. Free Meerkats*

              Way back in the winter of ’64-’65, my dad got bitten by an alligator. In Rapid City, SD. In January. He wore the tooth they pulled out of his hand on a chain around his neck until he died. Mom had it cremated with him.

              He used to love telling the story of how the medical insurance company bounced that one three times because it “just wasn’t possible.” He was helping the Reptile Gardens move animals to its new site and was carrying the “safe” end of the alligator when the snout wrap came loose.

          2. Anonymouse*

            Let me clarify:

            Alligator trapping is a calling, not a business.

            Alligator trappers have apprentices, not interns.

            There are no sleeping on the job stories in alligator trapping.

            1. it's-a-me*

              – There are no sleeping on the job stories in alligator trapping.

              There would be but no one is alive to tell them.

        2. MsSolo*

          It’s really nice with peach and balsamic glaze, either on skewers or as a pizza topping!

          (I’m from the UK, but do like a bit of unusual meat)

      1. Paralegal, Part Deux*

        Unfortunately, we have 2 mounted deer heads and one wildebeest hide rug in the office…and they paid a decorator for this crap.

        1. Icontroltherobots*

          Your office is AMAZING. Thank you for sharing.

          My questions are:

          1) how long had the gater been in the truck?
          2) Why was he hunting during working hours?
          3) who processes MULTIPLE DAY OLD MEAT?!

          1. Paralegal, Part Deux*

            1. Just since that morning.
            2. He had a day off and gator season in pretty short. The attorneys told him to go have fun.
            3. It was fresh so wasn’t a problem.

    4. MsSolo*

      Reminds me a bit of a friend of my parents, who went hunting before work and had the deer in his car boot all day. He was a teacher at a school for kids who’d been excluded from mainstream schools, who were very interested in why Sir’s car was bleeding. They always behaved very well for him after that! So well that at the end of the year the school let him take a group of them fishing and they all brought their own knives to gut their catches.

  33. Tilly*

    Not the biggest offense but our summer intern walked into an employee event on our floor, which we share with HR, asking if bars allow you to sneak in shooters. She’s turning 21 this fall and really concerned how she can afford to be 21 and go out with her friends. I mean on one hand, I admire how comfortable/open/clueless she is but on the other hand I’m appalled that she thought that was ok to say out loud in front of our stuffy HR staff.

  34. RJ the Newbie*

    At my old office, an intern had been having issues dealing with our phone system and the codes to make international calls. He wasn’t supposed to be making any and he kept trying. A week from the end of his internship, he tried again and had an emotional meltdown about the lack of inclusion in the office and how he felt objectified and targeted. Once he’d calmed down, he taken over to HR. He left quietly shortly afterwards.

    After he’d left, we found out that in additional to his failed attempts to make international phone calls, he’d printed an entire multi-volume set of electrical/plumbing codes – a decade’s worth. This was the equivalent of about 20 reams of paper.

    I heard from my old office manager that he was shocked when his internship for this summer was turned down.

      1. Lynn Whitehat*

        My guess is calling home on the company dime. I once spotted a VP wandering the halls erratically. I asked what he was doing, and he said there was a phone line somewhere in the building that was not assigned to an individual, and someone was staying super-late and calling a country we didn’t do business with. So he called that phone number from his office phone, and was wandering around listening for a ringing noise.

        This was in the dark days before Skype and other VOIP services. Calls overseas could cost several dollars A MINUTE in those days.

        1. RJ the Newbie*

          I remember those days very well as I had to code those damn calls to projects/marketing/administration back in the day!

          He was from the Midwest. There was non reason (that I know of) why he would be calling overseas. He made PLENTY of calls back home as we found out after he left.

    3. Kit*

      Why on earth would he need an entire decade’s worth of electrical/plumbing codes? I could almost see if it was just the latest ones and his job was related, but a *decade*?

      1. RJ the Newbie*

        Really wish I could answer this as it made no sense to me either. Yes, the most current ones would make sense but he pulled a decade for each. It was a massive amount of paperwork and internal cost.

    4. Brownie*

      Not an intern, but a brand new hire out of college here decided to make an international call to India from his desk here in the US. So he picked up the phone, dialed the +91 country code, then decided since it was long distance he needed to start the rest of the number with a 1, realized what he’d done when he heard an unexpected voice asking if he needed fire, police, or ambulance, and hung up in a panic. After it was all over and the police had left management enacted a major new rule absolutely forbidding international calls from work supplied phones.

      1. JanetM*

        Many years ago, my university changed the “reach an outside line” number on our PBX from 9 to 8, for that very reason.

        1. Richard Evans*

          Years ago, the dept. supervisor came in about 7 am, then had a heart attack a half hour later. He told me later that the other guys were trying to call 911 but couldn’t reach it because they all forgot they had to dial 9 first when dialing an outside number. They eventually put stickers on the phone reading 9-911. He also said he was stretched out on the floor when the safety director looked down at him and said “he’s a goner”.

          1. it's pumpkin spice season*

            I worked at a community center and our policy was that all 911 calls had to be made from a landline. So you had to dial 9-911.

            Two things of course happened:
            1. We had a lot of 16-22 year old employees, who had yet to encounter a landline, and I had to put a post-it on the phone with directions on how to dial 911.

            2. We had a lot of clumsy employees, who in dialing outside numbers would accidentally 9-1-1, and panic and hang up on the 911 operator. An email was sent out reminding everyone that if they DID accidentally call 911, they were to identify themselves to the dispatcher and state clearly that it was a misdial and they had not intended to call 911, and there was no emergency. Apparently the cops had shown up a few times and scared our front desk manager, who ran around the building in a tizzy trying to find the emergency.

      2. Alli525*

        One of the very first things we were taught at my work-study job in college was that, because the university phone system required you to press “9” to dial out, and out-of-state numbers all needed to be preceded by a “1,” we should be EXTREMELY careful when dialing. And if we ever did accidentally dial 911, we should never, ever just hang up – we should always politely apologize to dispatch for the error, or they would end up sending an emergency vehicle to campus.

        Now that I’m telling this story, it occurs to me that the Brits’ emergency number being 999 makes a hell of a lot more sense than our system.

        1. Adereterial*

          In the days when I had a phone that had actual buttons, I pocket dialled 999 on more than one occasion…

        2. EvilQueenRegina*

          Yes, as a Brit I am sat here reading this and thinking it’s a good thing that mistake isn’t as easy to make with our emergency number. having said that, I had a temp job about 13 years ago where one of the extensions in the team I was working with was 0870. For the non-Brits, 0870 is a premium rate telephone code and a lot of companies use this. We had lots of people who forgot to dial 9 for an outside line – sometimes we got hangup calls if people realised the mistake quickly, sometimes they didn’t realise and would start going on at us about things like unpaid phone bills. We also got lots of faxes. Eventually they changed that phone number and retired 0870 as an extension.

    5. SKA*

      Ooh, on the calling codes front (but unintentional in my case) — at college, I did a work/study job at the IT helpdesk. If we were calling a cell phone or other off-campus number (as opposed to an on-campus office or dorm landline), you had to dial 9 first, and then there was a code you had to dial after the number. So the formula went 9 – [phone number] – [code]. However, the first time I had to make one of these calls, I got the order wrong and did 9 – [code] – [phone number]. And, you guessed it, the code started with 11. Thus dialing the local 911 dispatch. I was MORTIFIED. But I was also told that it pretty much happens once per batch of work/study students.

    6. plainjane*

      I had an intern who wanted to work from home so that she could call her bf (in the UK) because we wouldn’t give her the code to make long distance calls from the office. There were other problems too. And at my next job, I ended up managing one of her friends. It was not a good fit.

  35. Amber T*

    Harmless silly intern mistake on my end – when I interned for a Teapot Design firm, I got billable hours, which I was very unfamiliar with. I was being paid $X an hour by the firm, but my billable rate was $Y, which was like, at least 5x as much. So I thought if I was filing or doing some general office work, I’d be paid $X, but if I got to work on client work, I’d be paid $Y. Figured out verrrry quickly that that is NOT how that works!

    1. irene adler*

      Disappointed, no doubt.
      I recall when a new tech opened her first pay check and her face fell.

      Taxes???

      Quite a shock for her.

      1. Jayne*

        One of my colleague’s daughters brought her first paycheck to her mother and asked, “Who is this guy FICA and why does he have all my money?!?”

      2. Amber T*

        LOL I sorta did that too with my first salaried paycheck. Thought it would be my yearly salary divided by 24 with maybe a couple of bucks knocked off. Boy was I wrong.

        I did the same thing when I started my current job that offered a 401k… which is even worse, because in theory I should have realized how much would have been taken out… I just didn’t calculate what 3% was at the time haha.

      3. RJ the Newbie*

        I used to distribute checks to the interns. It was heartbreaking to see their faces when they realized what their net pay was after deductions.

    2. CheeryO*

      My mind was blown the first time I saw what my billable rate was as an intern. I still question them for billing my hours since I was so ridiculously clueless about all facets of the work process. I barely did anything that didn’t need heavy review by more senior staff.

      1. Shrugged*

        In my college for teapot design management, they taught us that you bill at a rate 3x what you pay the person. 1/3 is their pay. 1/3 is for overhead – lights, computer lease, internet access, water, health care, etc. The final third is for the company’s profit. With interns and our entry level staff at my current company we automatically take it to ~4x the pay rate: we still have the base pay, 1/4 for overhead, 1/4 for profit and then 1/4 for covering their hourly rate if they have to redo everything they did, or just worked really slow. It gives the budget enough padding to cover for an intern, otherwise the project managers would rebel and refuse to take on untrained staff.

    3. batman*

      @Amber T- how does that work then? I would also make that assumption, but I’ve never worked had to bill my work to different project codes so I have no idea how it works. Why is the billable rate so much higher?

      1. zora*

        The billable rate is what you charge the client for the work the employee does, and it includes overhead and profit you need to keep the company running.

      2. Bea*

        It’s like “labor cost” when a mechanic fixes a car or technician comes to fix an issue with your cable. It’ll be like $90 an hour instead of the $20 an hour the mechanic or tech gets.

      3. Amber T*

        What zora and Bea said. At that point, my only experience with billable rates had been seeing my dad work, who’s a contractor, so he gets paid his billable rate (a high number to account for everything they mentioned) or doesn’t get paid (when he’s doing filing or general office work for his own business, not for clients). I had thought I was getting the best of both worlds!

  36. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

    I am going to recount the Intern from Hell story, one of my absolute favorite terrible work stories. [Although now that I reread it, I realize she may have had a substance abuse problem :( ]

    Right before I came on as staff, Old Toxic Job hired a terrible legal intern. She had lied on her resume and about her experience during the interview process, where she presented like a normal and professional human. A week after she came on board, she became completely outlandish.

    She was working in our field office, in a very conservative (culturally, politically) part of California. Although the dress code is casual, she began showing up to work in really inappropriate attire—miniskirts that didn’t quite cover her underwear parts, cropped shirts that showed underboob, clothes that appeared dirty and unkempt, 6″ heels, etc. The Executive Director had to have multiple conversations with her about proper attire, but very little changed.

    At the same time, she began pressuring the older staff (think 50s/60s) to “party” with her, which of course was not something they were going to do. Then began to show up to work late and hungover (from the aforementioned “partying”), and lied about attending mandatory client meetings. There was a new staff person on our non-legal team who was relatively young, so she began to peer pressure him to party with her. He always declined, which apparently bothered her so much that she threatened to file a complaint against him saying that he had sexually assaulted her outside of work and was sexually harassing her at work unless she would come out with him. He was terrified because of the power dynamic, and he wasn’t sure if he’d be fired even though he’d done nothing wrong.

    Finally, while volunteering at a (dry!) work fundraiser at a major donor’s home, she came in noticeably drunk and high… all while staffing a table that required her to interact with other donors. When we called a cab for her, she refused to leave, insisting that we were discriminating against her because she was white (nevermind the other white interns were just fine), and also insisting that she was sober.

    1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      Oh, I forgot one other part: She also tried to reorganize the organization and foment a coup against the Executive Director (while she was living at the Exec Director’s house for the summer). She couldn’t understand why we wouldn’t take her suggestions regarding restaffing and restructuring. So then she tried to convince the entire staff that the ED was awful, terrible at her job, etc., explained why she would be a better director, and then tried to get the ED ousted.

      1. Jadelyn*

        You almost have to admire the level of self-confidence something like that takes. That’s…really something.

      1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        SHE DIDN’T. That’s the craziest part of the story, imo. The organization had never had an out of control intern like this before, and they were legit stumped about what to do—ride it out, or fire the intern. The ED is also extremely conflict-avoidant, which had a big role to play in why it was a Toxic Workplace.

        I think folks were also just so shocked they were kind of frozen. The intern in the field office the year before was truly the most wonderful and caring guy—having him around was like having a ray of sunshine in the office.

        1. Gazebo Slayer*

          I’d think “go out with me or I’ll fire a complaint saying you sexually harassed me” would be sexual harassment in and of itself. How horrifying, and also how harmful to people who actually ARE harassed and have trouble being believed. (Not to mention to this poor guy.)

  37. limenotapple*

    I was the awful intern. I was 19, and the internship was at a corporate real estate firm. I didn’t know ahead of time that the internship was mostly cold-calling to get information on buildings and offices-the specific location, number of square feet, number of tenants, etc. I *hated* it. This was 30 years ago and it was the worst.

    So, I didn’t do it. All summer, I just doodled and hid in the bathroom. I thought I was home free until the end of summer when someone wanted to see my work…and there was none. Probably, I should have quit right away, or my supervisor should have checked in with me, but neither happened.

    I did grow up since then.

    1. Foreign Octopus*

      Oh my god, this is me.

      I wasn’t an intern but this was my first office based job. I was 25 and it was working in recruitment. I told my manager at the interview that I was worried about cold calling but he brushed it off (red flag ignored due to desperation) and when I started the job I realised that it was all cold calling people about jobs they weren’t interested in because I couldn’t tell them who the company was or how much they were paying until later in the process.

      Instead of deciding the job wasn’t for me, as I would do now, I found a way to trick the system so that my call figures were high and minutes on the phone was high. I would dial the number to my mobile and then spend eight minutes chatting to myself in the voicemail – rinse and repeat.

      Looking back now, I am honestly amazed I wasn’t discovered and fired. I cringe at the thought of it now.

        1. Foreign Octopus*

          I’d pretend to have the same conversation I had with people who actually applied for the job. I’d create a name and do my whole spiel and then intersperse the silence with the occasional – uh-huh, hmm, I see – until it was over.

      2. Bea*

        If only all cold callers were as great as you are though. Think of all the people you saved ruining their days by calling them *.*

        1. Foreign Octopus*

          To be honest, I only started doing this when my boss decided that we weren’t getting enough CVs to our clients and made us start calling people at work. I think I did it a grand total of three times before I thought oh hell no, this is horrible, they’re at work – why, Jebus, why? The ironical thing is that my boss hated it when we took personal calls at work and he didn’t understand why other people might not want to talk about potential jobs whilst at their jobs.

          So glad to be away from there.

          1. it's pumpkin spice season*

            I briefly manned the only landline phone at a tech startup company, and aggressive recruiters would cold call down the employees listed on the “About us” on the website.

            So they’d call asking for Emily Jones, then we’d end the call. A minute later, the phone would ring, looking to speak to John Smith, and we’d end the call. A minute later, the phone would ring, looking to speak to Chen Wa, and we’d end the call. A minute later…and so on and so forth, until they’d hit every single one of our engineers, in the order we had them listed on the website.

    2. Oh dear.*

      Oh god, you’ve reminded me of one of my worst college jobs and my own horrible performance… calling prospective students at the admissions office.

      When we called students who had visited the school or requested information, it was fine, but a lot of the calls were numbers we’d purchased from a database who didn’t know our college or care to learn more about it. All of the other student workers who made calls seemed pretty diligent, but I hate the phone and only took the job because I needed money so I’d actually call the students who had a tracked visit or communication history and either pretend to call and get no answer or talk to a dial tone for everyone else. As far as I know, no ever found out. I’m mortified about this now, but it seemed to make sense at the time to college me.

      1. Book Badger*

        I did this on occasion when phone banking for $POLITICAL-CANDIDATE. The problem was that we had to meet goals for *numbers of calls*, not people successfully contacted, so there was an incentive to dial a lot of people without making contact because actual conversations took up more time. Besides, everyone who wasn’t successfully contacted would end up in the pool again, so someone would call them eventually even if it wasn’t me.

        So sometimes, especially if I was very bored, I’d list a bunch of people as being not home when I hadn’t called them at all, to be done faster. I also did that with people who I knew in person – the last thing I wanted was for someone in my small town to say, “Oh, Book Badger? Is that you? How’s your family doing?” when I was trying to convince them to vote for $CANDIDATE.

  38. beepboopin*

    Oh Lordy. This is a story from when I was a graduate intern at a Community Mental Health Clinic (social work student) and the fellow intern with me was cringeworthy in every way. She was a from a different program in our city but definitely acted in a way that made you questions why she was pursuing a career in social work in the first place. To preface, the CMHC had a medical clinic, provided case managers for clients, and had a day center for clients who qualified for Medicaid and were diagnosed with a severe and persistent mental illness. The first instance was when she got in a heated debate with some clients during a advocacy group session (the group was meant to inform them on latest mental health policies and how they can advocate for themselves). Our role was not to debate with the clients but rather to provide and educational and facilitation environment. My supervisor was not present during this group but luckily many of the clients reported her to other staff afterwards. Another incident later on was when she started debating with a highly religious client about their religious beliefs that she didn’t agree with! I witnessed this interaction along with other staff members but apparently no one reported it until my supervisor asked me later that week if I had encountered an “ethical dilemma that week.” The icing on the cake was when she showed up for an all day training wearing a sheer shirt with a sheer bra underneath. You could clearly see her nipples! My poor fellow male caseworker present during this training had to keep his head down all say as he was seated directly across from her. And this facility had registered sex offenders as their clientele. I am sure there were more incidents but these were the 2 biggies that stood out to me. Needless to say she was asked to leave at the end of the summer (she was supposed to have a 2 semester internship) and from what I can tell shortly left her social work program afterwards. And the kicker of all this? She was 36 years old! No real excuse for not knowing professional norms.

  39. CoffeeCoffeeCoffee*

    At my last job at a large, international foundation, we had a (paid) intern from a very prestigious “near-Ivy”university. She came in the first week and then didn’t show up the second week. We assumed on Monday she was sick and sent her an email and tried calling, but she didn’t respond. On Tuesday, when she didn’t show up, my boss got worried something could have happened to her- she lived alone and was from a different city with no family around, so he asked the police to do a home check. They found her fine, at home and watching Netflix, so we fired her. On Friday of that week, we went to a company lunch at a restaurant next door to our offices- and she was there working as a waitress. The restaurant manager told us later that she worked for one week then stopped showing up- no calls, no emails, she just never came back. About a year later, another employee and I were speculating on what happened to her so we googled her name and it turns out she had become an adult film star, using her real name nonetheless. Four years later, it still baffles me.

  40. Leela*

    Had someone tell us that they had balance issues due to a medical condition, so we didn’t think anything of it when they seemed slightly off balance. Or when they sort of slurred their words. Or when things were just a little….off. One day they spilled their opaque water bottle in front of us. Full of alcohol.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        Long-range planning! Contrast this with the intern upthread who kissed the hand of the coworker on whom he had a crush, then realized that it would look weird if he didn’t go around kissing the hands of all the lady coworkers…

  41. Orange You Glad*

    I currently have a 6 month co-op student that is finishing up his work experience this week. He wasn’t the best or the worst employee but he has a tendency to rush through his work without proofreading/review. No better example of this was the e-mail I got from him last week calling out. The last sentence was “I hope this doesn’t cause any incontinence for the team”. My manager and I have been laughing about that ever since.

    1. Elle*

      Oh boy, you just reminded me of my most embarrassing intern moment. I had to give a pitch to the entire senior leadership team at the end of my internship. I had written “asses” on basically every single page. Someone finally pointed out at the Q&A section that its spelled “assess”.

    3. Mia*

      This actually reminds me of my own embarrassing (but also funny) mistake. I tend to proofread kinda poorly when I’m anxious and for one of my first assignments at my current job, I had to write ad copy for a high-end spa. I did a good job overall, but there was one glaringly nonsensical sentence I’d missed that read: “Revitalize your skin with a customazible chemical pee.”

    4. Anon attorney*

      One of our typists once produced a letter for me: “We enclose by way of intimidation pleading X”…

      (One intimates pleadings to the defendant in my jurisdiction. But I prefer her version )

  42. Environmental Compliance*

    As an intern in a group of 5 or so at a state agency, we all went out for drinks after some big project was completed. One intern decided to talk in graphic detail of how he was cheating on his girlfriend because apparently “we’re all friends now!”. Yeah, no.

    Few years later, as a FT employee in the same state agency but different regional office, we had interns. One decided that he needed to impress me in particular (he was in a different department, the only reason we ever interacted is because our desks were near each other), and would tell me all about cool stuff in the city (okay, thanks, but I’ve lived here for 3 years already, I know the bar over there also serves bacon) and leave me wildflowers on my desk. I was engaged at the time and would talk with my desk mate about wedding planning, or mention my future husband to coworkers. Intern (after ignoring my requests to leave me alone/knock it off with the flowers) finally got a talking to from his boss and was flabbergasted that 1) hey, do the work we are paying you to do and 2) EC’s getting married. Then he refused to speak with me at all for the remainder of the time he was there. He also apparently missed several fieldwork events by just not showing up, and told the boss he was just too hungover.

  43. Prague*

    Can’t remember if I’ve posted this before. When I was an intern at a government agency, one of my fellow interns began bringing in a large cardboard box of baby bunnies. I think it took three days for anyone to tell him to stop.

    It was the first year they’d had interns and no one knew how to handle anything. Escorting us everywhere – including the break room and restrooms – stopped after the first day. We only found out on the first day that it would take six weeks to get paid at all. One girl answered everything you told her with, “Really? Wooow….”

    So glad that’s well behind me.

        1. Nea*

          Excellent fertilizer, though. Better than coffee grounds for composting, and yes, I take (used) coffee grounds home from work.

        2. pugsnbourbon*

          Point-counterpoint: some domesticated rabbits eat their own droppings.

          Maybe that’s not a point in my favor, tho …

          1. Free Meerkats*

            Rabbits (all of them) are pseudo ruminants and produce two types of feces. Soft ones, usually produced at night, are partially digested and are eaten again, providing the nutrients in the fodder that the bacteria in the caecum have broken down from indigestible cellulose. If you are squeamish and prevent them from doing this, they will die. They also produce hard, dry feces, usually during the day, which are the undigested stuff.

            The More You Know!

  44. DCGirl*

    I worked at a department store after completing grad school and while looking for a job in my field (in a sucky economy at the time, sigh). The company decided to give Saturday-only jobs to high school students in a fashion merchandising program. Their assignment primarily was to empty the fitting rooms and return clothes to the correct departments. After a number of issue with general flakiness and not being present in our department, we found out that the company had hired a set of identical twins (assigned to different departments), one of them had flaked, and the other was doing her best to collect both paychecks.

      1. DCGirl*

        She seemed to be trying to do both jobs, but not succeeding. Our fitting room would fill up, we’d go looking for her, find her putting clothes back out in the other department, tell her to get back to our department…. Then their fitting room would fill up, they’d wonder where she was…. It’s amazing she got away with it for as long as she did.

        You’ve got to admire her chutzpah.

        2. Kelly L.*

          That one was obviously Elizabeth. Jessica was off on a beach somewhere.

          Liz swears she’ll never do a favor like this for her sister again, but we all know it’ll happen again in about 4 books.

    2. moss boss*

      I worked a fall/winter internship with my university library doing peer tutoring in information science. Another science student had also been hired, and he was upfront with the program manager that he would be spending the second semester outside the country and so could only do the fall semester tutoring.

      Well, our supervisor must have forgotten that conversation, because when the gentleman left for the winter, she began hassling his identical twin (who also went to the uni, different program, and certainly hadn’t been hired by the library) about not showing up for his shifts. The poor guy spent the winter semester trying to convince this lady that she was talking to one of a set of twins, but she wasn’t hearing it.

      To my understanding, the situation was not resolved until she finally saw them both in the same room.

  45. LQ*

    Worst intern story is 100% my fault. I assumed interns were …like me. And I’d had 2 for 2 years come back who were, grab a project and run with it and just go. And then I had the Intern I Failed.

    I had an event, she was trying to go into event planning. I’d done the event several years in a row, all the vendors and location had us penciled in so it should have been easy so I gave her everything I had, introduced her to a couple people and said…go forth!

    And she did, and the Monday before the event she came into my office sobbing, with the same folder. She’d done nothing. She didn’t know where to start or what to do. And I’d never checked in, I’d never had regular meetings, I never did Good Boss things. I completely and totally failed her. (We did manage to pull the event off, she and I basically spent the entire week and made it happen.)

    2. Melly*

      Assuming interns were like me is a mistake I made (embarrassingly) more than once. Now I am liberal with feedback and meetings. Also why I don’t take interns unless I’m mentally prepared to share so much of my time.

  46. Former Hoosier*

    I used to work in arts related non profit in a smaller town. We would send free tickets to an event to people who were listed in the paper as having achieved a promotion, new hired, etc. I had a summer intern who I gave the task to do this. I gave her the newspaper clipping, the form letter, the tickets and told her to send letters and tickets to each person in the article. She later came to me and said she couldn’t find an organization named let’s say, Teapot Time, in the phone book (this was a long time ago!). I asked her if she had looked up Teapot Time under “T” in the phone book and she had not. It hadn’t occurred to her.

    At the same organization I had an intern another summer who came in one day and asked if he could leave early to get a new driver’s license. We were very flexible and so I said yes. He then launched into a story stating that the night before he had been out to the bars and got really drunk. When he was driving home he decided to stop at a fast food restaurant for some food. There was a wait because it was late at night. And he passed out in his car. He woke up when someone was knocking on his window. He assumed that it was his food so he rolled down the window and handed his wallet to the person. But of course it was not a fast food worker and his wallet got stolen. I was so stunned that he told me this entire story as if it was appropriate to do so when I had said he could leave early without questioning why he needed to renew his license.

    2. Quackeen*

      I had a temp who was helping me file paper applications for a scholarship program. He labeled all the folders as Firstname Lastname, and filed them all alphabetically by first name.

      2. Rey*

        A few years ago my office had paperwork to distribute that included three different forms. Two forms were alphabetized by first name and the last form was alphabetized by last name. For ~400 people. Thankfully when it came up again the following year, we remembered how stupid and hateful that was and fixed it.

      3. Nessun*

        This will forever remind me of one of the “secretaries” in Are You Being Served? who, when asked where all the missing letters and bills were filed, said “Under ‘A’, of course! ‘A’ letter, ‘A’ bill…”

    3. Sam.*

      I don’t understand…where in the phone book was she looking? How did she think they worked? I’m so confused!

  47. Elle*

    We had an intern this summer who seemed intelligent and hard working enough, but her meeting etiquette was horrible. She spent all meeting, every meeting group chatting on her phone. Or she’d bring a full set of markers, etc and doodle away on ‘goals’ wall hanging posters(?) with goals such as ‘be nicer / more friendly’.
    She was female, and I’m the only female in our 20+ person group (male dominated industry) so I decided to take her under my wing and try to help her a little bit. I asked my friend from another department if she wanted to help me take this intern out to lunch. My thought was we’d spend a while getting to know her, letting her know the opportunities within our company, and then have a conversation about how badly texting during meetings was perceived and how she should probably knock it off (my boss would never have the spine to do this).
    We get her out to lunch, and there was this weird awkward one-upmanship coming from her on every topic. Somehow I ended up mentioning that collecting wine is one of my hobbies. She says, “Oh, my family and I only drink the BEST of wines, we would NEVER be caught drinking a wine from California… We drink exclusively wine from the Finger Lakes region.” oh, dear, under-aged, sweet thing.
    Then the topic turns to TV, turns out she loves The Bachelorette… except, it would seem, “that season with the black girl- I couldn’t STAND her ugly forehead!” She said this in front of my clearly biracial friend who was kind enough to accompany us to this lunch.
    We wrapped up as quickly as possible and I decided maybe I wasn’t so interested in helping this girl come back next year after all.

    1. Delta Delta*

      The Finger Lakes comment is sort of charming in a naive way. Based on all you said it sounds like she’s got some growing up to do.

      1. Elle*

        I agree. I thought she was just young and could really benefit from some mentoring, even after the Finger Lakes comment. But I drew the line when she launched into her racist rant about ugly women being given time on TV….

  48. AdAgencyChick*

    Our clients often have grad student interns for the summer. Last year it’s not that their intern behaved badly, but the client team came up to visit us, and the agency brass planned a fancy dinner for all of them, complete with party bus to take us to the dinner location.

    …except that everyone on the client team decided to fly home that night instead of spending the night in NYC, except the intern. I’m sure agency management was thrilled that they ended up spending thousands of dollars wining and dining someone who was highly unlikely to influence the business relationship in the future.

    The intern was thrilled. It was her first business trip ever and we treated her like a queen!

  49. Nina*

    Ahahaha, I had a weird summer intern when I worked on the Hill, but it prob wouldn’t translate well in a comment. I used to love reading the DC Summer Intern blog (talked about interns, was not an intern blog), though — so much fun. So much stupidity and undeserved egoism– kids thinking their intern badges should let them skip lines, wearing the badges on weekends doing touristy things, etc.

    2. DCGirl*

      Oh, the badges….. I used to commute through Union Station, which is right behind the Capitol, and would stop at the Au Bon Pain to pick up a bagel and caffeinated beverage morning. One day, Au Bon Pain was having issues with the computer system that powered the cash registers. The cashiers kept opening new registers but none of the m worked as the line moved from check stand and to check stand and got longer and longer, with 20+ in it by the time they got a register to work. No sooner had the cashier started ringing up the first customer than an intern toting the largest, foofiest drink you can get at Au Bon Pain (with extra whipped cream) sailed up to the front of the line, flashed her badge, and demanded to go first because she had an important job to go to. The woman at the head of the line told her that we all had somewhere to be and to go back to the end of the line. As scattered applause broke out, the intern slammed her big fancy drink down on the counter and stormed out of the train station.

  50. Moose*

    There might have been something in the water that summer, because in addition to the intern I talked about above, the other intern also was…interesting. We had a weekly department-wide meeting that we all attended. Every week I’d stop by her desk and we’d walk to the meeting together. One week she started to unplug her laptop, then stopped and said “Actually, I have something complicated up on the screen and I don’t want to mess it up.” I assumed she meant she just didn’t want to bring her laptop to the meeting, so I said “Okay!” and kept walking, assuming she was behind me. Halfway to the meeting I turned around to say something and she…wasn’t there. She didn’t mean she wasn’t bringing her laptop; she meant she wasn’t going to this regularly-scheduled required meeting At All. Part of this was miscommunication, but…why would she think that was a good reason to skip?!

    I might start using that as an excuse to skip meetings I don’t want to go to. “Sorry, I have something up on my screen!”

  51. purpleparrots*

    A friend of mine had a student teacher once who explained to the high school pupils in her class, many of whom were D1 and D2 wrestling recruits, that COLLEGE MARCHING BAND FLAG CORPS was the most physically demanding sport available to all humans. Full stop. She proceeded to detail how she suffered a debilitating shoulder injury from “over twirling,” which I presume prevented her from ascending to the ranks of professional flag-handlers.

    Please take comfort in the fact that a follow-up revealed that this person IS NOT educating our youths.

    1. DCIdudette*

      Uhh…
      Per Dr. Jeff Edwards, the chair of Physical Education and Athletic Training at Indiana State University, your student teacher is right.
      https://bleacherreport.com/articles/195762-drum-corps-international-the-athletes-who-bridge-art-and-sport

      Basically, the DCI (Drum Corp International) folks have the conditioning and oxygen use levels of marathon runners. So yeah, they hurt themselves pretty regularly and seriously. But marching band is for nerds, right?

    2. EmilyAnn*

      The sport is called Colorguard and I did it at a HS Level. Yes, it is very physically demanding. I don’t believe in comparing sports, so I have no idea if it is the hardest in the world, but it’s pretty difficult. We practiced just as much as the football team did 8 hours a week, outside in Houston, TX for football season. In addition to that we did Marching competitions that were very competitive. In the winter we did indoors and practiced even more and competed even more. It was a ton of hard work and physical activity. Mentally, memorizing your marching route while spinning equipment for 15 minutes straight is pretty difficult. Yes, we “twirled” flags, wooden rifles and sabers and a shoulder injuries from overuse could certainly occur.

      1. Navy Jones*

        Yes! My sister did color guard in high school and it was super, super intense. Incidentally my dad, who was a HS/college football player, became the most devoted fan of the sport. He still calls my sister during college halftime shows to ask if she noticed that one person in the back mucking up their throw or what have you. It’s the best.

      2. Business Cat*

        I did Colorguard in high school too and agree that it’s physical demands are often understated. However, I think its more the loudly declaring that it is “THE hardest” to a group completely unrelated to it that got this student teacher in trouble. I don’t think anyone would appreciate hearing why their sport is easy compared to some other, unrelated activity.

      3. Anonym*

        Same, but it’s far, FAR from the hardest sport/art. What?? Try marathon running (or open water swimming, which I do now), or ballet, which is utterly brutal. I know we want guard to be taken more seriously, but long formation marching, heavy arm workouts, black eyes and bruises are just not at the same level of exertion or pain as many other sports. The kindest interpretation is that the student teacher had very, very limited information and a fierce, misdirected urge to defend an activity she loved.

          1. LadyCop*

            Actually. It’s not proof. It’s a third parties recounting of a study that we can’t read. So we have no idea if the study holds any water in terms of academic rigor. I’m not saying that it doesn’t…I’m just saying we don’t know, because we can’t read for ourselves.

    3. TheMouse*

      uhh yeah, former Flag Corps member here as well. I don’t think you can compare sports easily but flag corps isn’t just messing around. I was promoted to our “weapons” line where I spun rifles and sabers (which are just dulled swords with tape in a few spots to protect your hand – definitely sliced myself a couple times when I was first learning). We had two camps over our summer break + daily practice with the marching band + twice weekly outside school practices + an additional evening practice with the full band. So yeah, it was an intense and fairly time intensive and physically demanding sport. I’ve also definitely seen flag corps/colorguard members get seriously injured during a performance and keep going (notably a member of my own team broke their thumb – which is essential to spinning weapons – mid performance and kept going despite it being bent at an angle) so the fact that your friend got injured isn’t surprising to me and not really something to mock either.

      The whole attitude of ‘that’s not a real sport’ is truly frustrating to me – not only because it’s generally aimed at female-dominated activities, but also, who cares? It should be a competition in the first place, and I’m just generally not here for people mocking extracurricular activities because they think they’re “easy”

      1. Anonicat*

        I used to do synchronized swimming, and our coach would invite any journalist who made a snide comment about it to join us for weeks’ training.

        That was years ago, and local jounos still won’t diss synchronized swimming.

      2. Book Badger*

        I used to do ballet (stopped before I graduated to pointe shoes, unfortunately). I also used to get told frequently that ballet isn’t a sport. I’d like to see those people lift their feet over their heads.

    4. Funbud*

      I imagine Color Guard is demanding and a fun activity for “those who like that sort of thing if that is the sort of thing that they like”, to quote Miss Jean Brodie.
      I had a co-worker (Sam) who was very involved in an adult, amateur color guard organization (I mean not related to a school, but I’m vague now on what the organization was). He traveled a lot for the competitions, etc. He seemed to enjoy it; he talked about it a lot. Whatever floats your boat. Once, at a company picnic, a bunch of us were talking with his partner who was 1) not involved with Color Guard and 2) considerably less enthused about the amount of time they spent at competitions, etc. However, being a loyal guy, he was defending Sam’s interest in Color Guard against the charges of it “not being a real sport” and so on. Finally, exasperated, he said “Look, it’s not as stupid as collecting Wedgwood teapots!” One of my snarky coworkers countered “But at least when you’re done with that you’d actually HAVE the teapots!” This lead to a general outburst of laughter, upon which his partner went off in a huff. For years afterwards, my partner and I followed up any reference to a futile activity with the expression “But at least you’d HAVE the teapots!”

    5. sei*

      Your student teacher is annoying, but color guard and drum corps are pretty demanding at the competitive colleges that participate in them. I know someone who tore their rotator cuff.

      Maybe focus your ire on this person and not an activity you don’t know anything about.

    6. LadyCop*

      To all those talking about how demanding color guard is…I want to point out they’re not all remotely that level. My high school wouldn’t be caught dead doing such nonsense…but some of the more rural schools did…

      Marching around in goofy uniforms, poorly playing pep music, with a couple nonathletic teens waving a few banners looked like it was nothing but a money hole for the schools. It would be one thing to actually start a color guard program, but making it mandatory for your band members and a poorly trained dance team is about as big of a joke as it gets…

      It’s kind of like the difference between cheerleading and competitive cheerleading… one is athletic, but not nearly as demanding as many other sports and activities…the other is a highly intense program that trains kids from the age of 4 in order to keep them competitive…

      1. TheMouse*

        Clearly the student teacher, if she seriously injured her shoulder, was part of the more demanding version

        Also “wouldn’t be caught dead doing such nonsense”, really? That’s incredibly disrespectful

      2. Kitrona*

        Your high school may not have, but mine was at a much higher level. I mean, we didn’t get to the state competition every year with “poorly playing pep music, with a couple nonathletic teens waving a few banners”. It takes training, yeah… hours every weekday, band camp, after school, plus the school period designated for band, and a lot of parent involvement. It was most assuredly not a joke.

        Why would you be so insulting to an activity that clearly at least several people enjoy(ed)?

  52. pleaset*

    Here’s my story – not exactly what AAM was asking:

    For two summers I both managed a few interns in my organization, and also WAS an intern at another organization – I was in grad school while working, and got two internships in libraries at the time.

    This was quite interesting – being on both sides of internships at the same time.

  53. memyselfandi*

    We are a government agency and we have lots of interns especially in the summer. I am generally impressed with them overall. My attitude (and I tell them this) is that they cannot do anything wrong. They aren’t expected to understand the workplace, that is what they are there to learn, and that I will give them straightforward feedback if needed. However, I had one this summer who needed WAY more structure than I was able to give. He just didn’t seem to be able to take in what I was saying. We had weekly check-ins and he more than once missed the meeting because he overslept, had to take his parents to the airport (no prior notice), etc. Plus, he would not do anything until just before our meeting. The funniest thing he did was when I asked him to draft a letter to a former government official of whom we were making a request. Unfamiliar with the concept of a business letter on official letterhead (remember, we are a government agency), this intern wrote a personal, handwritten note and dropped it in the mailbox on the way to his meeting with me. Then, he sat before me frantically texting his mother to retrieve it before the mail carrier arrived at the house. To his credit he then researched business letters and provided me with an acceptable draft. Fortunately, most of what he was doing was a low-stakes side project, so there wasn’t much impact. And, I give credit to his mother who taught him abut the importance of a handwritten note, even if his school did not teach him about business letters.

  54. Free Meerkats*

    Not an intern, but a long-term temp. We’ll call him E.

    Many, many things, but here’s the story of the topper.

    We were doing an odor study, as part of that we spent 4 hours a day, three times a week at a particular manhole at the main airport in a major Arizona city. This particular manhole was located between the main runway and the ramp for the Air National Guard where they kept the alert KC-135 tanker parked. If you don’t know, security around the alert tanker (crew and airplane ready for takeoff in under 5 minutes) is tight, with signs saying “USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED.” Whenever we’d be out there, there would be a Jeep with armed Air Patrol sitting under the wing – in the shade. One day, security was especially tight; our truck was searched like never before and the Air Patrol Jeep was replaced by an armored vehicle with an M2 pointed in our general direction and a few more armed vehicles. Seems the President Reagan was due in that day and Air Force One would be parking on their ramp. So I’m chilling in the truck (as much as possible, because the AC never worked well in that truck) and I smell the unmistakable odor of marijuana. I get out and walk to the back of the truck and E had lit up a doobie, not 100 feet from the heavily armed airmen, and next to an open manhole (this is a Bad Thing.) I “counseled” him at the top of my voice, probably used some language that HR wouldn’t approve, and made him toss his stash into the sewer. While I was doing that, more vehicles showed up on the ramp and the activity level ramped up. I was worried we were screwed, but it was because there was a distinctive blue and white 707 that had just landed taxiing behind us.

    1. Elle*

      OMG I would have a heart attack. I don’t really have a worst nightmare, but “ending up in Gitmo because my idiot coworker wanted a joint” ranks pretty high up there.

    2. Submerged Tenths*

      “Odor study” reminded me of an intern I’d forgotten about, many years ago . . . I was the Community News Editor of a small local paper. Set the intern, Kathy, to typing up and clipping photos of weddings together for the weekly page. Days later, went looking for the file (literal manila file with paper and photographs inside) couldn’t find it. Eventually it turned out the file had landed in the trash can. Tracked the trash can to the dumpster, to the garbage truck, to the landfill (Kathy had put the list of what was in the file, in the file, so we had no idea who to contact for replacement info). Kathy and I changed into grubbies and went mining the landfill . . . in July. Yeah, odor study all right!

      But we found the file!

  55. Captain Barn*

    On the other side, I went with my two friends to have a summer internship at this office. The boss wanted some 3D drawings, the boss didn’t know how to make 3D drawings. His solution? Park himself behind my two friends for 8 hours straight telling them how to draw something while they operated the computer, “make the walls a bit taller, bit more, bit more, bit… yeah, that’s good. Now let’s do the windows.”

    Guess what he really wanted when he hired us was a voice activated CAD system.

  56. Sabrina*

    I worked with an intern I’ll call Anya. During her first summer she did the following

    1) Came to our business casual office late, in pajamas. When asked why she was wearing pajamas she explained since she sat in the back no one was going to see her. She got sent home to change.

    2) Actually she got sent home to change a lot her first few weeks. HR had to explain to her that mini skirts and what she called “stripper heels” were not business casual.

    3) Speaking of shoes she went out with me on a field assignment. I told her multiple times we were inspecting a levee, steel toe boots and outside appropriate cloths. There was even a boot stipend and a boot store a short drive from the office. “Got it!” she assured me.

    She showed up in heels and a skirt. “Sorry, I was in a rush”.

    4) She hated drinking water. Normally not an issues, but part of her job was to do field surveys. In the desert. That last all day. Day one she brought a can of lemonade. After being marched to a store and bought a camelback water carrier she showed up the next morning with it full of Pepsi. It was too mold filled within the week to let water flow. She kept trying to use it anyway.

    5) She was once late to field work and gave the excuse “Sorry, I was having morning sex with the boyfriend and it was soooooo good!” She said this to a sweet older male coworker who was still scandalized hours later when he told me.

    6) When she was let go I went through her computer for work files and found a folder of her sexy Halloween photoshot. I was later told this was better then what IT found on a Zip drive she left, her boudoir photoshot. All praise to IT for deleting it and only telling me because I asked them to make sure all sexy Halloween photos were gone.

    We’re Facebook friends now, she’s doing great and a responsible adult. But her learning curve to get there was steep.

    3. Falling Diphthong*

      1. But… we can see you right now!

      Times you think you’re invisible, but you’re not, seems to be a theme this week.

    4. LadyCop*

      Carbonated anything doesn’t work well in a Camelback…

      Reminds me of a guy in my platoon during OCS that would dump the sweet tea from the MREs into his…and then was constantly complaining of how “gross” the bladder and tube were. Uhh…yeah…

  57. Intern21*

    On behalf on sleepy interns everywhere, I’m going to tell tales on myself.

    The summer after my sophomore year of college I was interning at an engineering firm. Was horribly falling asleep at my desk exhausted the first couple days. Went to the doc for a sore throat, turned out I had mono.

    I know that’s not always likely to be the case, but I’m generally a good employee and I was glad they were understanding!

    1. Gandalf the Nude*

      Oh, gosh, I had to end my technical theater internship a month early because I got pneumonia from untreated mono. I barely got the props done ahead of deadline and missed the cue to cue and and hell week while I was getting diagnosed. I felt so bad for leaving them in the lurch, but they brought me back for another show the next year, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

    2. Elle*

      Yeah… one of my internships I was working midnight shift and then going to school full time during the day. Probably not setting myself up for great success there… but I never fell asleep thanks to the unlimited free coffee. I did once get lectured about how I ‘looked tired’ during my meeting at the end of a particularly bad 12 hour shift. I gave him an earful about how he’d look tired too if he was doing my job- probably not the most gracious or professional response. Moral of the story, know your own limitations.

    3. lost academic*

      This is nearly exactly what happened to me, same timeframe, an environmental nonprofit research firm, and it was a major mono relapse! It was a huge opportunity and a fellowship that wouldn’t have been available to undergraduates normally so it was a wasted opportunity on my part (they didn’t seem to really mind that much since it was external funding). It wasn’t as bad as the first bout the summer prior, but I really couldn’t find energy or focus for the next 2 months.

      1. Roja*

        It takes a serious amount of guts to lecture an employee about looking tired after a 12-hour OVERNIGHT shift. Yikes.

  58. never going home*

    Does anyone remember, in a previous thread a while back, someone told a story of an intern (Roger? Robert?) who was so Go Getter, that he ended up sprewing trade secrets or something of that ilk to try to get more customers, so for years afterwards, they had a list of folks who they couldn’t contact because of that intern had done? I’ve been thinking about that story, in the context of “it doesn’t hurt to go above and beyond”. yes, it sometimes does. I’d love if someone remembered where that would so I could refresh on the details.

    1. Gingerblue*

      I think I remember that one! Something about the intern deciding on his own to renegotiate deals with their suppliers? I can’t find it, though.

      1. never going home*

        Thanks! And, hey, I even remembered the first letter of the dude’s name, wow, that’s unexpected. :D

  59. Pennalynn Lott*

    I don’t know if this is weird or just really poor form.

    My co-intern and I were coming to the end of the internship at a company going through a merger and we had no idea if we were going to be offered permanent employment or not. So my co-intern sent me the following meeting request:

    “We should meet to discuss ideas on how we can approach our management team to escalate our need-to-know for potential Staff Positions ASAP. We need to place a sense of urgency on them as you have school requirements to fulfill and I have a family that I have to take care of.”

    He wanted me to strategize with him on what we should say to the DIRECTORS (our boss’s bosses) in the 30-minute meeting he wanted to set up with them. As in, he wanted to get on their calendars to tell them that they needed to hire us. . . urgently.

    NOOOOOOOooooooo…..!!!!!

    I told him this would be like calling a meeting with the Big Bosses because the vending machines aren’t stocked with your favorite snack. Yeesh. Just. . . no.

  60. Former Expat*

    My first summer working in Shanghai I had an intern from Germany. One night, very early in his internship I got a call from him at 11:30. I was in a taxi on my way home for the evening. I assumed it was a butt-dial, but decided to pick up anyway. He sounded desperate and was slurring. He said that he didn’t know where he was and couldn’t get home. I asked him if there was a Chinese person around to give his phone to so I could figure out where he was. He handed the phone off pretty quickly and the person told me where they were. I gave my taxi driver the new directions and hoped that the kid did not move before I could find him.

    I arrived at the cross roads the stranger on the phone told me to go to, only to find my intern and his American buddy in the back of a taxi so drunk they could barely talk. The taxi driver was like “these idiots don’t know where they live. They kept on telling me to drive, but I don’t know where they are going!” (the taxi driver was probably the person I talked to on the phone) Luckily for my intern, he had mentioned earlier that day where he lived (the building was close to our office) so I was able to get him home. I think the other kid just stayed at his apartment for the night.

    The next day my intern showed up looking very sheepish and with a McDonald’s breakfast for me. I forgave him.

  61. dude....*

    Our intern asked if there was a way to extend her internship. She was told no by our manager, unless Team Lead could come up with more work. TL told manager no, who confirmed to intern that she would have the same last day as the other interns. She left early this day because she was too stressed to work, and proceeded to arrive late and leave early that whole week while begging for more hours. She lied on her time sheet about all that missed time.

    Then, the Monday after everyone’s last day she showed up wanting ‘closure’.

    This was a 40 year old woman.

  62. LizzE*

    I have spoken about Toxic Job on here before – I worked there for a year from 2014-2015, and got laid off in the fall of 2015, which ended up being a blessing. That said, I am so excited to shared this redacted version of this crazy email I got from one of our intern’s parents while still at Toxic Job. Background: I worked at a small arts organization with a particularly nasty board president who was impossible to deal with. In the beginning, I had a nice boss who did her best to shield me from the board president, but that boss ended up going on maternity leave for the summer, and left me and another co-worker to have to deal directly with nasty board president. Nasty board president was also the type of person to placate the demands of others, so she out of nowhere dumped some interns on me and my co-worker (“Arya”); they were actually the teenage children of two board members, who was adamant about her daughter doing this internship. This board members/intern’s parent was a unique personality to say the least. To put it nicely, she was a helicopter parent and a loose cannon – a combo that was embarrassing to her poor daughter, “Sansa” who was actually quite level-headed and mature for her age.

    In the middle of her internship, Sansa got mono and had to end her internship with our organization earlier than expected. What should have taken one two paragraphs to alert us, her mother/board member, “Cersi”, who was also a retired doctor, instead wrote this novella:

    [i]Dearest LizzE and Arya,

    I hope ur return from Hawaii was fine and u r recovering from jet lag (and or vacation- that happens to me sometimes, lol!).

    To update u both: Sansa last worked last Tuesday, a week ago from today, and has not called u Arya , because literally the next morning, Wednesday, she came down w acute mononucleosis.

    We caught this incredibly early, so we’re in good shape (hopefully), as good as anyone with acute mono can possibly be. Sansa woke Wednesday morning saying “mom, the front of my neck catches when I turn my head, I think I pulled a muscle.” I was like “oh honey, there is no to minimal muscles in the front, they’r in the back to protect ur neck spine and to hold up ur skull.” She let me exam her (unbelievably given teens’ needs for privacy w the “do not touch me” attitude). I was startled to find massive cannon balls (!) of lymph nodes swelling on her entire right neck exteriorly, as well as interior right sided tonsillar and upper palate swelling, so significant they were rather obstructive, with potential airway compromise.

    I squeezed my way into her pediatrician’s office, saw the nurse practitioner, asked for monospot, strep, CBC w peripheral smear to rule out lymphoma, to which she said “oh, this is strep cuz she was exposed to a friend w strep 3 days ago.” And I gave her one of those “r u demented look” but instead said calmly “when was the last time u saw a strep who is Asymptomatic and not sick?” Meanwhile Sansa gives me the evil eye, whisper yelled at me “mom, stop arguing, she knows more than u!” Can u believe that?!? And I think to myself, ok, my kid must be really sick if she thinks this nurse tech who doesn’t even have a high school diploma knows more than me.

    Anyway, we basically spent the entire day at the pediatrician’s and then at Children’s Hospital getting blood work; and then I had an ENT surgeon friend to take a quick look at Sansa, and surely enough, by then, some 24 hours later, the monospot was positive, and ENT gave her steroids to prevent airways compromise by obstructive massive tonsils and upper palates.

    By 36 hours, Sansa’s symptoms started- came down w the usual sore throat, severe myalgia, arthralgia, etc., all as expected. I took the bold move to convince ENT to put her on Acyclovir which treats Herpes Simplex and chicken pox, not EBV (Epstein Barr Virus) which is the culprit that causes Mononucleosis. But since it does belong in the herpes viral family, I was hoping for some cross-reactivity. There is no data proven-efficacy for Acyclovir against EBV, it’s not approved, only prescribed “off-label.” It was a calculated risk, but I decided to do it to reduce viral load and burden before Sansa starts a fever. Of course, she suffers now from acyclovir’s side effects, but I’m covering those with other medications.

    I am happy to report that after 5 days of treatment, Sansa’s symptoms have NOT expanded as one would expect in Mono. In fact, she has improved clinically. Her sore throat is gone, and her right sided parotid gland swelling has abated- she is happy cuz yesterday night she said, “omg, I can see my jaw again. It does exist!” Thank goodness, cuz who has time to be sick for three months treated with bedrest with countdown to the last month of August?!

    As the risk of sounding superfluous, I’m sure u all know that Mono only infects via saliva and body secretions exchange. It is NOT air-born. In fact, it is NOT a contagious bug at all given its ubiquity. She can NOT infect anyone unless she kisses or shares food loaded with her saliva with people around her.

    Going forward, I believe she should be able to work and do anything withOUT lifting or involve anything that would put pressure on her belly because her spleen is enlarged, at risk for rupture.

    I know u guys r crazy busy preparing for upcoming meetings. Please do let me know what’s up whenever u have a free moment.

    Thnx so much,
    Cersei [/i]

    4. Annie Moose*

      O.O

      Things I don’t need in my life: my mother giving my manager extensive details about the state of my right parotid gland.

    5. Elle*

      Omg. Omg. Omg. I had to pause between each paragraph. Both to laugh extensively, and to prevent from throwing my computer across the room at the combinations of “ur” and complex medical language I’m almost positive she doesn’t have a true grasp of.

      1. Observer*

        She ABSOLUTELY doesn’t understand half the words she used, as she used a number incorrectly. She’s also dangerously ignorant.

        1. GreenDoor*

          Yes, but isn’t she just a woooooonderful mother?? She detected the problem! She got her bratty teen to turn to her for support! She pushed back on that know-it-all nurse! She even demanded a specialist and extra meds! And lo and behold, her daughter survived the ordeal thanks to her diligence. All hail Mother of the Year!!

          1. Ego Chamber*

            You forgot the most important part! She basically invented and proved the efficacy of a new treatment plan that kept her daughter from being sick during the countdown to “the last month of August.” She’s a genius and goddamn hero. /s

        3. Empty Sky*

          The ‘no muscles in the front of the neck’ thing would have been news to my physio, who recently gave me a series of exercises to strengthen them.

          And isn’t there something in the medical code of ethics about not treating family members? I imagine this letter would be exhibit A for that rule (“I took the bold move… it’s not approved… It was a calculated risk, but I decided to do it”)

    8. Moose*

      I am Floored. That poor girl, oh my goodness.

      And claiming the nurse practitioner didn’t have a high school diploma…and wasn’t worth listening to.?@??!?! floored.

    9. Aunt Piddy*

      She thinks a nurse practitioner is the same as a tech who “doesn’t even have a high school diploma”?!?!

    10. Dee*

      I read this while WRITHING WITH GLEE. All of it, but especially: I was like “oh honey, there is no to minimal muscles in the front, they’r in the back to protect ur neck spine and to hold up ur skull.”

      Thank you for this gift.

  64. alice*

    When I was an intern, our team would have Friday scones, where one person would buy scones and pastries for the group. On the last day of our internship, another intern insisted on bringing them (although interns were exempt from buying). He was vegan, so we were all skeptical. Sure enough, he brought in salad. Salad. At 10 in the morning. To a bunch of hungry and burned out software engineers. He got properly scolded by two people on the team. Half of us went back to our desks. Someone asked him if he actually ate salad for breakfast and he said no. So was it a joke? Who knows.

    Another intern and I went and bought croissants afterward for the team. I hope it wasn’t too mean.

    1. irene adler*

      Salad.

      Honestly, makes ya wonder.

      Did he ever consume any of the scones & pastries when they were brought in by others?

        1. Gumption*

          But scones are made with butter? Or margarine or even shortening and none of those are vegan! At least, the ones I make are.

          1. Quackeen*

            I have to think he’s like my ex’s sister, who had kind of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to veganism. If she didn’t see proof that something was made with an animal product, as in the case of a scone bought by someone else, she could pretend to herself that it was vegan.

            I just can’t imagine the disappointment of people expecting pastries and getting breakfast salad (and I love salad! Just not at 10am, usually).

          2. Ella*

            To be fair, if the shortening is Crisco (or most other commercially produced brands) then it is vegan. But almost all scone recipes include butter and eggs at the very least, often milk or cream as well. They’re super non-vegan unless specifically made otherwise.

    2. Falling Diphthong*

      NEVER MESS WITH PEOPLE’S SIMPLE CARBOHYDRATES.

      If AAM has taught me one thing, it is this. We could be in day 3 of the zombie apocalypse, and someone would be hunkered in their cubicle tapping out “It’s Friday, where are the bagels!” in morse code on pipes to the other survivors hidden on the far side of the building.

      Also: spinach with tomato and poached egg and a mustard-vinegar dressing; melon and prosciutto; smoked salmon with greens. All tasty, but I would know not to offer them to people who had been promised a baked good.

    3. Number One*

      As a vegan, I have to wonder if it was a joke nod to the “all you eat is salad” cliche. But poorly executed. I’d have at least brought something carby!

  65. No1CatParent*

    There were these high school interns from a private high school that I’d been put in charge of as a training wheels, let’s see how you do at managing people, type thing. I was in my mid 20’s at the time and the poor young men were TERRIFIED of me. One barely spoke and when he did stuttered terribly, I heard him talk to other people just fine. It took a long time to get them to calm down enough to give them any tasks beyond stuffing envelopes and sorting paperwork. Then I tried to get them on the phone and they said it was absurd to have to answer the phone. They were going to a private high school, they’d surely get jobs that didn’t require knowing how to professionally answer the phone. In retrospect I think they were just nervous. I pointed out that everyone at the office had to answer the phone but not everyone had to stuff envelopes so it was a weird line to draw. One of them ended up answering the phones and I went on to show him Office Suite things you don’t use in school but the one that barely talked ended up stuffing and sorting the whole time. They both gave positive reviews of their internship experience and said they’d come back. I had moved to a management position by the time the next year rolled around so I don’t know if they did or not.

  66. J*

    In a former job we frequently had college-age interns throughout the year. Here are some gems:
    1) The intern who tried on our boss’s motorcycle helmet without asking, and then couldn’t get it off. He ran around the office for a few minutes shaking his head and yelling, “it’s stuck! It’s stuck!” until someone finally gathered their wits and helped him.

    2) The intern who thought it was *great* to say, “that’s the tits!” whenever he thought something was cool/funny/noteworthy. Needless to say, he said it once as I was walking by, and I made a beeline for his desk and pulled him into a side room for a stern talking-to about professional behavior and not being sexist. He was truly shocked and confused about why I would be offended (I’m a woman, by the way, but it’s offensive regardless of gender), but he never said it again (in our office, anyway).

    3) The intern who came into work hungover, threw up in his desk trash can, then pretended that it wasn’t him and he didn’t know who had thrown up in his trash can all day while the rest of us had to deal with the lovely smell.

    4) The intern who was invited to sit in (quietly) on a meeting with a client, and then proceeded to interrupt and correct the boss multiple times throughout the meeting. Awkward does not begin to describe it.

    5) The intern who would patch calls through to my boss, and when he very clearly asked her to transfer them to his voicemail, she would say, “ok no problem!” and then put the call through to him? Like, every.single.time. Even after it was brought to her attention. Otherwise, she was a great intern, so it was pretty strange.

    6) The intern who proudly displayed a Confederate Flag sticker on his phone case and was strongly off-put by (genuinely polite, but informative) discussion from his fellow interns and our colleagues about why people might find that offensive. He also referred to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression.” We were not even in the South.

    We also had some stellar interns, and several who were offered full-time jobs. As a former intern myself (who made some mistakes for sure), I did have a great deal of sympathy for young people in the workplace and tried to be understanding, as they were just learning workplace norms. But these ones…oh boy.

    3. EddieSherbert*

      The hungover one I could forgive… if he didn’t let vomit sit out in the office all day. But I think “don’t come to work hungover” is a common learning curve, unfortunately! Haha.

      1. J*

        Same here! I’ve come to work hungover several times. The issue was that he threw up and then denied it instead of dealing with it for the sake of everyone else. It was his trash can that always sat under his desk. Clearly the lovely cleaning lady or someone didn’t throw up in his trash can over night and then leave it? Like, dude, we all know it was you. It was hilarious…and gross.

  67. Anon and on and on*

    I was going to post this on tomorrow’s open thread:

    I work at police headquarters in a mid-sized American city. At the beginning of the summer we had new interns start and they were issued their ID badges. As the norm is most workplaces but especially in a law enforcement facility, they were told they need to wear their IDs at all times while inside the building. Several of them immediately began to grumble and try to push back on having to wear them. I was flabbergasted!

    Do you really want to be stopped by a police sergeant or higher every time you walk down the hallway because they don’t recognize you and think you are out of bounds? And these were just your standard ID badge, not large or heavy or anything weird, and they came with a plain black lanyard.

    I hate to say “kid’s today” but really, this is what you want to complain about? It wasn’t easy to get this internship and you’re gonna make waves on your first day by pushing back on a requirement that you will find in a lot if not most professional environments?

    1. Gumption*

      That’s an ingrained habit from childhood that a parent or a teacher didn’t help to curb. I see a lot of this during Scout meetings. No matter what you suggest, some kids are contrary, just to be contrary. I suspect it’s a control issue or a bargaining habit to get attention or something else but it’s annoying AF.

      I hope that a lot of what I see will disappear with maturity. This is not giving me hope!

      Sometimes you just need to be told, NO, you can’t bargain this, you have to accept it and that’s life. You just don’t always get what you want.

  68. pleaset*

    I had a princess as an intern one summer. An actual princess of a relatively small county – her father was the king. She wasn’t the crown princess – she had several older siblings.

    On her first day I asked her what I should call her and she said “Just my first name, X is fine.”

    As an intern she was totally normal and good – joined to learn.

    1. Rat in the Sugar*

      Damn, if I worked with an actual princess I would be almost disappointed if she didn’t want us to actually call her Princess Intern all the time.

      1. pleaset*

        It could seriously be “Your Royal Highness” for princesses from some countries in formal situations. I’d looked it up in advance of meeting her.

      2. KayEss*

        I’d be constantly suppressing the urge to make Disney-based jokes, like asking if she could enlist some friendly forest creatures to do the office filing or have her fairy godmother do a quick Starbucks run.

  69. S*

    I work in an earthwork construction setting and train many interns. So many stories.
    We had an intern who indicated “he didn’t go to school to use a shovel” so he would supervise my work from the side of the test pit excavation and take notes. Don’t study civil engineering if you don’t want to use a shovel buddy. Didn’t go well.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      My brother got that from an intern once. We don’t know where that kid is now but we’re reasonably certain he does not have a Master’s in anthropology [archaeology].

      1. Merula*

        I know someone with an MA in archaeology* who never had to dig as part of his coursework, though he has dug on a volunteer basis during and after grad school. So it’s entirely possible, but you won’t then be employable in the field, so what’s the point?

        *Masters was in the UK, which doesn’t have the weird anthropology/archaeology thing. BA in the US was anthropology.

        1. The Other Katie*

          Plenty of working archaeologists don’t do much digging after their training period – they work in the labs, museums, and classrooms where the other three-quarters of the work of archaeology happens.

      2. Human Form of the 100 Emoji*

        Man, the amount of people who go into archaeology programs but never want to put in any physical labor is heinous… I knew a kid in undergrad who was looking for a field school but “didn’t want anywhere that wasn’t air-conditioned”. Have I got news for you buddy!

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          There’s a great Rhymes with Orange cartoon in which the dog is trying to convey to its master “You can do it! Hang the expense! Throw the windows open and air condition the outdoors!”

  70. Public Health Nerd*

    You wouldn’t think that you’d have to tell a 3rd year med student that a tank top and ripped jean shorts is not appropriate garb for interacting with patients in a pediatric emergency room, but you’d be wrong. Thankfully a mom reported it to her attending and they got it all sorted. Otherwise she was great, just super new to clinical norms.

  71. EmilyAnn*

    Did not show up on his first day. When I called him to find out his whereabouts, he behaved as if I was bothering him. Coached him on workplace norms. This was a 6-week internship. He called in regularly. On week 4 he called in two days in a row and was told if he called in for a third day he’d need a doctor’s note. Called in on the third day and on the fourth came in with the doctor’s note. I checked its validity and discovered it was fabricated. He was fired from his unpaid internship, with 2 weeks left to go. This was a Congressman’s Office.

    1. Tired*

      I was a Congressional intern for six months and I think I called in sick all of two days. When I was legitimately sick. Behavior like this baffles me, especially for Congress where it’s clear you need to show up on time and do your work.

  72. Dust Bunny*

    This was a graduate-program intern who was well into her twenties.

    1) There were general tardiness issues. Her paying job was with her parents’ business and I think she had gotten used to setting her own hours, which was not how we worked (she was required to put in a certain number of hours with us for her graduate program within X number of weeks, and was going to have a hard time fitting them in around her classes and job if she didn’t show up on time).

    2) No filter. Caught me drinking milk in the break room and told me I shouldn’t do that because most adults are lactose intolerant. Thanks for the concern, I guess, but I’m not. Recommended a certain business/service to another employee and added that their support staff were in the US and didn’t even have accents or anything. And when I related a story about something quirky one of my siblings had done when we were preadolescents, she responded with, “I bet all the other people in line were wondering what was up with that retarded kid!”

    3) Her parents contacted my boss to beg for a job for her because she had such a hard time finding one.

    People in other departments were begging us not to hire her.

    1. AnonGD*

      I’ve had interns in the past that assumed it was cool to adjust their hours on the fly because they were unpaid (I vehemently disagree with the unpaid bit, FWIW). I once had an intern show up 1.5 hours late to a 3-hour shift and declared “well I will just stay later so I’ll still have my three hours!” um, no, you won’t.

    2. RainbowBrite*

      The first part of #2 is weirdly similar to a thing a woman I used to work with did to another woman. She saw this woman making a sandwich with cheese on it and was completely shocked she was eating cheese. My coworker is Filipino and this other woman was absolutely convinced all Asian people are lactose intolerant and she shouldn’t have be eating cheese.

      1. Jaid_Diah*

        Tell that to Mikey Chen of Strictly Dumpling fame. That man puts away pizzas like he has been starved all his life.
        BTW, do not Google Asian Dairy. Especially at work. Sweet Jebus!

      2. Just Employed Here*

        But… Even if she were lactose intolerant, lots of cheeses are naturally lactose free. The lactose gets used up as the cheese matures.

  73. Grey*

    the intern who was blown away by an electric stapler

    I have to admit, I was expecting a very different story from the one I read.

    3. arjumand*

      Yeah. ):
      Ok, I immediately went to google electric stapler, then decided that I don’t really need it.

      But when I heard ‘blown away’ I thought it would be . . . not a metaphor.

  74. Elle*

    Oh I can’t believe this wasn’t the first story I thought of! I guess I’ve blocked Toxic Job from my memory, and its been years…

    There were 3 female interns in an entirely male company (here’s your first sign). Intern 1 was sleeping with the department manager, who was like 40 and her boss’ boss. She couldn’t understand why he wanted to keep it under wraps and spent all day every day in text arguments with him about it / complaining to me about it. Then Intern 2 got invited to a house party where the department manager and all the other sleezy frat dude managers were hanging out. Intern 2 ended up sleeping with department manager at said house party, so obviously everyone knew. Then Intern 1 and Intern 2 got in a hair pulling fight at work over it. It was such an HR nightmare that everyone just pretended it never happened, and Intern 2 got transferred to a new department the next summer. Intern 1 carried on with her ‘relationship’ with Department Manager.

    My first summer at this job, I reported a group of guys for sexually harassing an intern. They would literally corner her in the warehouse and say “I just wanted to get a good look at you, pretty thang,” etc. The resolution from the guys after being yelled at by HR was to flat out refuse to speak to her to ‘avoid inaccurate allegations of sexual harassment’. This poor young woman had to spend an entire summer trying to do her job when NO ONE would speak to her! When she walked up to her, they would literally turn and walk away. All because she was too afraid to report it (apparently rightly so) and I tried to do the right thing and speak up on her behalf. I learned my lesson about interfering when people don’t want your help the hard way….

  75. CheeryO*

    Here are some of mine, way too fresh in my memory even after seven years…

    (1) I marched into one of the principal engineer’s (my on-paper supervisor) office on Day 2 and asked him to give me work. He looked at me weird, thought for a minute, then gave me a quick project. I finished it in a couple hours and asked for more, and he said, “I don’t have time for this, go ask someone else.” I really thought he was going to mentor me and give me projects throughout the summer, so this threw me for a LOOP. I went and sat at my desk in a state of blind panic until someone took pity on me and gave me a little project. I didn’t know how to do it, so I just… didn’t. At the end of the internship, he asked if I ever did the project, and I said no. No explanation or apology, just “no.”

    (2) I didn’t want to wear the same five thrift store blouses every week, so I creatively re-purposed some of my casual clothing into “professional” outfits. Nothing too inappropriate, but I’m positive that I looked like a total ragamuffin all summer.

    (3) I didn’t ask how to handle time off after my grandfather died. I saw in the employee handbook that you were allowed to charge X number of days to bereavement for an immediate family member, so I charged to bereavement for the day of the wake and the day of the funeral, and I got chewed out by HR (like, ALL CAPS EMAIL chewed out) for using benefits that I was not entitled to as an intern.

    (4) I definitely did not understand that I was basically auditioning for a full-time position. I asked to have my last day be in early August so I could go on two vacations and have “some down-time” before the semester started back up. Supervisor was like, “Sure, I guess.” The other interns stayed until right before they went back to school.

    (5) I didn’t know how to do anything, and I didn’t even know what questions to ask to get started. They really stressed that the company was a “sink or swim” kind of place, and that they were treating us like any other entry-level employee, so I was terrified to tell people that I needed more help. Best example, I was asked to put together a draft plan-view drawing of a stormwater management pond, and I drew some random sqiuggly lines on a piece of computer paper and gave it to my coworker. She looked at me like I had eight heads and said “…in CAD. This was supposed to be done in AutoCAD.” I also screwed up an entire field work day’s worth of data because I wasn’t using the GPS device correctly. We didn’t figure it out until the two field staff (who had flown in from the opposite coast) had already left. Oops. Thanks for taking me out in the field, guys.

    (6) I left X minutes before 5:00 for every X minutes early I was. I almost always packed up and left between 4:50 and 4:55, because I figured that I had put in my eight hours and was allowed to leave.

    (7) I took my stapler home at the end of the internship. It was really nice, and I thought it was mine to keep for some reason. My mom made me return it.

    Guess who didn’t get hired at that company? I learned a lot, though, and it helped pave the way for a different internship the next summer where I did much better, which in turn helped me get my first job out of college.

    1. Annie Moose*

      I’m kinda confused at #1. Why was your supervisor surprised when you asked for work to do? Who was supposed to be assigning you work?

    2. Yamikuronue*

      Everything except #2 and maybe #7 sounds like the company failed you as an intern :( You can’t just leave interns to figure things out on their own, that’s the whole point of interning, to have someone hold your hand a bit more and teach you the ropes

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Weirdly, there never seems to be any connection between the companies who leave the interns with no direction, and the interns who try to launch a coup against the CEO.

    3. Lady Jay*

      Most of these seem like the fault of your company, though. I’m all for interns knowing some professional basics (e.g. don’t wear PJs to work), but not being sure how to handle bereavement or use the AutoCAD seems like something the company should teach you.

    4. J*

      Ugh, #1 reminds me of a supervisor at one of my summer internships. I had a question about something one day, and my direct supervisor advised me to ask this woman. I went to her office, and her door was open and she was sitting at her desk. I knocked on the door, and she turned and looked at me, which I took as an invitation to ask my question. I started to say, “Hi *insert name*, do you have a quick second for me to ask you–” and she cut me off and literally screamed, “I don’t have time for your questions! Figure it out!!” while slamming her fists down on her keyboard. I just stammered out an apology and ran away. At the time, I was hurt, but looking back now I realize that it was just bizarre. Later on that summer, she invited me to a BBQ at her house that she was throwing for the interns, and the way she invited me indicated that she felt bad for screaming at me and wanted to show that she wasn’t hateful. I didn’t go.

  76. Equestrian Attorney*

    At my first firm, we had an articling student who seemed unwilling to ever do any work. It’s a mystery to me how he ever made it through law school. One time I asked him for a memo about a specific legal issue, and he copy-pasted a section of the law and was like “voilà!”. So I responded in the kindest way possible that this was a good start, but could he provide guidance on how this provision was interpreted by the courts and how it related to the facts of the case? He responded “Sorry, no, I would have to do more research for that”. And I was like um, yes, that is precisely what you were hired for? He also left at 6pm on the dot while most of us (including much more senior folks) were slaving away until midnight. He wasn’t fired, because we never fired articling students, but he was also not hired back.
    At my current company, we had a wonderful example of the intern who eats all the food. I work at a tech company that provides multiple catered meals, and he would hover in the kitchen until the meals arrived, fill his plate up to the brim, then return for seconds and thirds. We had to order extra portions so everyone would get some food during his time here. He also watched a lot of Netflix (to be fair, I think he didn’t have much to do – he wasn’t in my department).
    Most of our interns are lovely, though.

    1. John Rohan*

      Not sure what an “articling” student is, but if it’s an unpaid intern, I don’t blame him for leaving at 6pm instead of slaving away until midnight.

  77. Silence Will Fall*

    I supervised an summer internship program at a non-profit for several years. Out-of-area interns usually lived in the dorms at the local college. One summer, the college made some mid-July changes to their schedule and notified our one out-of-area intern (and current student at that college) that he had to be out two weeks earlier than planned. (His presence apparently ruined their entire cleaning schedule.)

    Being a practical kid, he didn’t tell anyone. Instead, he leveraged his friendships with other campus workers to live in the theater storage. He set up a cozy bedroom in the midst of old set pieces and would swing by the field house to shower.

    The only reason I even found out is that someone discovered his little nook and a friend gave him a head’s up not to come back. One of our board members put him up his last few days and no one was ever the wiser.

  78. Donnatella Moss*

    I worked for the Central Office of a large metropolitan hospital system. Every summer we got college interns from this health care organization that placed health majors in hospitals. One summer we got this young woman who seemed bright, but who literally did not put her phone down the whole summer. Not just looking at it and scrolling, but like actively doing things on it. She brought it to every meeting, 1:1 or otherwise. We spoke to her early on and told her she had to put the phone away, she had to pay attention and be engaged, and if she was going to take notes that she had to use pen and paper. And that even if she saw the boss doing it, she couldn’t take out her phone. Well. It was fine for a few days. Maybe even a week. Then she started sneaking phone activity: she had it in her bag and she would pretend to rummage around for like a pen or something and she would be on the phone. She would excuse herself for long bathroom visits, but just went back to her cube and did phone things. She also would keep her phone (it was a skinny phone) tucked between papers and she would hold her papers close to her book style (so not flat on the table) and pretend to be reading and writing notes, but then would just be snapchatting or whatever they do. Called her out many more times, behavior didn’t change. And then my boss (a toxic one) didn’t do anything when I raised it with him, he just made her his personal intern for the rest of the summer and she had her phone out the rest of the time.

  79. Carrotstick*

    He was the son of a major client – the client begged us to take him for a month as an intern even though the son was not even majoring in a relevant subject.

    He arrived at the interview in pink jeans, a linen shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, and messy hair in a man bun. He spent the entire interview yawning hugely, open mouth, as he had clearly just woken up. It was afternoon. He expressed surprise that to do the very technical job most of the company is there to do, that one needs to have studied and become licensed in that technology. He had no questions for me, other than “when can I start?”

    He then explained that he could not work every day, maybe only three days a week. I found, as a favor to the client, a couple staff members who would show him some cool projects and let him see client sites, and apologized to them for the inconvenience.

    The intern’s first day: He is late. When he arrives, he does not have his documentation in order to be able to work in the US. He “forgot” to get his visa updated. I send him home to sort it out. Ten days pass before he has things sorted.

    The intern’s second first day: He leans way back in his desk chair, and falls asleep. Another staff member sends me a photo of this, causing the intern to have a disciplinary meeting on his first day.

    Second day: He was supposed to go to a client site, but never showed up. I spent some of the day verifying that the intern is OK and not dead or injured somewhere. He was fine; he had just decided to go home.

    Third day: I get a complaint from staff that the intern seems to be stoned. Before I can speak to him, the intern has left the office in the middle of the work day. He is later seen wandering the streets in front of the office, but does not return that day.

    Fourth day: The intern asks if he can end his internship early. We agree readily.

      1. Lissa*

        I’m pretty sure I know this person, or a close cousin, sadly. I think his name was Satchel. (in my defense I live in British Columbia, seriously this description or parts of it could fit multiple people I know.)

  80. gmg22*

    I’m kind of amazed that I haven’t seen any “intern steals people’s lunches out of the fridge” stories yet (or maybe I read over them?). A friend’s Intern From Hell did that on the daily until he was caught and reprimanded — his reply was basically, “Wait, people put their OWN food in there?” (I guess he thought everything was just put in there for him to choose from or something, like a Silicon Valley free-lunch buffet but with DIY containers?) The same guy also was supposed to be working 9-5 but was doing more like 10-4 and when that was mentioned, he said well, he’s just not much of a morning person. (Or an afternoon person, apparently.) And oh yeah, he once raised his hand in an all-hands staff meeting to request a new laptop. Good times!

    1. Dust Bunny*

      Ours stole bottled water. The first time, OK, maybe she didn’t know, but she was told multiple times by multiple people that bottled water was for clients and she needed to bring her own (and we have a filtered water cooler in the office). We knew she was still doing it but it took awhile to catch her in the act again.

  81. tacocat*

    Scene: My cubicle, first time I ever met intern. She strolls over, walks into my cubicle, turns around sticks her butt very close to me and asks if she has blood on her pants because she thinks she got her period.

    Hi, nice to meet you too?

      1. tacocat*

        Something to the effect of “um, sorry but yeah…”
        I’m not squeamish but that weirded me out like crazy. I mean… she was going to have to go to the bathroom to figure things out anyway. I’m not sure why she made a pit stop to ask someone she never met about it first!
        Also, she was borrowing a coworkers desk and apparently only made a very halfhearted attempt to clean up her chair… coworker was very unhappy upon her return to work after vacation..

        1. EddieSherbert*

          … at least she wasn’t embarrassed…..? I guess. I would have been traumatized if I got my period and bled through my pants into someone’s chair at my internship.

          Scratch that, I’d still be traumatized if that happened today, at my current job, on my own chair (at least my chair is black?!).

        2. JTour*

          First part of story: Dropped my pen. This part of the story: Just sitting, not moving, hand over my mouth in shock.

  82. Seriously, whyyyyyyy?*

    Okay. So. I was working as an intern. Basically, it was one of those internships where they want to get labor for cheap under the guise of it being a learning experience, but there was very little teaching to be had. There was a revolving door of interns and they were always hiring. And the “standards” were low. Oh, so very low.

    One day, a guy came out to “interview” (to see if they fit in and were interested in the job, but also basically a half day of free work). So this dude comes, we’re all working and chatting with him and he says he’s carving an engagement ring, do we want to see it, and we all say sure. He takes a block of wood, maybe an inch and a half, (maybe two inches?) square with a hole in the middle. Okay, we had been expecting something more finished, but hey, it’s a nice thought, right? One person (in a kindly fashion) says it looks like he’s got some more work to do on it, when is he planning on proposing?

    Ahhh… well. He’s not actually dating her. “Yet”. She has a boyfriend, but some day she’ll see that intern dude is the right guy for her, and he’ll have the ring ready.

    He was hired.

    1. Seriously, whyyyyyyy?*

      OOohhh, forgot this gem from his time with us:

      He said he was 1/6 black. But we couldn’t tell that you see, because it only showed up on his, errr, twig and berries.

    2. EddieSherbert*

      Runnnnnn girl run. Far away from weird guy who’s carving you a ring for when you break up with your boyfriend and fall in love with him.

  83. tacocat*

    Scene: my cubicle. First time meeting the intern.
    She enters cublicle, turns around, motions to her butt, and asks if she has blood on her pants because she “thinks she got her period.” And indeed, she did. So my first words to her were “sorry but yeah?”
    Hm. Hi. Nice to meet you too?

  84. LadyByTheLake*

    At a major law firm we had a summer associate(Fergus) who:
    – Asked me why I wasn’t married, and allowed as until I got married it was okay for me to work, but informed me that my real role is as a wife and mother and he wouldn’t be comfortable working with married women
    – Refused to do any research and writing (which is the JOB) because he saw himself as “an ideas man”
    – Told a waiter at a restaurant who had made a mild political joke that the waiter needed to learn his place and not joke with his betters because we were all from Name of Law Firm (damage control had to be instituted for that one)
    – At the end of the summer when he wasn’t given an offer, accused the firm of discrimination because he was (insert ethnic minority). He was not that ethnicity.

  85. Anansi*

    At my first job, I inherited an intern. He started with the company during his senior year of college, and when I started he was halfway through his third year (both of interning and as a 6th year senior). It was supposed to be a temporary internship and he just never graduated, and I guess no one bothered to do anything about it? When I arrived, it was clear he was very perturbed I was giving him assignments and expecting him to do work, and he started constantly calling out sick and making excuses to not show up, but wouldn’t just quit.

    Anyway, as you might guess, he wasn’t the most motivated of individuals. He also had no sense of professional norms, nor could he follow directions. Every day, he would wear a ratty pair of jeans and a college sweatshirt, no matter how many times we explained the dress code. One time he came to me panicked, because the printer wasn’t working! We need to fix it right away! I went to help, and fixed a paper jam only to have reams of stuff he’d been printing from CollegeHumor come spewing out.

    One day, I asked him to make templates so we could more quickly send letters (We wrote a lot of letters to state legislatures. This project basically entailed looking up the public address of the state capitals and putting them on letterhead). I sent him a letter I’d written to Pennsylvania and asked him to do it for a few other states.
    “Ok, but I only have Pennsylvania. I don’t have a template for New York.”
    “Yeah…I’d like you to make a template for New York.”
    “Well, I can’t get on the central drive.”
    “That’s ok. I sent you the document you need.”
    “But this is for Pennsylvania. I need the New York template.”
    “…There IS no New York template. That’s what I need you to make.”
    “But how am I supposed to make a template if I can’t get on the central drive?”
    “By taking the document I already sent you, looking up the New York address, and editing the document to reflect that?”
    “But that still doesn’t solve the problem that I can’t get on the central drive!”

    A few weeks later, I was FINALLY able to get rid of the guy. The last straw was that he was calling in sick so often that he couldn’t keep his excuses straight. One night he emailed me to say he wasn’t going to come in the next day because he was sick. The next morning he apparently forgot he’d already made an excuse, and called in to say he was on vacation with his parents. I told him that was fine, and he didn’t need to bother to come back.

    1. AnonGD*

      Hahah to the templates. I just had an intern start this week and I showed him the templates he’d need for a project and gave him the text he needed to replace, showed him where to save his work. It was as simple as changing the text from “Teapots available now!” to “Mugs available now!” and also changing the photo out to match.

      I opened up his work later to review it and he’d changed the text to something completely different, like “Check out the AAM Podcast” level of different. I have NO idea where he got that text from. Can’t wait to have that discussion at his next shift.

  86. Asaki*

    I interned for a senator in D.C. in the late 2000s. One of my fellow interns was nice but came off very spacey. One day she’s chatting in the front office with some of the other interns and a Capitol Hill officer comes in and we’re all chatting about our home state as he’s planning to take a job there at the end of the year. Intern is telling about her weekend where she apparently went swimming and burned her stomach. She then proceeds to lift up her top to show the officer her bikini tan line- so lifting up the bottom of her bra to show the difference between her stomach and where her bikini was. I think all of us were shocked, especially the officer. Intern didn’t seem to realize how unprofessional this was and just heads back to her desk.

  87. I Had the WORST Student Teacher*

    Totally anon for this…

    A number of years ago, I agreed to have a student teacher. I teach a engineering curriculum to high school students where they can earn college credit. It’s a niche market for this type of job; most require industry experience, and thus I don’t often get asked to have a student teacher. Anyway, a local college had a student teacher that was “highly interested” in my field and after a conversation with her where she claimed she had three engineering classes in college and others in high school, I agreed to take her.

    The problems started almost immediately…the first day she showed up late. I told her it was easy to misjudge traffic around the school and that if she wanted to be on time, she probably needed to show up about 15 minutes before first bell. She didn’t like that, because it was “too early.”

    Her tardiness was a huge problem, as was her need to leave early, just about every day. “I have a sorority meeting” and “I need to go meet my sisters” and “I have a doctor’s appointment.” I told her that sorority meetings and social hours are not an acceptable reason to leave a school early, and doctor’s appointments can be accommodated, but if she were a teacher, she would have to use a half-day of sick leave for them. She said that wasn’t fair; I explained that was education.

    I had her go with me to a Special Ed meeting (IEP) as part of her training. She took out her phone and started Snapchating during it. I had to take her outside and explain that was inappropriate on so many levels including confidentially.

    On her birthday, her sorority sent her balloons. We don’t allow balloons (except mylar) due to student latex allergies. They were refused by reception and she threw a fit and yelled at the receptionist.

    Another day, she had her boyfriend bring her lunch. Rather than have him sign in at reception, she propped a door open for him to enter. Security found him before he found her. She was angry that the security guard “harassed” her boyfriend.

    I communicated the complete unprofessional-ism of this candidate to her professor. He told me he was challenged with her and her parents (!?!?) and that she was “an entitled young lady.”

    The day she was essentially “fired” was the first day she was supposed to take over the class. I was in a meeting in another part of the building when an AP came to get me. My student teacher decided t deviate from the lesson plan and had my students taking “Snaps” of each other and “Auctioning” each other off via SnapChat. It was going to everyone within the area. And when I say auctioning, I mean “James has a really firm ass! $5? $10?” Was the gist of the text overlays on the images. She even had a few of the boys do one of her.

    I took control of my class, my principal told her she wasn’t welcome here anymore and called her professor. She actually said to me, my principal, and the AP who found the SnapChat mess “I don’t see what the problem is, really. We do it my sorority all the time!”

    The finale…her father sent me a nasty letter (lawyer letter, since he’s a lawyer) telling me that I needed to sign off on her hours and give her nothing but a stellar recommendation or there would be “repercussions.”

    Yeah, I don’t think so, pal. But nice fake legal threat!

    2. John Rohan*

      The latex balloon ban seems a little silly. Is that really a thing? It’s not like every student would be forced to rub against them. Also, for an allergic reaction to occur, it would have to be natural latex, and I don’t think it’s ever used for balloons.

      1. ArtK*

        It is used for balloons and lots of other stuff. You don’t need to be that close to it, either. Please don’t make assumptions about allergies that you don’t suffer from.

      2. PSB*

        It’s not like every student would be forced to rub against them? That’s a very common method of demonstrating static electricity, so it’s entirely possible they would be.

      3. Zanzibar*

        A lot of professional spaces won’t allow for any balloons either. If they get loose they can set off the fire alarms

      4. Anon Teacher*

        Many schools have the no balloons policy. It’s not the balloon itself, it’s if the balloon pops the latex particles can travel great distances. I witnessed a child have a scary reaction to this one. I totally get it.

      6. Observer*

        Others have pointed out that you are in no position to judge the matter.

        More importantly, it does NOT matter in the least bit. This is a rule in the school. What makes her think she can just ignore it? Worse, that it’s ok to yell and the receptionist who was simply doing her job?!? The rule could be the epitome of stupidity, it’s still beyond unacceptable.

    3. tacocat*

      If ever there were a “where are they now” request for the characters of AAM, this would be at the top of my wishlist. Hooooooooly.

      1. I Had the WORST Student Teacher*

        I can only pray that this individual is not anywhere near children or teenagers. To my knowledge, she did not complete the education program at her college, but she may have transferred somewhere and repeated her practicum.

    4. Mia*

      This is so absurd that I’m wondering if she was doing some sort of elaborate performance art. Also, wouldn’t the auctioning (particularly the “firm ass” comment) be a harassment or abuse issue?

      1. Lissa*

        I think she meant the students were saying that about each other, not that she was saying it about the students – and then a few of the guys did one of her, which is certainly just as bad but I think the implication was it was another student Snapchatting James’ well-developed posterior. But um yeah. Wow. Bad idea. So bad.

        1. I Had the WORST Student Teacher*

          Yes, that’s what I meant. The students were “snapping” each other with comments “advertising” the physical features of each other. So, James would snap Sarah and overlay text that referred to Sarah’s body, like, say, “Sarah’s got the best legs!” Not surprising, a quite a few ventured into the NSFW category. (The text piece, not the photo).

          Still it was cringe-worthy…with the added bit of her asking the boys to do some of her.

    5. Delta Delta*

      Lawyer here. I’d be tempted to forward that letter to the father’s state’s attorney professional responsibility board.

  88. AH*

    Our lab had a summer student who, at first, just seemed highly sensitive. Then she started complaining to our supervisor that we were bullying her. We tried to be kind but nothing we said or did was right. She’s tell you about a personal problem with a boy, you’d remark “that must be tough”, she’d storm out of the room highly insulted. She started accusing us of sabotaging the lab equipment and we began considering this was a mental health problem, but our supervisor just kept telling us to try harder to work with her. Finally she told our supervisor that we had poisoned her water bottle and we realized she was have a breakdown. Our supervisor called her family and her father came and took her home and hopefully got her the medical care she needed. I never heard what happened to her but I hope she recovered.

    1. Observer*

      One of the rare cases where getting a parent involved is clearly appropriate.

      But, what was your supervisor thinking? They should have realized that there was a serious problem a lot sooner.

  89. Persimmons*

    I had an intern who was very into a certain “look” – a derby girl/retro 40s style. She absolutely could not deal with the fact that company dress code required full-length pants and closed-toe shoes. People who go into the field also need steel tips. (The company takes safety VERY seriously. People have been escorted out on the spot for fooling around.)

    She was told about the dress code ahead of time, agreed to it in writing, and still showed up every single day in an a-line or princess dress with wads of tulle underneath. She then proceeded to put on a ratty pair of Dockers underneath the dresses every day. She complained that the large plastic safety goggles didn’t fit over her cat-eye glasses. She painted her steel tips to look like wingtips. Every company safety measure was apparently designed to cramp her style.

    Women employees were very, very frustrated and angry with her. Women in STEM have a hard enough time. Acting like doing the job properly and safely was less important than cultivating her fashion sense was infuriating to many of us.

    At the end of the summer, she asked around for business cards and LinkedIn connections. All she heard was fashionable crickets.

    1. Antilles*

      I’m assuming she wasn’t in a role that actually required safety, because all of that sounds super dangerous. Speaking as a safety manager myself, I would have flipped if someone (especially an intern) was refusing to follow safety protocols…because OSHA and our insurance company wouldn’t care one bit about the fact it was a summer intern and not a permanent employee; it’d hit our safety metrics just the same.
      You’re an intern, so you generally get a little more flexibility and leeway on not knowing the rules…but on safety, you still get the exact same Very Serious Warning that a regular employee would get.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      Armchair fashion historian here: WTF if you can’t merge 1940s retro with long pants and sensible shoes . . . the 1940s were when women could finally wear pants and oxfords in public!

      I mean, I know that wasn’t really her point, but geez. Cute glasses don’t do you much good if you splash something caustic in your eyes.

      1. mcr-red*

        I was going to say, I have tons of photos of my grandma from that time period as a woman in her early 20s, wearing long pants and sensible shoes!

        Also during the war, a lot of women were working at factories, so they certainly wouldn’t be wearing cute dresses to work there!

        1. ArtK*

          A family friend wrote a book about her experience working in a bomber factory. The title? “Slacks and Calluses.”

      2. GreenDoor*

        How can you be into 40’s/Retro and not be familiar with Rosie the Riveter. In her hair-holding-back headscarf and denim over-alls?? The symbol of women entering the fields of male dominated workplaces??? Mind blowing!

    3. Elle*

      Fashionable crickets. I love it.
      As someone who has to follow safety rules and someone who enjoys retro fashion… just no. I don’t want all my cute outfits being ruined by work! Plus, I’m not at work to make a statement about anything but my professional capabilities. I like the feeling of being superwoman when I leave work, take off my boring work clothes, and transform into my ‘fashion’ outfits.

      1. Cathie from Canada*

        A friend of mine was a safety officer at one of the potash mines near here. He was very upset one day because he had had to fire someone who simply would not wear a safety helmet — my friend found in just impossible to understand why the worker was so stubborn about “sneaking” off the helmet, almost like he was daring my friend to “catch” him. He was warned repeatedly that this was a firing offense, but finally my friend concluded it was some kind of mental tick or pathology, where “getting” or “tricking” the safety officer was more important than just going along with the rules of the job.

  90. Just for this post*

    My first year of law school, I was one of four 1L interns selected for a paid position with the local DA’s office. At the time, my office was handling the prosecution of a mass shooting from the year before. As first years, we worked directly for the attorneys that handled the pre-trial motions for the case. My first day I made a rookie mistake, and volunteered without knowing what it was for – I got assigned to that case. After two months of writing the most mind numbing and mentally/ethically taxing motions in support of capital punishment, the attorneys were going to court to argue the motions. As the appointed keeper of the boxes and boxes of reference material, I was given a seat directly behind the prosecution side, so that I could reach over the railings and hand them materials. Of course, the other interns came to see the arguments, and by right of the courthouse credential, got in early enough to squeeze into my row.

    During any matters related to this case, because of the media swarm, the attorneys, the defendant, and me and my boxes were allowed to use the back entrance to the courtroom (where the judge came in). However, the other three interns had to walk the media carpet outside the courtroom to leave. By virtue of where they had been sitting in the courtroom and the courthouse credentials, they were quickly identified by someone in the media as part of our office, and a number of reporters tried to get them to speak with them.

    Now, there was this one guy the other three of us hated. He was a bit older, and had been a bit higher ranking than us in the military (all four of us were former military). He could go on for hours if the attorneys weren’t around about how classy he was, how he was more sophisticated, how much the attorneys loved him. He wore three piece suits every day, (other than oral argument/ courthouse days, our attorneys normally wore jeans and a button down), and constantly talked about how he wanted to be a prosecutor to make the world safe for the women of the world who were constantly being brutalized by guys who weren’t like him. When the attorneys were around, he constantly waited on them hand and foot, and would try to reassign cases to himself on days we werent in. My direct boss on this case hated him and would only speak to him in middle english whenever he came in and tried to take a case (this case) from me. We eventually discovered that mentioning what we had done on deployment would shut him up immediately, and applied this, and noise cancelling headphones, to him as often as possible.

    I was in the back, stuggling with my precious boxes, so I never saw it, but apparently, he decided that by dint of membership in the interns club, he was authorized to speak to the media. ON CAMERA, he started pontificating about what jail and society had in store for scum of the earth like the defendant. He also started going on and on about the benfits of capital punishment. Not wanting their faces on camera, and totally panicked, the other two interns, knowing that our first year attorney “supervisor” was in the next courtroom, burst in there, whisper/hissed that Windbag was on camera, and she left the court room to get him.

    The PR group for the office managed to get the station to not run it by pointing out that they would just say they interviewed an intern who wasnt even assigned to the case, but they did manage to get the tape of her walking into the frame and physically dragging him away by his windsor knot, from the station.

    1. Observer*

      It sounds like the other two handled the situation as well as is possible.

      Whatever happened to Mr. Bigshot?

      1. Just for this post*

        I actually don’t know… They kept him for the rest of the summer, but he was fired during the 2/3L summer. I worked there all three years, but I was gone on military leave when it happened. I don’t know if he actually DID anything to get fired, my impression from the attorneys who were there was a “he’s not getting it and he’s not going to” moment for senior attorneys during a case rundown meeting.

        I do know that he took three tries to pass the bar. (ouch)

      1. Just for this post*

        He also played the bagpipes at lunch. He was an awesome boss if he liked you, and vastly entertaining if he didn’t.

    4. Lissa*

      Just out of curiosity – why were all four interns former military in law school? Is it a common trajectory? Or was it a random coincidence?

      Also that story…yiiiikes. “Dragging him away by his windsor knot” is an amazing image.

      1. Just for this post*

        It was more that all four law students they hired happened to be former military. Specifically, they liked hiring first years who had prior work experience and would have some idea of how to conduct themselves in the office; the 1L program required a lot more independent operation than the 2&3L years, ironically. They were less discerning with their second year hires, and I think most of them in my second year were K-JDs.

  91. h'okay*

    I once had a student worker file a complaint that we were not giving her a lunch hour and laborers working more than six hours are entitled to a lunch break.* It escalated before anyone thought to ask about her work schedule. She was only working 6 hours a week.

    *this isn’t exactly true for our state but I’ll give it to her

  92. Michelle*

    I had an intern who thought it would be funny to send my computer a message saying I had a virus and to call a certain phone extension (I didn’t recognize the number as his at first). Unbeknownst to him, he screwed up and the message went to the WHOLE plant, 1000+ people. His mailbox was full of panicked messages and he almost got fired.

    3. Merlin*

      ahahaaa I’d completely forgotten, I did the same thing too as a trainee! I can’t believe I didn’t get fired

  93. In The Woods*

    One of our interns this year mentioned during a happy hour get together one evening that the reason I was one of the first people he tried talking to was because he was looking to get to know someone around his age and thought I was the youngest in our department. Most everyone else in our building is mid 30s and up and have kids but we do have 1 young guy who was an intern with us last year and is now full time in a different department and another woman in her mid 20s who is in our department. I’m one of the youngest in our office, but I’m by no means really that close in age to him.

    I got a huge kick out of watching him guess my age over and over and getting it wrong. He couldn’t believe that I’m 29. I told him not to feel bad as he’s not the only one to think I’m way younger than I am.

    1. EddieSherbert*

      I’m the same age and had someone ask if I was old enough to SERVE ALCOHOL the other day (volunteer event).
      I said yes.
      The woman didn’t take the hint and proceeded to remind me you have to be 18 to serve alcohol.
      Still yes.
      O-o *sigh*

    2. Lisa*

      Looking young is a permanent thing, I’ve learned. I’m young-looking, and also I had my kids when I was 22 and 25 When I reentered the full-time workforce around 27, I could have passed for 21. Whenever my age or the age of my kids came up I was met with “No WAY! You can’t be old enough!” Now I’m 46 with kids approaching 21 and 24 and I could pass for late 30’s – same exact line. “No WAY! You can’t be old enough!” My whole life. Business and personal settings. From people older, younger and around the same age. You’d think by now people would have figured out that you can’t read people’s age from their looks, but nope.

      The “Guess My Age” game can be fun though.

      1. Kitrona*

        I turned 40 over the summer. I still have people thinking I’m in my early to mid 20s. (Which is fun as a nontraditional student, because most of the profs don’t know that, yeah, I have some life experience.)

      2. This one here*

        I’ll be 55 next month. Had my kid before I turned 21, so they’re 34 now; when they were a teenager, we’d get taken for siblings a lot.

        Even when I’m feeling stout and middle-aged, I’ll still get a “no way!” when it comes to my age.

    3. Amber Barnett*

      I had something similar happen myself in a new job I was training with this week. My fellow trainees, our trainer and I were talking during a break, and our ages came up. Told them I was 38, and both my trainer and one of the trainees burst out with “No way! You have to be lying!” Had to show my ID to prove it, because they swore I had to be in my 20s.

  94. May*

    Had an intern who would tell his manager he was bored. Then say he had nothing to do. We would ask if he finished x work and he would say “oh yeah I forgot about that.”

  95. AnonGD*

    I’m a designer and had a nearly full-time intern this summer. She was actually totally amazing but we had an amusing issue all summer that resolved itself in a funny way.

    All summer long she would occasionally have a problem where she couldn’t locate one of our partner logos in our “Partner Logos” folder on the shared server. She’d come over to my computer, I’d say “You’re looking in Company A’s folder?” “Yep!” I’d go over to hers, sure enough, she was in Company A’s folder and half of the files in that folder would be missing for some reason. I’d just email her the missing logo and we’d go about our day. It happened maybe 5-6 times, enough that it became kind of a running joke. I assumed there must have been a permissions issue because we sometimes run into that with intern accounts.

    On the 7th or so time I finally said I would get IT involved. I wrote up the email and copied my intern, including the complete file path to some of the folders where she couldn’t see the files I could. Not even two minutes later my intern comes running from her desk and declares “OH MY GOD! We’re not looking in the same folder!”

    Turns out that someone in our department made a copy of the Partner Logos folder at some point and my intern had been referencing the copy the entire summer, which had been copied over a year ago and therefore was not EXACTLY the same as the active folder. I don’t even blame my intern for that, both folders really did have the same name! Just another cautionary tale about keeping shared server space organized, haha.

  96. Lauren*

    My intern fell asleep every day at her desk. She’d nod off in meetings with clients / company EVPs (on her 1st day too!). She’d come unprepared to meetings without a notebook or her laptop. Late to meetings. Not paying attention / staring off into the distance. The unprepared part wasn’t told to me until 3 weeks into her 8 week internship. I sat her down to have a 1-1, and said – you need to be awake and alert. I asked if there was something medical that she’d like to disclose. She said that she was always drinking coffee and had been to the doctor months ago, but clearly needed to go again.

    I told her that this was serious and being noticed by higher ups. I let her go home early that day, and told her to come back Monday refreshed and ready to work. I also stated this cannot happen again, or we would be ending her internship early. Ultimately, she stayed awake, but would slouch at her desk constantly. She was caught watching Netflix on her second screen, but I think that was part of how she stayed awake – so I let that slide as well as the posture at her desk. Her work was thoughtful and well done . In the end, it was a conscious choice to keep her as she her internship was temporary and she completed entry-level work that would otherwise fall onto higher level staff. I do wish that people had come to me as her supervisor and told me the issues that were happening when they happened. Unfortunately, our office is known for ignoring staff issues so they may have assumed senior leadership wouldn’t bother. I made sure that my other direct report knew that it was a conscious decision to keep the intern as the work would have fallen to him. I was more concerned about him knowing that she didn’t get away with anything and that it was addressed.

    1. Bigintodogs*

      I hope she got it figured out. I have two sleep disorders and it can (obviously) be incredibly difficult to stay awake, despite one’s best efforts. It’s also really embarrassing when you do nod off because you realllly don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.

  97. Alex*

    We had an intern who supposedly wanted to transition into politics (we’re a local government office). However, this is all information we found out from his course advisor because he almost never spoke to the female staff, and would only answer with one word answers. His (public) social media profiles mentioned his belief in government conspiracies and how no one should trust the government. One of his online handles alluded to teabagging, another one had his location listed as “in the p***y.” He also wandered into my office one morning, shirt open, bare chested bc he’d gotten damp on the way in, and then when I left him in my office so I could grab him a dry shirt, followed my path with his shirt still open. I asked the male course advisor to speak to our intern about the sexually explicit social media issues because as a woman who was younger than him I didn’t want him to feel even more uncomfortable around me knowing I had seen it. Nothing changed, and when he left our office all the social media stuff was still up.

  98. MarigoldP*

    An intern at my company a few summers ago was one of the strangest humans I’ve ever interacted with. At first we just thought he was shy or quiet–he would never engage in normal small talk or speak at all in meetings. But sometimes he would walk up to you and just show you a video of himself playing the guitar (and singing!) or you would be showing him how to format the spreadsheet he was supposed to make and he would be completely silent for 20 minutes before interjecting that he made ice cream from scratch last weekend.

    So he was weird, but one incident from the middle of summer was unforgettable. It was on the news! One week he talked about how he bought a $1200 kayak on ebay and was going to drive to New Jersey (from Ohio) to pick it up. He had never kayaked before. Then he missed work on Monday, which we all wrote off as “interns can be unreliable.” But then he was absent again on Tuesday and he finally reached out to our boss, via email. Saying he was in the hospital with hypothermia! He had taken his kayak on Lake Erie and decided to row to Canada and back, but there was a terrible storm and his kayak capsized a few miles from shore. He was stranded clinging to the kayak for almost 24 hours! A fishing boat came upon him and rescued him!! He got hypothermia and was very badly sunburned. Which is not funny and we were all glad that he was okay. But his attitude was actually the craziest part of all this. He seemed entirely unfazed and only mentioned that he was upset that he was unable to recover his kayak. Although I guess he didn’t mind talking about the incident because he did an interview with the news.

    About a month later he was fired for being bad at his job.

  99. Morgan*

    I was the horrible intern once, but it was also a horrible company. I went into it thinking it was a marketing internship (as they presented themselves as a marketing company…). It was totally a door to door sales scam where they brought people in for cattle call interviews and then they were whisked away for full day “shadowing interviews” (aka get into Kyle’s car and go door to door with him and then buy your own lunch at Subway) where they tried to trick them into accepting horrible jobs for no money (I think most lost money by spending it all on gas). The company had tons of cult like “culture” practices with weird chanting and even weirder attempts at motivational speaking every morning.

    I didn’t even know that when I interviewed, they even told me that I would be helping with growing their company (nothing about the truth behind the jobs). The job was going to be more HR, which was okay with me because I was studying business psych and didn’t totally know what I wanted yet, but I liked the idea of using psych in a non-clinical atmosphere. Anyways, it ended up being cold calling non-interested candidates. It was horrible…I would talk to people who were so excited about the opportunity and I knew that we were just lying to them. I couldn’t stomach it. I started by faking calls, then tried being completely honest about the job (when someone heard me it was a problem…). Finally, I couldn’t ethically take it and I ended up quitting, but used my PT job as an excuse. It wasn’t one of my better moments, but I was young and conflict averse…

  100. Former Producer*

    Worked at a post production company in New York, and we had to make revisions to something last minute and send the tapes directly to the advertising agency we were working with. It was for a big client meeting for them, so it was quite important (and urgent) and we didn’t want to wait for a messenger service.

    So we decided to send the intern. We wrote down the address (he had a smartphone) and the phone number of the contact person, and to be very sure, we also printed out the Google Maps route and highlighted the exact route he should take. (As you can see, we’d already started being suspicious of his capabilities.) It should have taken him about 20 minutes to walk there.

    15 minutes later my boss got a call from him, confused. “No one’s meeting me,” he said. “I’m in the lobby but no one’s here.”

    After some uproar and cross-calling, we figured out that he was in the lobby of our building. He had listened to his delivery instructions, pulled up the destination on his phone just in case, and taken the printed map… and then just sat in the lobby and waited.

      1. Former Producer*

        He was BAFFLED when he realized he was supposed to go somewhere. When we asked what he thought the map was for, he had no answer.

      1. Former Producer*

        He was waiting for the EXECUTIVE PRODUCER of the project, from [famous advertising agency redacted], to walk to our building and pick the tapes up from him in the lobby. Because once you’ve walked 20 minutes, you don’t want to bother getting into an elevator and going up to get the tapes from the office, I guess? And he had no guesses on what the address and map were supposed to be for.

      1. Former Producer*

        The best is that he still tried to use us for a recommendation. Even after we declined to continue his internship after a month due to his inability to keep up.

  101. Beth*

    My team had an intern who desperately wanted to make a good impression. Unfortunately, he did this in large part by finding problems that didn’t exist. My co-workers and I tried our best to be patient, and whenever he found a new “problem,” we’d carefully work through what was happening and why it wasn’t an issue. This was all well and good… until we realized that whenever me or my manager (both women) had explained the situation to him, he’d immediately go and ask our male co-worker for confirmation that we were right. Needless to say, he did not get to stay the entire summer.

  102. Seifer*

    We had a total of seven interns this year but two in my department and they both drove me crazy. I was not in charge of either of them, but the problem was that no one was officially in charge of them. One fed my boss a sob story about having to take public transit from the city to the suburbs, but then got to work 10 minutes before our start time only to spend an hour and ten minutes in the bathroom brushing her hair. At the end of the day she would leave half an hour early to catch the bus. She randomly took a month off in the middle of the internship and told the guy that was responsible for assigning her work that she was going to be taking a month off twenty minutes before she was to leave for it. She never sought out new work or asked if there was anything else she could help with. The kicker was when we found out this was her third internship, so she definitely should’ve known what she was doing by now. Both my coworker and I raised concerns with our boss and he spoke to her, but nothing changed. Before the month off was up, she called in and said she got a full time offer somewhere else. She ended up accepting it and both my coworker and I read our boss the riot act about how despite her impressive resume, we were absolutely not impressed. He had ended up encouraging her to take the other offer anyway, because there was no way we were going to be able to sponsor her for a work visa.

    The second intern was underage and had an attitude of ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ shrouded in social awkwardness. He brought his personal laptop in and was working on his senior project for the first few weeks. We work in an industry with tons of confidential information and that was a huge security risk. After my boss spoke to him about it, he just started no-calling, no-showing to work on the project instead. When we told him he was required to let someone in the department know if he was going to be out, and pointed him to the directory where everyone’s direct lines were, he instead called in to reception who didn’t always tell us until way later in the day that he was out. He asked us a lot about what it was like to drink and go out to bars, and once insisted that he could open a bottle of beer with a piece of paper and dared one of us to bring him one sot that he could do so. I had to shut that down because he was getting adamant and one of my other coworkers was about to bring it to him. He also did not seek out work and did poorly on the stuff that my coworker assigned him. My coworker once found out three days after assigning him a drawing edit that he did not have the program necessary to open the drawings. Instead he messed around on the internet for three days. If we were talking about something, he would often interject to complain that he couldn’t relate to what we were talking about. We played along once to ask him what he wanted to talk about and the answer was memes. After that, we just kind of avoided talking to him about anything not work related.

    We are done. With interns.

      1. Environmental Compliance*

        My MIL does that. Daily. It seems to involve a lot of absent-minded staring at nothing and/or the TV and a lot of hair fluffing.

  103. LSP*

    How about the intern at old job who slept with the chief of staff?

    She was married, in her thirties with a kid.

    He was 19.

    I walked in on them once. I am still traumatized.

  104. Auntie Social*

    We had a temp “fix” our criminal defense attorney’s filing system because it “wasn’t alphabetical”. When she redid it, ALL the files were under ‘P’ (People vs. Danny Druggie, People vs. Hannah Hooker, etc). She was furious when I made her put everything back under the defendants’ names . . . and when the attorney called the agency and said if you think I’m paying for this, think again.

    2. H.C.*

      Ok, that was a serious LOL moment – but also cringing on behalf of whoever first encountered all those ‘P’ files

    3. SadieMae*

      I have a friend who used to manage a tiny small-town library, only one room, maybe 30×20. One day my friend left a summer intern there for the day while she went to a conference. When she returned, the intern had consolidated all the books so that none of the shelves had any empty space except for several, now completely empty, shelves at the very end of the catalog. The intern was very excited: “See, I got rid of all those empty spaces! Now you have room for a whole other section of books if you want!”

      My friend had to explain that you *need* empty space on library shelves to allow for books being checked out and returned. The intern spent the next day putting all the books back…

    4. Turtlewings*

      If *everything* was People vs. Whatever, then… wouldn’t it actually work out to be exactly the same? They’d all have to be alphabetized by defendant’s name within the P category. The actual order of the files would be the same, just all in a folder labeled “P.”

      1. H.C.*

        The commenter didn’t say the old filing system was entirely alphabetical though, it could’ve also been sorted by date, open vs closed cases, lead attorney on the case, etc.

  105. Suki*

    I worked for a smallish office where the boss was always complaining about how we didn’t have enough money and would regularly lay people off (we called annual Christmas layoffs “Craig’s Christmas Clearance Sales”). Anyway, we only ever had one intern. It was Craig’s son. He showed up the first Monday, announced he was taking the rest of the week off to play golf and I never saw him again. He got paid for the whole summer, though.

  106. Serin*

    I vaguely feel like I’ve told this story here before — apologies if I’m repeating myself.

    In college, I participated in a journalism internship program that sent interns to work for various newspapers for 3 months. At the paper I went to, the permanent staffers told me that

    – one intern had to be bailed out of jail by the publisher because he’d been arrested for peeping into the women’s locker room at the YWCA.
    – another one wrote a very explicit letter to her boyfriend on the office computer (this was in the days before email) and accidentally printed it to a printer that she couldn’t get to without a key.
    – another one, sent to cover a kids’ ballet recital, wrote a blistering review of it — then went back to the apartment they provided for interns, took a bath, apparently shaved pretty much every hair off her body, and left without draining the tub.

    (Staffers also assumed that all the female interns would end up sleeping with this guy named Brendan who lived in the apartment two doors down from the intern apartment; I think he considered himself part of the newspaper-provided utilities, like the free parking.)

  107. arcya*

    Oh we had a good one this summer! Details have been changed to protect the privacy of the intern, not that she really seems to care about that.

    Ok so HR occasionally sends out emails when our products turn up on social media (our product is expensive and has an extremely specific use so this is rare). I checked out one such post on Instagram and saw a comment underneath saying “I work for [company], and it’s so great to see our product having an impact!” I clicked the profile of the commenter, wondering who it was, and immediately saw a page full of naked pictures of one of our (college-aged, don’t freak out) interns.

    Her supervisor had to have a *really uncomfortable* conversation about how if your page is full of nudes don’t post comments using our company name, please. Also, rethink your privacy settings.

  108. pleaset*

    Just remembering we had two people who met in an internship with our organization get married a number of years later.

  109. Mona Lisa Saperstein*

    I work in entertainment advertising, and a couple years ago, at my old agency, we got an RFP for an extremely confidential project in development, which was set in an existing universe that had an established fandom. We asked one of our interns to do some research on social platforms/Reddit/etc to see what characters/plotlines/etc. fans were excited about.

    Despite having signed an NDA and having had the confidentiality of the project reiterated numerous times, this intern decided to take it upon himself to post about it in a fandom subreddit, asking “Would you watch [entire copy-and-pasted HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL SUMMARY]?” without running this by anyone. He casually mentioned it in front of our creative director and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much fury and naked panic on a face, before or since. Thankfully we were able to delete the post before it got more than a handful of upvotes, and it never leaked, but it could have completely destroyed our credibility and caused us to be sued/our MPAA compliance to be revoked, not to mention spoiled a highly anticipated movie.

    1. motherofdragons*

      I thought based on your username, you were going to share tales of taking naps at work or asking your boss for money to wax your B ;)

  110. motherofdragons*

    Not quite an intern, but I was a student assistant at a state government agency during grad school. In my first year or so, I was the assistant to the division director’s assistant, who was my supervisor. One of my jobs was to enter the retired annuitants’ (RAs) timesheets into our system by a certain date so their paychecks would be mailed to them in time. If I missed the deadline, their checks would be delayed by several days (thinking back, what an unreliable system!! but anyway). It hadn’t occurred to me to use Outlook tasks or calendar reminders, so I wound up missing the deadline twice. The second time, the kindly old RA who worked in my section, Fergus, asked about his timesheet. I was so embarrassed and nervous that I ended up laughing and making a flippant joke like “Welp Fergus, guess your paycheck is just gonna be late this time!” His smile faltered but he didn’t say anything. My supervisor overheard this and marched me straight into a conference room to ream me out for A) making the mistake in the first place, and B) being so cavalier about a person’s pay. I was MORTIFIED. She walked me through some steps to ensure I wouldn’t miss the deadline again, and then helped me set up a 1-1 meeting with Fergus where I fully acknowledged my mistakes, apologized for my error and my demeanor, and explained how I’d be preventing the mistakes in the future. He was very kind about it, and I never missed those deadlines again.

  111. all the candycorn*

    I had a group of summer jobs corps jobs-for-teens kids forced upon me one summer at work. When I say forced, I say it because I did not have any work for them to do and summer was our busy season, so I did not have time to make up BS work for them either. So we assigned them whatever cleaning chores we had lying around, and one day I asked two young men to sweep.

    I come back 20 minutes later to check the area they swept, and there was still big bits of dirt on the floor, so I ask them to sweep more thoroughly and come back to check on them. They were sweeping, but it’s still not clean. I start asking questions.

    It transpires that *none of them know how to sweep a floor.* They thought that sweeping meant “move the broom around over the floor haphazardly,” and I had to explain to them, in detail, how to properly sweep a floor, by repeatedly sweeping a section, including under chairs, in a set pattern until all of the dirt was in a pile that you could put in a dustpan.

    Argh.

  112. Temperance*

    My least favorite intern always looked greasy and smelled weird, and had this disgusting habit of keeping empty water cups on his desk. He had 15 by the time our cleaner decided to chuck them, and then he was pissed because he was “going to recycle them”. ‘k

  113. Sarah*

    Perhaps the strangest was one whose grasp of directions given was…just bizarre (she was, for the record, a native English speaker pursuing an advanced degree with no disclosed disabilities). She didn’t know how to mail a letter, and put the stamp on the wrong side of the envelope. I asked her to make a binder of materials, copying materials out of a sample binder and relabelling the tabs. She gave me a binder with the divider tabs in the back, and all of the materials in one stack at the top.

    I asked her how she thought she could improve the work she’d done, or what had not been clear, and she just shrugged. Strange, strange young woman.

    1. Lisa*

      I have caught my own adult children (early 20’s) getting confused about how to configure a postal envelope properly. I guess I assumed somewhere that they would learn that in school, because in the ’80s I learned that in school. But that is now one more life skill – like writing a check – that is becoming so rare that the youngsters just don’t even know how to do it anymore.

      1. Amber*

        A lot of people seem to criticize the private and religious educational venues, but the one I went to was really great for this. One entire three-week section of my high school math course was all on basic life skills math. It had us writing checks, balancing a checkbook, and even calculating interest on major purchases for a home. Fantastic little class, I really wish more schools would do that.

    2. Nonenglishspeaker*

      I am 25, educated and doing well in my job, and if asked to mail a letter I would double check (probably using google and not asking someone because I can guess the response) what side to put the stamp on. Last letter I sent was 7 years ago (Birthday card to a friend that was away didn’t have phone reception).
      Maybe in the US it’s more common but over here no one sends letters…

      1. Ego Chamber*

        It’s not more common in the US. The only thing I ever send by mail is the rent check, which is also the only check I ever write. If I ever get landlords that are on board with doing things electronically, that’s 2 more skills I will lose to disuse over time. ;P

  114. Durham Rose*

    Ugh mine is so cringy. I was one of several student workers in a university office. I was working with my male student co-worker to develop a database for conferences registration information for our annual conference. We did joke around/flirt a little I guess, and when he was setting up the database, he made the password (I assume as a joke) “DURHAMROSEIS HOT” which he then SHARED with the executive director when we were showing him the final product. The ED had to actually type it in….he was a devout Mormon and was extremely embarrassed, as was I. He told us to change the password immediately. I know it wasn’t me who did it but i should have stopped it before it got to the ED. I am turning red just thinking about it and this was 15 years ago…

  115. Emily*

    I had a summer intern who was in love with herself. Her desktop background was a photo of herself (not a group photo – just her) and she had a calendar where every month was a different picture of her (or sometimes her and a friend). She was very sweet, but not very productive. On her last day, she suggested that we create an intern wall, where we hang up photos of prior interns.

  116. nora*

    I’m a social worker. My agency serves survivors of a specific type of trauma. I’m supervising an intern right now who is a bit of a challenge. She’s been with us for three weeks and so far:

    -she showed up on the first day in scrubs (her other job is medical)
    -on her second day, at a semi-public event, she made a comment that made it clear she doesn’t really believe in our mission (which is fine, I didn’t really buy into any of my internships either, but not appropriate for that setting)
    -twice, she arbitrarily rearranged her schedule to meet her needs and not the agency’s, without checking in with me
    -once, she gave me 5 minutes’ warning that she wasn’t coming at all, without an acceptable excuse
    -she rambles and dominates conversations without really saying anything and consequently even the briefest conversation takes three times as long as it should

    I feel for her; she’s getting her degree from a private religious university and I’m positive she’s not being taught any kind of critical thinking skills. I encourage her to think, REALLY REALLY THINK, about what she’s going to say before she says it, but it’s rough. Thankfully my supervisor has done this before and is extremely helpful.

  117. Annie*

    I was a postdoc at an Ivy League university. I had a high school student assist me in my lab work one summer. He did a great job, I was so proud of him. He came early, stayed late, did everything I asked him to, and his project even yielded some interesting results. While my postdoc and grad student friends were complaining about their unhelpful interns, I felt like I won the jackpot. When he came back to school in the fall, he was supposed to write up what he had done over the summer and submit it to his class, and also a high school science fair. I had given him one of my unpublished manuscripts to read over, just so he understood the background of one of the projects in the lab. The manuscript was submitted for publication but rejected, so I was working on fixing it before resubmitting it. This was a manuscript I had written before he even joined the lab. I offered to help look over his report summary to his science teacher and he never wrote back to me.

    A few months later, my PI/boss was contacted by his teacher – she was very confused about the presentation he gave to the class on his work, and wanted clarification from my boss. It turned out, he had submitted my unpublished as his “summer internship work” and also entered it into a prestigious science fair! He submitted the work completely as his own, took off the front page with my name and my boss’s name, just put his and put it as his own. I don’t know what happened next, but I know that his high school teacher wanted to fail him for the semester but his parents threw a fuss. The work had to be taken away from the national science fair, as it was, obviously not his. (By the way, he was a previous winner/finalist in this science fair competition, so I highly wonder what he actually did!) Needless to say, he did not get a recommendation from my boss for university applications.

    1. SadieMae*

      Ugh, why do parents throw fits over this sort of thing? I have two kids, and if I found out one of them had done something this outrageous I would want him to face the consequences of his actions. The worst thing you can possibly do for your kid’s future is give him an “out” from something like this. Let him take his lumps and face some much-deserved public embarrassment, and maybe next time he faces such a choice (possibly as an adult, with much higher stakes) he’ll think twice.

  118. Kimberly*

    We had a woman who was in an alternative certification program for teaching. Every other teacher that I worked with from that program was terrific. As part of the program, she had a Teacher’s Aide position at our school, but she was given more official duties so it could also double as coursework.

    There was a medically fragile student, who had no cognitive disability. He had been sexually abused by a member of a hospital staff member. His mother didn’t believe in science-based mental health/emotional therapy only religious based. The religious-based therapist maintained this CHILD was responsible for tempting his abuser. The kid started acting out towards other students. Teachers were filing medical neglect reports against the Mom for not getting the boy help. He probably should have been in a SPED placement for his mental health issues but he didn’t need them for actual classwork. He did have problems with motor skills and got PT , OT, and had accommodations.

    The teacher’s aide wrote a post about how she was going in to work the next day even though she had a horrible cold. Maybe the (Racial slur) (R word slur) would catch it and die. Colds/flu/lung ailments were particularly dangerous because he had difficulty coughing due to problems with his muscles and would have to be admitted and have his lungs suctioned.

    Sent an e-mail with a screenshot to the principal. From what I understand everyone on staff that had her as a friend had reported it. I got pulled out of class and told to hack the firewall to find out if the post was still live and get a screenshot with time and date. (This was pre-iPhone or at least pre App) And the tech-phobic principal had told HR he was going to do that so IT showed up to find out how I was doing that. I went back got my personal laptop, stuck my ATT 3G USB hot spot and pulled up Facebook got the screenshot and e-mailed it. The principal (who was a small earth creationist and anti-tech) kept saying see how easy it is for someone to get around the firewall we shouldn’t have internet.

    Teacher Aide was fired

    IT had a talk with me about using the USB hotspot to get around the firewall. I’m severely dyslexic and dysgraphic they had refused to allow me to set up my workstation to accommodate me. I was using my laptop to do most of my work because being able to read the screen without my head exploding with pain was a good thing. Some procedures got changed by the next fall.

      1. Jaid_Diah*

        I think schools don’t allow use of social media sites, so they get blocked. Kimberly didn’t get around a firewall, she just used her own internet provider instead of using the school’s internet.

        Kimberly, your IT people sound pretty dumb. I hope they didn’t take away your use of the laptop.

  119. Nelly*

    A minor one, but our last intern liked to drink the cold water from bottles in the fridge and/or give them to guests. Except that he’d take employees water bottles from the fridge and give out those. I had to explain to him that not only was this stealing, but that the lipstick around the neck of the bottle showed that he was drinking my backwash.

    He visibly flinched when he realised that he was drinking our spit – all that lipstick never clued him in.

  120. A Fine Spring Day*

    I had an intern once who probably had no future in our industry, but might have had one as a vexatious litigant.we had to walk between sites, and she was one of those people who will saunter out into oncoming traffic on the theory that, “ they have to stop for me, I’m going a pedestrian.” Uh, not if they have the green light they don’t! Also regularly said, “ if they hit your, you can sue them.” To which my response was, but isn’t it better not to get hit in the first place? At the end of the internship she had to give a presentation to her fellow interns group, at which she declared she had learned nothing from her internship. She’s been reaching out and we’ve been avoiding her ever since.

  121. Shoes on My Cat*

    I worked at a very small and exclusive high end dude ranch for a few years. The owner was semi retired but had made his living in construction/engineering. One year, the day our state’s Governor was coming out, the septic tank had issues. Boss was out there helping to fix it, in up to his knees in waterproof waders two hours before arrival. Got it done, showered and greeted Governer & entourage with aplomb. Needless to say, future staff heard to whine “but it’s not my job” about anything didn’t last!

  122. Julia*

    I did a pretty long part-time internship at a Japanese overseas school, including some substitute teaching when necessary. I had been there a while when we got another undergrad intern who commuted for over two hours from the next city, saying she had worked at a store to save up the money for the train fare, so we all thought she had to be super enthusiastic to be there. Nope.
    First of all, she spoke hardly any Japanese, so she couldn’t really help at the office much and the only classes she could sit in were the English ones, which she proceeded to disturb by showing the students drawings she had made during class, and behaving like a middle schooler herself. The crowning moment for me was when during an event, everyone was busy preparing, dragging around furniture, supervising children etc., and she had the nerve to chat up the official from the Japanese embassy for a job – in English, because she didn’t actually speak any Japanese. That’s like asking for a job as a llama groomer when you’ve never held a comb.

    Then we got a middle school intern who behaved the way you’d expect him to, which would have been okay if it hadn’t been for the fact that he acted like he knew more than I did, but every time someone said something in Japanese (so all day long), he’s turn to me and say, “huh?” I had to explain to him that a) I wasn’t his personal interpreter and b) I didn’t respond to “huh”. He didn’t get it. At least this one was an actual kid, though…

  123. Casey*

    So I work in a really international environment in Europe. There are almost as many nationalities as people on my team, so we get a lot interesting cultural moments. We also bring in a dozen interns every semester there are always new joiners with new cultures and expectations.

    Last summer on day 1 of new interns, I just about died of laughter when one of the interns was wearing a black t-shirt with a big green whale on it. And, under the whale was written “endowed”. I gracefully cornered this intern, and asked him about the shirt. It became clear that he did NOT understand the joke, and just thought it was a whale t-shirt. He was a stellar intern and got a full time offer – and we never saw the shirt again, but to this day he’s the “whale endowed kid” to a few of us.

  124. redbug34*

    I share an office right now with our intern, here for a year working on a long-term project for another department, but space is tight and she only needs a desk & a computer.

    The office is in a corner without great HVAC systems, so for the past month, when it’s been 90+ Fahrenheit outside it’s been a “cool” 80 in our office. On these days she turns on a space heater under her desk and pushes the temp up to 85 IN THE OFFICE. It took me awhile to realize it was even happening, and I contacted a baffled facilities multiple times about the heat.

    Our hours are so different that oftentimes I’m not even in the space when she is, so it’s hard to address, but the residual space heater heat really lingers. I eventually got a desk fan & started leaving the door open to the cooler hallway when I’m working.

    Luckily it’s cooled down in the past week, which means the office temp has dipped to chilly A/C fueled 67 Fahrenheit, and is the heater on now? It is not.

  125. SR71 Blackbird*

    John was hired as a summer intern through a university program for 8 weeks. John was housed in an extended-stay hotel since the university is in another town.

    I was tasked with being John’s manager, and gave him a programming assignment to read in and analyze some data. A week after John was hired, security came to me and said that one evening he had tried to install a program on his computer that was not allowed. Our security protocols blocked him. John was able to circumvent the security protocols by using a Windows NT Installation CD to reinstall Windows. Our security protocols had not anticipated that. When security came to work in the morning, they were alerted to what had occurred (and promptly upgraded their security protocols to prevent it from happening a second time). I reprimanded John, which he did not take kindly to. For the remaining 7 weeks, he did no work. At the end of his term, John had to brief everyone on the work he had done. His out-brief was atrocious; his conclusions were all made up; he blamed everyone but himself for his failure. The professor over the university program hung his head in shame and embarrassment.

    A week later the professor came to me and told me that the extended-stay hotel had sent the university a bill for several thousand dollars for John’s long distance telephone calls to dial-a-porn. The next summer the extended-stay hotel blocked long distance calls by the students.

    It only takes one bad apple to ruin the barrel.

  126. Mynameisnotjane*

    Not really an intern, but we were basically forced to hire someone because she had worked at our corporate office in another state and the owner liked her. We’re a small office so the general manager had to create a position for her, which sucked because her salary was an extra cost and we got yearly bonuses based on our profit. Then, we she showed up, she brought her 8-week-old puppy with her because he was “too little to leave at home” and he proceeded to pee and poop all over the office because he wasn’t housebroken yet. Thankfully there was a happy ending because she got fired after she’d been here about 6 months for forging the boss’s approval on her time card after padding her hours.

  127. hello from gethen*

    From my own summer internship this year: I had a co-intern who hadn’t really worked at an office job before, and as such didn’t quite grasp what professional boundaries, even in our very casual office, entailed. The crown jewel example of this was during a work event, where she proceeded to tell the other interns (with actual employees in earshot) her bucket list, which included specific sexual acts. She also told us about how hard it was to find willing partners for said sexual acts.

  128. Mr. Alarmed*

    One morning our intern had to drop his girlfriend off at the airport very early in the morning. Instead of going back home to sleep afterwards, our intern, who lives about 15 minutes away from work, decided he could catch a few extra z’s if he came into the office to sleep at his desk.

    Our main office building is set to alarm if anyone enters before or after normal working hours. He had been given a building access code at the start of his internship in case this were to happen. Our intern must have glanced over that e-mail because he did not enter any code when the alarm sounded. In fact, he simply walked past the alarm, out of the main building to the side building where we work, and went to sleep at his desk!!!

    The alarms kept sounding in the main building, and the company CEO and multiple of the other higher-ups were alerted by the alarm company. Another employee who lived close to the office was asked to check out what was going on, and after searching the entire office when he arrived, found the intern fast asleep at his desk.

    He got in a lot of trouble with our manager but was not fired. When asked why he didn’t call anyone to ask what to do, he replied: “I did not want to bother anyone.”

  129. A Sad One*

    I have a bit of a sad one. I officially work for one department but started out as an intern with a related department a few years back and still sit among them. (Our departments are ultimately overseen by the same VP, so it’s easy to just keep me here.)

    Since I left my original department, there’s been a string of interns who come and go with the academic schedule; I’ve gotten to witness them and their working styles because of where we sit. This summer, my old department hired an intern who is not a native English speaker and who grew up in a different country. They did not, in my opinion, effectively manage this intern, and the intern suffered greatly for it. A few examples:

    1. The department staff gave the intern multiple projects developing new marketing materials, did not check in regularly with her, and then staff members became extremely angry when the intern turned in something they described as “written at a third-grade level.” Well, yes, she’s not a native speaker…
    2. Department staff gave the intern multiple long-term research projects, did not check in with her, and then became extremely angry when the research didn’t line up with their original vision for the projects.
    3. Department staff would give the intern multiple urgent projects at nearly the same time, and then get angry with the intern for not completing all of them perfectly and on time. They would not check in with each other about work priorities, and the intern’s cultural background meant she wasn’t comfortable speaking up and saying she didn’t have time by the third or fourth project.

    See the pattern? I feel terribly for this intern because she likely has an awful reference coming from the department, but it’s really not her fault. There were so many times I wanted to intervene, but I really don’t have the standing / seniority to do that. Sigh…

  130. Yes_I_Am_A_Rocket_Scientist*

    Our college interns are always offspring of high level people in the company. We get them whether or not they are majoring in anything the least bit related to what we do in our department. We had one intern who spent the whole summer whining “This work is so boring! I can’t believe you do this for a living.” We chose this career because we get to do some really cool stuff.

  131. Charlotte*

    I’m actually surprised there are not more stories of interns being arrested! We had one of those. A group of the younger employees took the interns out for drinks and one got too drunk and tried to punch a police officer. One of the employees had to get cash to bail him out.

  132. Selphie Trabia*

    This isn’t so much a bad intern story as it is a bad boss story.
    When I was working in Public Relations in a small firm, my boss (the owner) told me that we should get some interns in. We interviewed and then hired two young ladies to do their internships in the office on a part-time basis (about once a week). They were polite and competent. These internships were unpaid.
    Well, fast forward a few weeks and my boss decided that she wanted to downsize the business and move it to her home. She wanted to take me with her, but I declined, as I didn’t feel comfortable about working in her home. We prepared to close the office for good and I asked her what we should tell the interns about the move.
    She said, and I quote, “Nothing.”
    “Should I get into contact with them to let them know the place is closing?”
    “No, they’ll come, see the office is closed and then leave.”
    “How about their letter of recommendation.”
    “Eh, it’s too much work. They’ll find another internship.”
    These girls were working for no pay so they could get a letter of recommendation that would allow them to complete their college courses! My boss was just deciding not to do all of that because it was too bothersome to do.
    Before the office closed, I ended up writing the letters of recommendation, printing them on office letterhead and then waiting outside the closed office on the girls day of work so I could pass it to them. I also gave my number as the reference contact.

  133. flying teapot*

    Another commenter said they were surprised we don’t have more stories of interns getting arrested. I do have one of those, but it’s not funny.

    The very last summer at my old job, we had an intern who was around my age. Usually, our interns were in high school or their first year of college, but he was nearly 30. We hit it off pretty well, and although I found him sort of strange, I didn’t mind since he was nice and we had common interests. He was the only person in my department close to my age so I was desperate for a peer to chat with. However, he didn’t do any work, ever. I didn’t supervise him, so it didn’t bother me, but everyone in the office hated him. I thought they were being cranky as these people were prone to do, but as the summer unfolded his behavior became worse and worse. He would sleep at his desk, show up hours late without notifying anyone. The workday ended at 4:30, and he once showed up at 3:15. Our boss stared at him and said, simply, “you can’t show up and expect to work for just an hour, you need to go home”.

    This guy was hired as a political favor (small gov’t office), so he wasn’t going anywhere. Not even after repeated absences, refusal to work, and talking loudly about taboo topics within earshot of others. Our supervisor sent complaints to management at least weekly, and nothing.

    At the end of the summer, I left that awful job and relocated. Life was going pretty well for me, and I quickly forgot about the strange intern and his oversized personality and lack of professionalism. I got a call from a former coworker, and chatted with her a while. Apparently, the intern had completely trashed the men’s bathroom. Threw paper towels and soap everywhere, then denied that he did anything. I should mention, that workplace was about 80/20 women to men, and we had about 4 or 5 long-time older male employees who had no record of behaving poorly or erratically. It was fairly obvious that it was the intern trashing the bathroom.

    I talked with her a bit about that plus other assorted drama, but was really into my new life and I ended that convo pretty quickly. I just didn’t want to think about the job that had made my life miserable for so many years.

    Fast forward 4 months later, and I get a text from a different co-worker that said “I’m so sorry you had to hear this…” and was a screenshot of an article from the local newspaper with a headline like “Homeless man stabs man 17 times”. I initially thought he died (from her wording) … but when I read the article, Intern WAS the homeless man who killed someone. He apparently did get fired after the bathroom vandalism incident, lost his apartment, and fell back (?) into his drug addiction. I had suspected he had some sort of substance abuse issue going on when he was there, but it wasn’t my business and I stayed far away from topics like that. I felt very disturbed by the whole thing. I had never known anyone who killed someone or even seriously injured someone, and knowing I had that guy’s number in my phone felt so icky. He had even sent me weird “I’m so sad we never got to be better friends” texts after I moved across the country. That whole day I felt shocked and disgusted. I believe he’s in jail now, I assume for a very long time.

    Honestly, this really puts into perspective all of my complaints about my current intern who thinks he’s a full time salaried employee who can make his own schedule and do whatever he wants, or a former intern who was caught making out with another intern in the filing room, or the twins we hired who always sat on the same office chair together and wore matching outfits…

  134. seira*

    I just remembered I’m probably my own intern horror story. In general I was a good intern and I am still in touch with many of the people I worked with at my internship (which was 10 years ago! And I just got dinner with some of them when I was in town recently, and some have helped me get work in the past), but there was one day when my sister came in town to visit me and I picked her up at the airport in the morning and then didn’t have time to drop her back at my house before work, so I brought her with me and thought she would use the time to go visit the museums nearby the office. She was tired, though, and decided to just curl up and nap under the desk next to mine. I had no idea what to do so she just napped there and pretty much everyone saw…

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