Meet the intern. They are the youngsters braving the grown-up world of office life to gain experience after graduating with fresh dreams and hopes of one day having a good career. Before any of that can happen an intern’s main purpose is to be the office sucker for up to three months, often longer. It can be frustrating. But at least there’s one place they can vent (fairly) safely: social media.
A few of these venters even have Twitter accounts and blogs that are worth checking out:
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@AnotherGraduate.
The profile for this account reads: “Follow me for the realities of being just another graphic design graduate, interning in London.”
Freelancing or Interning? But what’s the difference?
— Another Graduate (@AnotherGraduate) February 11, 2012
The London-based designer/intern and anonymous account holder of @AnotherGraduate is “surprised by the response” their blog and Twitter page have received and sees it as “kind of like a diary for me, but at the same time it is a current topic that needs highlighting, especially when it is so accepted in the industry as the way to do things, and working for free in such an age of austerity is wrong. I had something to write about so I wrote it.”
“I found that a lot of people related to it and shared with me their experiences. With me being anonymous, and Twitter and Blogspot being faceless encounters, when people feel strongly about an issue they share with you.”
If one reads the comments that some of these blogs and Twitter accounts get they are often negative and passionate. The anonymous blogger also adds that: “Interning can be quite a lonely experience. You are in a new city with new people. You have friends, but because you have no money you hardly see them and in the working environment your colleagues/friends change every week.”
Unfair Internships
Unfair Internships is a blog where interns can unite and share their experiences. It also lets its followers share stories on the Twitter account Ex Intern.
“Most unpaid internships are illegal. Why don’t more interns protest?” slate.com/articles/busin…
— Ex Intern (@exintern) February 14, 2012
Internspills
Internspills is, if anything, even angrier than Unfair Internships. The intro to the site pretty much sums up its attitude: “THE INTERN was the unpaid toiler on the publishing house floor, reading slush, and copy-editing your train-wreck of a manuscript (for free) because the “real” copyeditor is down with the genital crabs. INTERN wears mismatched socks, clunky glasses, the same shirt she wears every day and jeans she found in the dumpster”. “THE INTERN” also tweets to its followers on @internspills.
Vent all you like, just don’t follow the example of an intern at Marc Jacobs who was given the permission to oversee the company’s Twitter account.
During a very public meltdown, the intern sent out tweets that read “I can call him out! I’m out! Won’t work in this town again! I know that! Learned a lot. But I don’t have the energy of what is expected!”
She continued her rant, aimed at the company’s CEO Robert Duffy, saying: “You guys and gals have no idea how difficult Robert is. I am only an intern. My last day tomorrow. I wouldn’t be tweeting this if not!”
Sometimes even senior staff feel the need to speak out against intern abuse. Recently, whoever was behind the sub-editor account of The Sunday Times newspaper took exception to an advertised intern position which would be unpaid for a year.
Anyone fancy working full-time for free for a YEAR at the Sunday times? gorkanajobs.co.uk/job/8646/sunda… Outrageous. Where’s the union?
— The subeditor (@subedited) February 10, 2012
Most of these Twitter accounts and blogs seem comical. The real message they convey, however, is simple: interns are real people too!
