The Parable of the Intern and the Getting of the Coffee
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24 Comments
Oh, to be at the bottom of the ladder. One easy cure - don’t drink coffee!
So probably wouldn’t go and get the coffee because the baristas could tell she had tickets on herself as a Serious Journalist and she couldn’t bear their derision. Wait, why am I assuming it was a woman, what a gender traitor I am. Anyway: I will go and get the coffee if you give me work experience.
Seethe
seethe …….Gold!!!!
Was the cartoonist sent or did he offer?
Did he ever return unmauled?
Is he still bitter, and goes on about it every bloody chance he gets?
Did the others offer him a Small Achievement Award?
[Yes]
Sigh. Why in my day, you had to *make* the coffee, not just procure it. And it was *instant* (blech)
(Sounds of Mochaing laughter)
Mocha-ing laughter. Ha!
(and in MY day it wasn’t only instant, it was International Roast Caterer’s Blend… the horror, the horror)
First Dog, I take it that was [yes] to all the questions.
Well done! I’m going to follow your lead and get drinks for everyone.
I might get one of those eleventy thingies for myself - they appear to have a lovely effect.
Interns at Crikey enjoy brilliant workplace conditions compared to Qld MP staffers. We had to clean the toilets, vacuum the office and hand deliver the mail to save the electorate allowance. Send me on a coffee run any day.
I was going to say today, that “you just can’t get good help these days”.
Then I read Ern Malley’s Cat. I’ll have a large cappuccino with two sugars, ta, mate.
First Dog, can I give the Cat a Small Achievement Award, huh huh huh? I know I didn’t get an elephant stamp earlier today, cos I made a species ID error. But, Cat is offering to be really helpful? Can we not recognise the goodness of heart that lies behind that offer? Sir? Puhlease?
Surely, good thoughts must count?
Spit in the coffee machine, that’s what we did when I was a lad
There’s two main rules in life…
1. Be nice to your mother(no matter what you fuck up, she’ll back you)
2. NEVER fuck with people that handle your food
@Chris: To continue with !Keith’s ideas, you need to do things in the right order - clean toilets, then prepare their coffee…
Meski: Nah, this one had been doing it for years. You cleaned the office after hours when she’d driven off because the dust from the vacuum cleaner would get up her nose - like everything else in her life.
International roast! Luxury, we had Pablo
Did you really have an intern called ‘Steel’?
Phew, FDOTM is finally coming out of its Leunig phase.
David L. If you really believe that…..Then have I got a bridge for you.
Unlike the casual and off-hand commenters above, I have spent a good part of my life working for a-rseholes who presume that they are entitled to call upon the coffee and biscuit services of the juniour females in the office.
FDOTM, you are spot on in calling public attention to this offense. Sexism isn’t hard to identify, but it is particularly difficult to remove from the workplace.
Look. Read. Think.
Consider from the young and the female point of view.
I try to, but at the end of the day, I remain at least in part an unreconstructed dirty old man with hopes for attitudinal improvement. Then I remember the hopes I have for my daughters’ futures.
Spot on, FDOTM.
@John: Who says it’s only young and female? There’s an implied “you *will* get to do scut work unrelated to job description, male or female”
Love it!!!
Drug talk.
And I can remember a machine labelled cappucino, hot chocolate, and something else. Soup perhaps?? Often, if I felt snarky, I’d put in a bit of each. And no one noticed the difference.
Tom M, you may have cracked it.
I wondered if ‘getting the coffee’ was some Clintonian White House Intern euphemism.
It’s a tricky one… I think in the balance of things, people offering you work experience are doing you a favour. Supervising people, mentoring them, teaching them takes time out from your regular job. (Assuming this IS what’s going on). Getting them a coffee is a small price to pay, and a token of thanks, especially if it’s just for two weeks. (Wait - does the intern have to pay for the coffees out of their own munnies?).
But it IS worth remembering that women are always likely to wonder, “are they asking me do to this because I’m a girl?” because once upon a time that was all they were allowed to do. So let Mr Onthemoon’s “Important things to note” be writ large on the Official Crikey Internship Application…
I thought it was going to be about the White House and office desks and things, too.