The Intern Files by Jamie Fedorko

Author:Jamie Fedorko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Published: 2006-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“THE ART OF SUCKING IT UP”—LUCY

My first real internship was at a magazine where I’d become their most trusted intern, and where I think I was very well liked. However, I eventually began to overstep my boundaries, and one day I really screwed up. We were orchestrating an event at a local venue for a big-name clothing line, and the people at my magazine wanted to set up a hot dog stand outside, and a roaming pizza server inside, to give the party a sort of all-American feel. (God, this sounds so unbelievably absurd and meaningless in retrospect!) Anyhow, I told my boss that I would handle both areas myself. I had other projects to handle and was given few details, as usual.

Here’s where I went wrong. As I went on my hunt for the perfect hot dog vendor and pizza man to serve the eight-hour event, I would call the office, ask for details in terms of budget, and either not get an answer or not be called back at all. However, at the end of each day, my boss would say, “Oh, don’t worry, we have time, do it tomorrow,” and instead of pressing her, I simply sat back and took my time (i.e., sucked it up). Exactly one week before the event was to happen, I had a famous New York pizzeria waiting for the contract, but no hot dog man. As I entered the office that morning, a friend said that he had overheard my supervisor being berated by her boss for being so disorganized. Furthermore, he said that my boss then proceeded to lay blame on me and me alone, for which she was then nearly fired for entrusting the lowly intern with such responsibility (pizza and hot dogs!). Anyway, I walked right into this shitstorm, which proceeded to boisterously break loose.

So I’m sitting there listening to these two tell me repeatedly that it’s entirely my fault, the party could fall apart because of me, and well…it might be the end of the world, too! All I had to do to save my own ass was explain that the only reason things hadn’t yet been finalized was because my direct superior wouldn’t respond to any of my budget questions, and that had she done so, we would have been ready to go weeks before. But I didn’t. So the meeting ended with both of us “in trouble,” and my supervisor and I literally never said another pleasant word to each other again. Did she simply get caught being totally unprepared and subsequently blame the whole ordeal on me, or did she intentionally let me go through this whole process blindly so that I would inevitably fail? I’ll never know. But what I do know is that I sucked it up to the point of hurting myself. While interns must always be respectful, they must never be taken advantage of. Because taking advantage of an intern is easy. From that day on, I never once allowed

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