The Summer Intern - Part 4

Rowena Godwin sits in the cubicle next to ours. Rowena cowers most days in frail anticipation of not surviving the next round of budget cuts. Last month she told one of our managers that she was making headway on one of his pet projects. He told her, "Never oversell headway. . . I'm after results that blow me away." Rowena is taking that new diet pill that eliminates all cravings, until you start to crave the diet pill. Her husband Judd is on work release from the county jail and works for the facilities management company that cleans our building. On Tuesday afternoons when the managers have their weekly offsite meeting, Rowena and Judd have a conjugal visit in the twelfth floor boardroom. We are not supposed to know this--it is only supposed to be a rumor. Some things, many we happen to care about deeply, are not meant to be known by us with certainty, but a large company like ours needs rumors like a religion needs prayers.

The Summer Intern - Part 3

Valises, purses, handbags, tote bags, make-up cases, grocery bags, bulky sweaters, fanny packs, muu muu dresses, zoot suits, trench coats, ponchos and the like are not permitted in the cubicle area. The dress code is simple for interns—khaki-type chemicals, cotton, rayon, whatnot. Distractions are distractions. You will need to develop the posture and italic gait of a tightrope walker when traversing the main aisle in the cubicle area, taking short steps, bent slightly forward at the waist with eyes focused on the ground a few inches in front of you. You will not be expected to turn your pockets inside out when passing through security and leaving the building each evening but might as well give the strong impression that you are willing to do so. Do not fall into the trap of false humility—true humility is your goal and genuine disposition during office hours.

Just back through the aisle in this direction is Rory's desk. He staffs the reception area and lives to gloat about how his favorite sports team has defeated yours in four of their last five match-ups. If you ever expect to be waved or even waived, if you know what I mean, through security without showing two forms of ID and your departmental service credentials each time, develop at least a mild interest in a team that perennially loses to just about everyone else but especially to Rory's teams. The Montreal Expos were a good choice until they moved to Washington and won a few games. Check the sport pages for a team at the bottom of the standings that resonates with you. Promise to join his softball team, but forget your mitt on game day. Rory assigns parking spaces. Remember—until you have an assigned space, you will be expected to find street parking. You will be expected to be stoic about the twenty-minute walk in blistering heat or pouring rain from your car to the office. Complaints about the weather or parking are distractions and your internship could be terminated.

The Summer Intern - Part 2

You are aware that there was a rise and fall of the Roman Empire and so it is with your work.

What is that about? Asking questions is excellent, I am glad you are so eager to learn.

Each day's work requires a certain amount of condensing and creativity. When you have more than eight hour’s work in a day, you must condense that into an eight-hour workday. There is no overtime or comp time or studio time or bankable time or flex time. There is only straight time. This blue container on your desk which looks like a dishpan, note that there are two in the cubicle, is in fact, your work tote. Please do not touch it yet. Each morning, fifteen minutes before you arrive, there will be delivery of documents into your work tote. Other than for today's orientation, it is not advisable to arrive before your scheduled nine o'clock start time. It is not advisable for you to be in your cubicle if there are no documents in your work tote. If by any chance you arrive before your work tote has been allocated the day's toil, take a lap around the block. You are too early. When your work tote is half-full, it is not, as some in this office would pessimistically have you think, half empty. If your tote has only a handful of documents, you may only have two hours of work. Then you must use your creativity to fill the eight-hour workday with the documents you have available in your work tote. Never remove the last document from your tote before 4:45 in the afternoon. This will give you fifteen minutes to complete your initialization and extracts for that document before leaving at five o'clock. Never give the impression that you have had or will have anything more or less than a full day's work.
You are to three-hole punch your documents in the morning only. I will be using that particular piece of office equipment each afternoon. It is not initialed R. g. but is numbered by the manufacturer and the only one of its kind in the building.

The Summer Intern - introduction

Thank you for coming in a little early today. We are all quite supportive of our intern program and whatnot and I think you will find that this orientation will give you a good, running start.
Your desk is there and mine is just here on the other side. We will share a cubicle for the summer. This is the three-hole punch. It stays on the small table that is to the left of your desk and to the right of mine. That we will share as well. There are two of everything else in the cubicle and mine all have the initials R. g. on them—big R, little g. Yours do not have initials and it is Not Appropriate—big N, big A—for an intern to initial any office equipment as your internship could be terminated. We are not likely to learn your initials anyway. To most of us, you will be the intern.

I will endeavor to remember your first name while we are here in the cubicle. This will be easier for me if you always answer your phone after the first full ring and say, "Hello, this is Gideon." Ignore partial rings as the caller may hang up before you can answer.

If you are to be away from your phone for even a few seconds, you will have to forward all calls to voice mail. To activate voice mail, pick up the phone, press star, three, six, nine, say your first name only and then press nine, six, three, star and hang up. Phones are not allowed to ring twice in this cubicle. Phones on metal desks such as these cannot make outgoing calls except to the Security Department and Information Technology Shared Services Organization. I should make you aware that an internal call to ITS SO to report a problem with electronic office equipment or to ask a question about a software application may result you unintentionally initiating a sequence of actions leading to what is known as Helpdesk Assisted Suicide. Your system log-on routines will never work properly again and you will have to fill out your time card manually using a number two pencil and mail it to the Payroll Resource Office Central Processing Facility in Bangor. You will not be reimbursed for postage. There are no phones on wooden desks as the executives entrusted with those desks all have company-supplied cell communications devices. No other cellular devices are allowed in the cubicle area. Your internship will be terminated for any unauthorized use of telephones, faxes, text messages, or pagers. The ladies room is a clandestine T Mobile hot spot due to the high reflectance of the office tower down the block.

If your name is not Gideon then of course use whatever name it is that you personally have or wished to have had to answer the phone. Do not pretend to enjoy the thrill of ignorance about office protocol and politics because it is your first day on the job—the failure of our previous intern this summer to last a full day is tragic testimony to the fact that there is no such thing as being too prepared.

Trains Can Make it Happen

Trains help us decode life. Thomas the Tank Engine provides such a generous intrusion in what would otherwise be such a simple illness to camouflage - the civilized withdrawal from the world. Mr. Conductor, both suspicious and friendly, joyfully punched our ticket - still punches our ticket. We have left anxiety behind, headed for joyful.

The Seven Words You Can Never Say in Heaven

Christ, George, what are you doing here?

A Rich Man's Son

Koe: overheard at a coffee shop. . . "there can't be anything worse than having to take orders from a rich man's son - you name him: Jeff Wilpon, Hank Steinbrenner, George W. Bush. . . "

Two Kinds of Facts

there's but one kind of lie but two kinds of facts--those that are true and those that are too true.

Tangled Up In Indelicacy

Koe writes:. . . B. hired a consultant this week who has a tongue like a gangplank--he makes up stuff, then believes it. He's drowning himself. If I were going to make something up and believe in it. . . I'd make up god, and then have her be the kind who gets a little more involved. Example: She sees a pick-up truck driving 80 miles-an-hour the wrong way on interstate 95. . . and instead of letting it crash into a family of seven on their way to disney world, killing six and orphaning one, the youngest; she would pick the truck up, put it on the right side of the road, take the Cuervo out of the driver's hand and hide the keys under the his seat.

The Journey

A journey of a thousand miles often starts with you barking up the wrong tree. . .