#internship shenanigans

[scrappy-appy]

The trainer in North Carolina emailed me back. She wants to know more about my experience and says she might have a slot in the fall. So that’s one inquiry changed to a maybe. Still sending more out

[i-am-snowils-admiral]

My boss is such a typical boss like he’s this grandfather-aged guy who talks about his father’s days in the air force and plays golf and is “technologically challenged” to the extreme, as in, this guy ripped keys off the keyboard because he was tired of them sticking and didn’t know how to press send on a skype message.

He also sent me an email a week and a half after I met with him for an hour saying that he’d noticed my name listed and had never met me and wanted to fix that and then came over and gave me a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder when he realized his mistake (I had to point it out to him in an email).

It’s just fun, these guys are really out there.

[i-am-snowils-admiral]

Me, to a fellow intern: Yeah, my fastest mile time was 12 minutes

A coworker, a retired marine, who has up till now left us along to talk: *turns around in her spinny chair* Your fastest mile time was what now?

[gjordis]

I’ll go from having a delightful bonding moment with my coworkers to failing miserably at socializing so fast it’s not even funny

[gjordis]

My boss asked me to go through a few AI courses on microslop learn, because aparently corporate is considering making ITSS (?) people do them, and bro what fucking guy does microslop have writing those? ”Ask AI to make a presesntation about water sports” ”stay abreast of updates” there was also a very in-depth description of a cafe order just as a way to color in the text a bit more. Crazy

[gjordis]

So far I’ve had to do what, four courses that all basically boil down to ”don’t get killed at work, and if you can help it, don’t let your peers get killed either.” Industry enterprise IT has been quite the experience so far

[irisonmain]

Okay, I only have about another week to go on my internship, so allow me to complain about the new creative director. This is all gonna be a disjointed mess so if you’re interested just hit the read more.

Okay, so from the first day he got here, I got like this weird, bad vibe from him. Like, he had this air of arrogance around him that I do not like. You don’t get to be arrogant around me unless you A) play it for laughs, or B) deserved it. But instead, he just came in here like he’s hot shit and a big shot at his old job (which the old creative director I worked with took over from him. it was almost like a surprisingly pleasant prisoner exchange), which he wasn’t.

So basically he started his first week complaining about his old job. Which I kind of get, because I feel like he really didn’t have any connection with those people, and they constantly ran his hard work into the ground, and honestly, I felt kinda bad for him. Actual empathy there from my part.

Then on his second day, I ask him to give me the OK on a text I wrote for an assignment, and laughed out loud for my text containing one (1) spelling error. A typo my spell check didn’t pick up. Big whoop. Who Cares. (I do.) So then he proceeds to “improve” my text by making my sentences long, weird messes and cramming like 6 more spelling errors into it. Which I think spell check did pick up, but I’m not sure I remember that correctly.

So then I worked my ass off to rectify those mistakes before the text was due. NBD. I was a little pissed though. Because what the fuck did he think he was doing?! He was hired here to be creative (but mostly art) director. As copywriting intern (and only copywriter currently in this company), I was responsible for all the fucking texts, and evidently, I should still be.

(Wie is hier nou de copywriter, gij of ik?/Who’s the copywriter around here again? I thought I was.)

So I sucked it up for another week, and all texts I wrote that would have been approved by the old creative director and the respective project managers were suddenly held up and disapproved by the new creative director, despite me not changing anything about my writing style. It was still laid back, informal, and suited the DNA of the company very well. While HE, on the other hand, whipped out a thesaurus and threw a bunch of big, difficult words into my texts just to seem more intellectual. THAT’S NOT THE POINT. WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A CHILL, YOUNG COMPANY HERE. 

jfc.

And then there came the weekend that everyone at the company went to a music festival nearby. I didn’t join because I couldn’t get home by bus by the end of the party, and I plain and simple just don’t like going to music festivals. So then the Monday afterwards I have to hear that he was apparently a total creep to some female interns??? Like, I generally enjoy the feeling I get when I’m being validated in my beliefs, but NOT LIKE THIS.

And, I don’t know, I think the worst part is that I only now started noticing that he’s constantly being dismissive about feedback and advice I give him, despite my knowing I’m right. He’s constantly being dismissive about ideas and concepts that I come up with that I know other people would have been enthusiastic about and he just won’t let through to the other people who would like them.

And it’s just.

It exhausts me. I haven’t made anything for my internship that is as creative as I would have just a month ago, before he was here. He constantly makes me doubt my creative capabilities and I’m just done. I feel myself becoming bolder (in the bad kind of way), constantly retaliating against and overcompensating for the bad vibe he puts out. It’s like I’m forcing myself to be positive while deep down I’m pissed, disappointed, and a little bit depressed. It’s a really weird feeling that I can’t quite describe, but I feel bad. I feel bad for going against someone who makes me feel bad. I’m really confused about my feelings right now.

I have only a week left on my internship, and I want to be sad about going away and leaving these four people I otherwise love, but I can’t. Because deep down I feel this happy feeling that I will finally be rid of him, and it overshadows the feelings I have about leaving the others. And I hate it.

But on the other hand, the other creative is just as done with him as I am so we’re gonna give him a taste of his own medicine during my final week, and after that it won’t have any consequences for me.

Huzzah!

[irisonmain]

Me at my internship: UUUUUUGH I have nothing to do.

The new creative director that started this week: Actually, you can do this thing?

Me: Uh, no. I don't have to take orders from you.