Clean Those Coffee-Mugs with Zest and Aplomb!

That’s an ugly pair of shoes

I don’t know–sounds like reasonable advice (even for paid professionals) to me. (Certainly in my workplace, an insurance company, people who clean the coffee pot occasionally are better-liked than people who always leave it dirty–and yes, people notice. I perceive it, and think others do as well, that leaving a mess for others to clean up is perceived as abusing status.)

Yeah… this speaks for itself. Only rich people can run for congress, only rich kids can become staffers. To me this, as much or more than campaign finance issues, cements the rule of money in DC.

@4
That’s life in the big city.

You want the plum job, the power position, the big salary potential you gotta give out some free samples of what you’re made of.

For Doctors its being an intern and a resident, for other professions its an internship an apprentice, an adjunct or an ‘associate’ the hours are crazy, the pay (if any) on a per hour basis is poor, and oh, by the way, if you don’t look the part with the wardrobe, manners and work ethic you aren’t gonna make it cause there will be someone else who will.

While surely there are cases where people get these jobs by nepotism or other backdoor means – most are earned through sweat equity and the system perpetuates itself because so many of those who are the deciders now were once the grunts and “it was good enough for me, so its good enough for you.”

You don’t have to like it, but “paying ones dues” is the way of countless professions and it has its pros and cons.

I wonder how many of these internships violate federal labor law?

Maybe ‘equity’ isn’t the best term – but no one would take an internship if you got nothing out of it. People take the job to get something – it just doesn’t fold and have dead presidents on it. I don’t know a better term than ‘sweat equity’ but thats the gist of it – you give labor and you get something of value, just not money.

As the OP said, its contacts, referals, and networks that get you the real gig – in DC its the lobbyists or consultants most of the time, in NYC finance, in law, advertising, accounting etc. its different still – sometimes with the firm that provides the internship, sometimes not.

The point is, your internship and more importantly the related referal letters, provide future buyers of your labor a “seal of approval” – I’m not saying this is never abused, what I’m saying is that it has a value to empoyer and employee which is why it persists.

Medical interns and residents don’t work for free.

Also the vast majority of internships are pretty much illegal.

There’s s huge, huge difference between unpaid internships, and lowly paid internships that allow you to scrape by without another income source.

Important organizations could easily pay interns the latter. If they do not, it’s on purpose. It’s because its acts as a filter against the wrong type of people, i.e. those without rich parents.

Same for 300 dollar shoes. You can take it for granted that interns are not dressed to the standards of well-paid professionals, or value interns who wear the right clothes. Lots of organizations do the first
.

And these are just identifiable symptoms. You can bet that there are lots of subtler barriers. People who are more easily identified as ‘promising’, if they behave like proper people. Importsnt social events that are comfortable to some, and awkward to others. Etc.

The equity analogy is seriously misleading. That’s an explict deal: you do the work, you get something. Internships have an implicit deal: you do something, you might get something. If you’re from the right background, the odds that you will get something are far higher.

“There’s s huge, huge difference between unpaid internships, and lowly paid internships that allow you to scrape by without another income source.”

I dont know, is there really? Moneys important of course, but even if it was paid I doubt you’d get a more socio-economically diverse workforce. Class, geography, family networks etc and all those other little acts of exclusion close out any possibility of getting one of these jobs to 95% of the countrys population. Making them paid might make them more accessible to a tiny sliver of the middle/upper middle class, but that would be about it, Id assume.

Ronan, its importance is not just as a barrier in itself, but also a symptom. It’s a sign that people in the organization rarely say ‘I got these promising interns, but they have troubling coping with the double workload and might quit. Then I would be left with just the spoilt rich kids’. It implies that people are very happy with having mostly rich kids, and do not feel they are missing out on valuable talent.

nihil obstet, 10, “taking on relatively menial tasks simply solidifies their position as support staff”. No doubt you’re often right about that. However, for the groups you describe, refusing to take on menial tasks surely gets them classified as arrogant, uppity, not team players. So possibly damned if you do, definitely damned if you don’t, and the OP (on the other site) was offering good advice — which is, again, revealing.

My favorite part of the whole post is her use of the word “investment” for a pair of patent leather medium-heel pumps, with a bit of a platform under the foot. Again, I’m sure she’s right. Again, it’s revealing.

I got chatting with a gallery owner at an opening once, years ago, and asked how much a gallery assistant got paid (I was unhappily employed in IT at the time & curious about anything in The Arts). He named a figure which boggled my mind, it was so far below what I was getting as a fairly junior programmer. When I commented he explained that this was entirely by design – he was selecting for people with rich parents, because they’d bring their parents and their parents’ friends through the door of the gallery.

Most businesses don’t have such a direct payoff from employing rich kids, but – if you want to sell things and make money – having rich kids on the premises is rarely a bad idea.

Pumps? Low pumps? You’ve got to be kidding. These are pumps.

Yeah, you don’t have to like it. We could, alternatively, actually enforce the law against unpaid internships. Even without requiring that the intern bring suit (which is kind of absurd since the intern most likely loses big time from bringing a suit and the whole point of the law is to prevent a situation where the under-privileged are obliged to participate or suffer even worse outcomes). And the world would be better because of it. The working long hours for crappy pay to get into a field thing is unavoidable (and maybe has its benefits). But working for nothing or minimum wage to gain entry to a lucrative field? I see neither the benefits to society or to anyone for that matter.

The point is, your internship and more importantly the related referal letters, provide future buyers of your labor a “seal of approval” – I’m not saying this is never abused, what I’m saying is that it has a value to empoyer and employee which is why it persists.

So long as you can work for free for a year, and afford $300 shoes (with clothes to match, I assume).

So, yeah, this is just the free market chuggin’ along, giving them that’s got access to the levers of power and money, and them that’s not…well, as the Bible says, they shall lose.

And what’re ya gonna do about that?

Having just read the blog post linked in the OP, I’m surprised at the discussion. You could rewrite it as something like: there are two career paths, fellow, which requires a Ph.D. and government experience, and research associate, which requires an MA, six months to a couple years in an unpaid clerical position, and extra time learning to write stuff that you hope people will like. That’s not quite the same as, “just get an internship and work lots of hours and do lots of scut work in the office, and you’ll stand out from those who don’t make the cut.”

The whole “internships should all be paid” meme seems to be assuming that the alternative to an internship is a job; if one compares it to a Master’s degree, the economics look far more reasonable. (I was about as far from “rich” as you could get, but I did do a 1-month unpaid internship for my Congressman; it was interesting, and convinced me I never wanted to work professionally in politics.)

I doubt I’ll convince anyone, but I’ll lob in one last thought.

What is that these interns do that actually provide any value to their organizations such that they deserve much in the way of pay? In general they have few real work skills, they are there to observe and learn by observation – they bill no hours, the do nothing that rings the cash register and in fact suck up time from productive resources that could be spent on such activities. Many companies don’t bother.

The companies that do bother, do it to identify people that might add value upon further training. People with creativity, initiative, good work habits, personality – all stuff that is hard to access in a 1 hr interview, but which tends to become apparent over a multi-week internship. Its precisely to give opportunity to people who might be better employees in reality than might appear obvious on paper or in a one off interview.

Once hired, the person will draw a paycheck and more money will be spent on training and mentoring. The further training will also have a cost – an outlay in real time and real dollars to make said person a value to the organization. In most professional environments you’re pretty happy if you can break-even on a new hire inside of a year, maybe 18months. Even then, usually more than one third quit for any number of reasons in which case the return on the effort is negative.

Jobs aren’t costless to an organization.

Likewise, there’s no question that some intern programs are run in a manner which contravenes laws (i.e doing work that should be paid for but isn’t). I doubt the internship described in the OP is that way, but if it is than fine – I’m against breaking laws and slave labor.

Most are not like that. Most are designed as something of a test drive between labor seller and labor buyer. No one would commit to a $50,000 car without a test drive – why commit to a +$50,000 salary without one either. This isn’t about whether the firm should hire people to clean coffee mugs – its about whether it should invest substantial resources in employees that over the short run are worthless, but over the mid- to long term add value to an organization in a variety of ways.

Again, I doubt I’ll persuade anyone why these systems do and should exist. Given the stack of applicants begging to get the opportunities even for zero pay – there must be some value involved to the people who take the jobs, it would be irrational for so many to give away their time for “nothing”

God knows men’s business attire is uncomfortable and impractical, but at least we’re not expected to wear high heels.

Trader Joe @ 35

‘Given the stack of applicants begging to get the opportunities even for zero pay – there must be some value involved to the people who take the jobs, it would be irrational for so many to give away their time for “nothing”.’

Sure, but that’s not a particularly strong argument. If indentured servitude for 6 months is a prerequisite for getting a paying job, people who want paying jobs will become indentured servants. That doesn’t mean the servants see much ‘value’ in servitude; it means they have no choice in the matter.

What is that these interns do that actually provide any value to their organizations such that they deserve much in the way of pay?

Something, or they wouldn’t be there. Unless businesses are run like governments, and everybody has a job but does nothing because that’s how governments roll.

The companies that do bother, do it to identify people that might add value upon further training. People with creativity, initiative, good work habits, personality – all stuff that is hard to access in a 1 hr interview, but which tends to become apparent over a multi-week internship. Its precisely to give opportunity to people who might be better employees in reality than might appear obvious on paper or in a one off interview.

And if they are worth having around, they are worth paying. “The laborer is worthy of his hire” is an idea that goes back to at least the 1st century. Or is that old-fashioned thinking, now?

Once hired, the person will draw a paycheck and more money will be spent on training and mentoring. The further training will also have a cost – an outlay in real time and real dollars to make said person a value to the organization. In most professional environments you’re pretty happy if you can break-even on a new hire inside of a year, maybe 18months. Even then, usually more than one third quit for any number of reasons in which case the return on the effort is negative.

Or they’ll get fired. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

Jobs aren’t costless to an organization.

Nor to employees, either. They don’t get hired because the organization has a kind heart and is a soft touch.

Likewise, there’s no question that some intern programs are run in a manner which contravenes laws (i.e doing work that should be paid for but isn’t). I doubt the internship described in the OP is that way, but if it is than fine – I’m against breaking laws and slave labor.

Well, I know I feel a lot better now. At least interns aren’t bought and sold; but then again, slaves never got paid…..
Most are not like that. Most are designed as something of a test drive between labor seller and labor buyer. No one would commit to a $50,000 car without a test drive – why commit to a +$50,000 salary without one either. This isn’t about whether the firm should hire people to clean coffee mugs – its about whether it should invest substantial resources in employees that over the short run are worthless, but over the mid- to long term add value to an organization in a variety of ways.

Again, I doubt I’ll persuade anyone why these systems do and should exist. Given the stack of applicants begging to get the opportunities even for zero pay – there must be some value involved to the people who take the jobs, it would be irrational for so many to give away their time for “nothing”

@42
See….if you were my intern, I’d know you were lousy at editing and I’d know not to hire you for a task that involved it.

Far better I should pay you to do a lousy job and then fire you?

Trader Joe@43: If an Rmj were writing on assignment from you to help you in your tasks, yes, you should pay him, even if he does not perform as well as you would like. And if he were your young intern, you should also talk with him, in a supportive manner, about the importance of editing well, so he could benefit from having worked for you. Maybe you’d find that, with a little helpful mentoring, he became a very attractive potential regular employee.
If interns cannot expect guidance and mentorship, they should not be called “interns.”

Maybe people are unclear on what it is that most interns do.

These aren’t people who are digging holes in the ground on a hot day, designing bridges or developing the next iPhone. Mostly they are bright college kids who might think they want to go into – accounting, marketing, finance, policy analysis….whatever, but really don’t have much idea what that is or what people do all day in those jobs – all they know is they will soon have some degree and a butt load of debt that they better figure out how to get a job to pay for.

An intern’s day falls into two broad categories – doing menial work that lightens the load for an existing employee (most likely last year’s intern) and which involves a minimal level of supervision and the slenderest chances of having consequences if screwed up. Filing, copying, running basic errands, waiting for things to be delivered stuff like that. Sometimes they might get to fill numbers into a worksheet – provided there is no way it could get screwed up.

If the intern wasn’t doing it, most likely it either wouldn’t get done (like washing the mugs) or would get done by an existing employee for no additional compensation since said employee is salaried. The benefit of having the intern do these things is that the slightly more experienced employee – who may by now actually have some skills worth using on something more meaningful – is freed up to do such things.

Beyond that, if it’s a good internship, there will be some opportunity to vaguely participate around the fringes of some actual work. Maybe they get to sit in some meetings, or look at drafts of something, see a presentation get made etc. Stuff where the intern can get an idea of whether this is a job they actually want to do and give their energies to, or its just a job that will help pay down their debt that’s better than Starbucks.

An intern is usually assigned a mentor. Predictably some are good and some aren’t. A good one should help answer some questions as arise about how things work and who does what. They might even listen to some creative ideas the intern has. Usually there is a part of the program where the intern is rotated to different areas of the firm so they make a variety of contacts and can see lots of different jobs.

Some mentors are lousy – they ask the intern to pick up their dry cleaning and lunch, don’t let them near anything worthwhile and never introduce them to anyone. In those cases, I’d fully agree the intern is getting screwed by the system.

The #1 payoff for the intern is a job at the place they interned. The second-prize would be the chance to put “Interned at XYZ” on their CV alongside of a bunch of puffed up accomplishments. Employers all know this is bull – but also know that this person at least survived an internship at XYZ and still wants a job in the field and maybe, just maybe, might pick-up their training a little quicker.

I’ve been an intern. I’ve mentored interns. I’ve hired interns. I’ve said ‘Whewwww” I’m so glad this person was just an intern and not an employee….The system, if managed correctly, works very well (IMO) for all concerned.

If managed poorly – yes, it can be unfair to the intern. But don’t take just one side of it. There are cases where employers spend effort on trying to find good interns, begin training them and give them every opportunity only to have that intern join a rival. There’s no sure thing for either side which is why a “test drive” of the arrangement makes sense.

I get the points about classism – in general I’m speaking to jobs that demand a college degree, not “open employment” opportunities. Its true copying doesn’t require a degree, but the internship isn’t about what the person is able to do now – its what they are able to do later that’s being auditioned. The internship isn’t about throwing up barriers to opportunity its about making hires that work for both employer and employee. I’m sorry if some refuse to see this.

@48
How can anyone do anything but generalize from their own understandings?

You can reach your own conclusion about whether the power structure devalues workers. Having been an intern – I played the risk of that vs. the potential reward and chose what I chose and am happy with my decisions. Other will have different outcomes and different views on those outcomes.

The woman in the OP didn’t sound devalued – she sounded somewhat excited about the opportunity to hobnob around policy analysts, wear expensive shoes and polish coffee mugs.

If that’s not you – chose a different path – there’s more than one way to get to nearly any destination. There are far more people who are in their current job having not interned than having interned. Don’t make it sound like these are one-way systems, apart from the medical profession and legal (where interns tend to always be paid) I know of no field where the internship is a firm gate and the only way inside.

A tool? Maybe. But I believe in my own experiences as lived and can recognize the weaknesses when I see them. I don’t think I’ve said the system has no weaknesses – I said it has plusses and minuses that can be managed to mutual benefit.

The outrage would’ve been appropriate if unpaid internship was a requirement for getting hired. But it isn’t.

The fact that upper middle class has an advantage is not at all surprising, and indeed it it’s a feature rather than a bug. Being shocked seems a bit naive.

I currently supervise interns (“co-op students” here) who are part way through an undergraduate degree (usually computer science), and so have less experience than the ones in the article. If I gave them the kind of task that Trader Joe does, I’d be run out of town. At my workplace we have about 30 to 40 interns every semester. They get paid, find their way, and do useful work. It’s not that difficult.

The whole black&white isn’t terribly helpful.
I think internships taken while you’re studying, three month or less duration and with a significant teaching component are perfectly legit, even if they’re unpaid. Having talked to a number of people supervising interns, the tenor is typically that the net average immediate benefit is zero – some turn out to be significant help after two weeks, some are still a drag at the end of twelve. I believe organizations should make an effort to pay interns, both as a matter of social responsibility and for enlightened self-interest: Paid, informative, pre-degree internship are certainly common in fields that aren’t exactly known for disregarding economic calculations (consulting, large law firms, e.g.). Still, if a small NGO, e.g., takes the risk of taking on an intern for the summer and they really can’t afford to pay her/him, but both hope to get something out of it, I think that’s fine. Universities are in the best position to monitor and potentially blacklist such summer internships and I think they should do more of that.

But six months unpaid internships for someone with a graduate degree is just exploitation. No one can tell me that you can’t train someone competent in three months. And the fact that this is common in politically influential fields – media and policy – is indeed troubling.

“At least these young people want to get a job, that’s something…”

What young people do you know that don’t want jobs?

@50
“You can reach your own conclusion about whether the power structure devalues workers. Having been an intern – I played the risk of that vs. the potential reward and chose what I chose and am happy with my decisions. Other will have different outcomes and different views on those outcomes.”
Typical conservative argument; I’ve got mine so fuck you.

I don’t see it that way at all. I worked for what I got. I invested in my own opportunity and made it happen. I worked nights busing tables and doing dishes to pay my way. I bagged groceries, carried a union card as did my father and mother, and cut grass in the summer. I tutored people on the weekends, ate piles of rammen noodles and shared a flat with five guys – don’t tell me about being elittist. Nothing was handed me – I earned it and I know others can too.

I should say also that I’ve seen pretty well every race and nationality come through intern programs – men and women in fairly equal numbers too….

People want companies to hand them something – they are. Something for their resume and some experiences they can use – not the overpriced theoretical crap they get in their fancy university classes.

If you did real work in your internship – I’m glad you got real pay. I hope your employer was pleased – many are not. Too many college kids act like entitled brats, not people willing to earn what is being offered.

If its a conservite agrument – so be it. Don’t let utopia stand in the way of a ‘win-win’ way of doing things. As I said – there are many ways to get a job you want an internship is just one of them – no one makes these kids do this, its a choice among many they can make.

Not all interns/apprentices are unpaid. Many skilled professions that require internships that are paid — doctors, lawyers, computer scientists — have come up in this thread. The wannabe policymaker/wonk is unpaid because every half-clever 24 year old who has seen a handful of West Wing episodes wants to work in that world. Seriously… have you been to NW lately? Supply of this type of bright young thing, which is drawn to power structures like a moth to a flame, is not exactly scarce. And when you increase supply while holding demand constant the results are predictable.

The ones who can do math get paid. The ones who have real area expertise or language skills or relevant experience (often) get paid. The ones who are just attracted by the halls of power are not.

Frankly, I don’t want even more people to be attracted to DC. I’d rather them do something more productive with their lives. So I’m happy for the DC intern to be unpaid, because I don’t want them to be encouraged. If they’re cleaning coffee mugs with a master’s degree then they are not essential components of the functioning of the Republic. If that means rich kids are cleaning coffee mugs for free, well that sounds like something approaching social justice to me.

@Kindred – well, but in the longterm, the people in DC make the rules (and, given revolving doors, good money). Sure, you can say people should take out loans for those internships if they pay out over the long term, but even if they qualified – which many poorer kids likely don’t – that’s always more of a theoretical than a practical solution. I think it _is_ vital for the functioning of the republic that policy elites aren’t made up of a narrow sliver of the economic elite.

fyi: http://www.amazon.com/Intern-Nation-Nothing-Little-Economy/dp/product-description/1844678830.

This whole discussion, and the link provided by geo, remind me of the larger context in which we should perhaps be thinking about internships at every level (a context I alluded to in an earlier comment), namely: are employers expected to pay for training their employees, or is the taxpayer (via publicly funded schools and some forms of financial aid), or is the academy (e.g., private colleges’ private sources of income), or the employee her/himself (whether through tuition or non- or low-paying internships)? Presumably some mix is needed and appropriate, a mix that isn’t easy to work out, but in recent years employers have increasingly depended on anyone but themselves to shoulder the costs of educating employees, as if this were their right. Certainly helps their bottom line.

Who does the filing of paperwork in your place and what is their career progression like?

This is the important question, I think. Where I’ve worked, for example, supervisors are who makes (made) copies, because they are the ones with copies to make. Technical staff doesn’t have managerial/clerical tasks delegated to them. There are places that separate those job functions. Some of them have career paths from professional to management. Some of them see the professional staff as infra dig and not really the jobs that count no matter how far up they go, how well known they are in the field, and how many degrees and publications they have. Some of them have shadow career paths in some number of professionals are hired who are members of the economic elite and so can be promoted to management “safely” when the time comes. (So they say. I, never having been on that track, wouldn’t know.) Some of them have entirely different career tracks. Most of the comments don’t distinguish between these in any clear way.

“Nothing was handed me – I earned it and I know others can too.”

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/free-markets-and-the-myth-of-earned-inequalities/

Meredith:
I would still be calling them spike heels but I noticed a few years ago no one else was. I would still be calling flip-flops thongs if that wouldn’t get me weird looks.

Anyone else wondering if the Labor Department has anything to add to this discussion?

Trader Joe (emphasis mine):

An intern’s day falls into two broad categories – doing menial work that lightens the load for an existing employee…

This is illegal, unless the intern is earning minimum wage. Otherwise, the rule is that “The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.”

Trader Joe:

The benefit of having the intern do these things is that the slightly more experienced employee – who may by now actually have some skills worth using on something more meaningful – is freed up to do such things.

DOL:

If an employer uses interns as substitutes for regular workers or to augment its existing workforce during specific time periods, these interns should be paid at least the minimum wage and overtime compensation for hours worked over forty in a workweek.

Trader Joe:

The #1 payoff for the intern is a job at the place they interned.

DOL:

The internship should be of a fixed duration, established prior to the outset of the internship. Further, unpaid internships generally should not be used by the employer as a trial period for individuals seeking employment at the conclusion of the internship period. If an intern is placed with the employer for a trial period with the expectation that he or she will then be hired on a permanent basis, that individual generally would be considered an employee under the FLSA.

adam.smith:

I think internships taken while you’re studying, three month or less duration and with a significant teaching component are perfectly legit, even if they’re unpaid.

As far as I can tell, these internships are legit, so long as the teaching component is 100% of the internship.

This should not be confusing: if your labor benefits The Man, then The Man owes you a check.

I reckon its easy to tell which people in this thread are in the sheltered workshop of academia.

Not that academia shouldn’t be a bit sheltered – man does not live by GNP alone and anyway people need space and security to advance knowledge, so it makes sense even for maximising GDP alone. But it does mean that it’s a distinctive workplace fairly sheltered from capitalism’s remorseless economic logic, and the sheltered often do not seem to have the imagination to understand what it is like to be out in that storm (for both employer and employee, BTW), let alone how we could build better shelters from it.

My only objection here is not to the notion of a tournament to allocate very limited and desirable places (wannabe policy wonks are always in massive oversupply – as a career policy analyst I do know how lucky I’ve been), but to the irrational spaces in which the tournament is sometimes played. An employer who judges ANY employee by their taste in shoes or their parents’ assets is just a fool. Unfortunately fools abound, so I’m afraid the article’s advice is probably sound.

But it does mean that it’s a distinctive workplace fairly sheltered from capitalism’s remorseless economic logic, and the sheltered often do not seem to have the imagination to understand what it is like to be out in that storm

well, or they disagree with the fact that 95% of society should have to live entirely unsheltered. Esping Anderson describes the function of well-working welfare states as de-commodifying labor. I think that’s exactly the point – people’s livelihood shouldn’t be under any type of “remorseless logic,” including an economic one. And TINA isn’t really an argument.

I have to say, coming from a background of small manufacturing companies, with an emphasis on efficiency and pride in running a lean operation, that the idea of having interns is actually offensive. The workplace ought not to be so slack that it could tolerate the participation of clueless and over-privileged assistants. The presence of interns says something less than complimentary about the nature of the work done in the places that enlist them, perhaps that it’s more a matter of who you are than what you can do.

Regarding shoes: someone wrote that she wore athletic shoes while taking the subway and walking to her job, switching to heels when she got to her building, then kicking them off once behind her desk. Eminently sensible and utterly senseless.

Many years ago it was not uncommon to see young teens at the opera with their parents, wearing little black dresses with Doc Martens. It seemed bizarre at first, but then pumps started looking even stranger. My beach town now has two seasons: flip-flops and boots, the more zippers and buckles the better.

Tom Slee: I was responding to the original post, and had in mind the sorts of places that recruit interns from elite institutions. I have no doubt that interns can benefit from exposure to working environments, and some institutions may well obtain some value in return, but surely it matters what sort of work they do.

In support of Tom Slee @82: I would hazard that often small businesses and such get involved in internship programs with local colleges because their managers are eager not to exploit labor but to “be involved with” and “help” “the young.” Those of us who teach late adolescents/young adults all the time can complain a lot about them (boy, can we!), but mostly we do appreciate how lucky we are to spend so much time and energy with them. (As for energy, I should say “from them.”)

My husband had a long conversation on the phone the other day with a local business person who was very upset that he had had to deliver a report on a student (his first intern) that meant she wouldn’t get course credit for her summer internship with him. This man had had such high hopes — as if we teachers are always having Mr. Chips experiences — and he thought he must have failed somehow. My husband assured him that this particular student was a problem in the classroom, too. (Basically, failing to show up. First rule of life and all that.) Said student the exception rather than the rule, I hasten to add, among the students my husband teaches. But this poor, disappointed local business person/citizen/neighbor, who had only wanted to help and had hoped to be inspired by the energy of youth.

All this distant from my own students’ more la-de-da internships (for which they’ll seldom receive academic credit — only, e.g., if they’re “shadowing” local doctors for a J-term course). But in the end, all these internships should be about the same thing: transmission, tradition, inter-generational support. Which should include financial support, without which not for all the rest.

bad Jim, I have been thinking of you as the kind of good local business person my husband was talking to, even if I responded to Tom Slee and you don’t employ interns. (Something in your tone…. Not that your comments are responses to mine.) You are not the problem. The problem, maybe, isn’t individuals — there are lots and lots of good people with good motives and intentions all around. The challenge is effectively mobilizing all those good motives and intentions while avoiding, individually and collectively, the insidious temptations of exploitation, to which we are ALL susceptible.

Perhaps I am naive, but I would guess that the lobbyists from the OP also see their internships as well-intended efforts to train the next generation. With the long work hours and the coffee-mug cleaning as useful lessons in humility, presumably a valuable exercise for rich graduates from elite schools. Also hazing, as DD says. Become one of the the club by being exploited by the club.

For all I know, this really is a good way to train and select new lobbyists, and the interns are getting a good opportunity even at zero pay for long hours. But it still oozes exclusionism.

If you have a hundred qualified applicants for a job you’re gonna need some sort of exclusionism, aren’t you? It used to be you needed a family member in the union to get you a job at the plant, now you need a family member who can support you while you work for the movie studio for free. Not sure which is worse.

Once you get into fields where finding good people is difficult then you start seeing internships used as a recruiting tool. Good pay, interesting work, maybe the occasional field trip, all in the hopes that they’ll either come back and accept a full-time job. Or at least tell all their friends that your company is a good place to work.

I also don’t get the thing about hazing. I’ve never worked anywhere with hazing. Hazing is a disgusting form of bullying. Throwing the concept around as if it is something inevitable that we should formalize in the form of an internship program marks you out as a bully, in my opinion. Someone who wants their bullying to be given institutional approval.

you’re going through a series of menial and unpleasant tasks in order that cognitive dissonance will set in and you will be more loyal to them. It’s a hazing process, like the ones that have been independently discovered by more or less every organised group from the British Army to the Sioux to every trading desk ever.

Sidenote: I have never been a Sioux ( that looks wrong as a singular noun. A Siou? A Sioul?) so can’t comment, but the British Army AFAIK doesn’t do hazing in the sense of deliberately give people menial, unpleasant and pointless tasks to do in order to build camaraderie. Things have moved on from the days of Windsor Davies ordering people to cut lawns with scissors and clean toilets with toothbrushes.
A lot of the training is admittedly unpleasant and does build camaraderie, but it’s necessarily unpleasant: you spend hours tabbing across the Brecon Beacons because being able to tab cross country for hours is actually a useful skill.
For one thing, hazing is a waste of people’s time. For another, it’s a waste of people.

It’s notable that hazing survives in organisations where optimum performance is not quite so critical. If a trader does a really culpably bad job one day, no one dies. Most of the time, no one (except maybe the other people on his desk) even notices. He can steal millions or lose tens of millions without ringing any alarm bells, and nine times out of ten the alarm bells will be ignored. There’s a lot of slack in that system. But the public sector (military and civilian) is doing work that’s rather more important and therefore it has to have a more professional attitude: it can’t afford the sort of slack that hazing implies.

bad Jim: clarification accepted and sorry for misinterpreting.

Trader Joe, please forgive us if we don’t share your efficient market view of finance.

100: Trader Joe, that would be nice but it just ain’t the case. See the recent trials of, for example, Kweku Adoboli and Jerome Kerviel. Those guys were losing millions with no one noticing. They were ringing alarms almost weekly that were ignored: Kerviel triggered (IIRC) 93 separate alerts, none of which were properly acted on. Those guys were not working at minor banks – they were at UBS and SG, both leading banks. The control system at those banks, and at many others, was indeed “fundamentally broken”. But, because what they were doing had such minor real-world consequences, it was able to continue for years at a time in that state; had they been air traffic controllers, someone would have noticed rather sooner that things were amiss, because they’d have seen the columns of black smoke rising from scattered sites all around the perimeter of London Heathrow Airport.

You may think you’re in a well-controlled, well-regulated industry. Maybe your bit of it actually is. But the industry-wide picture is very different.

A) I love the “those don’t count, they happened in (sniff) Europe” argument. Sorry, that one won’t work.

B) “It’s a great control system! It only fails to work when people try to avoid it!” HAHAHAHAHA no. On that basis my house is safe from burglars thanks to the large PLEASE DO NOT BURGLE THIS HOUSE sign outside, which will work perfectly as a defence unless some blighter tries to actively circumvent it.

C) If someone can ring 92 alarm bells with nothing happening, and only get a reaction on the 93rd, then p(alarm is ignored) is probably rather larger than one in a million.

Trader Joe’s position I think misses the point, which is that internships may be well used in his industry, but still used badly in others.

And particularly, the concern is that the structure of internships in the policy industry contributes to the groupthink in that industry – via the exclusionary selection of people who can’t afford to be unpaid (and indeed, put in so many hours that a second job is impractical.)

@105
Thanks for the thoughtful rebuttal ajay. I’m sure the Daily Mail has it right and the legions of people at the SEC, Federal reserve and 22 other organizations which oversee different parts of trading platforms are all clueless and the tens of thousands of folks are nothing but Viking plunderers with keyboards. That seems a correct conclusion.

@108 You’re absolutely correct that this example is an aggregious abuse of an unpaid internship and the company involved should rightly be punished.

“Trader Joe’s position I think misses the point, which is that internships may be well used in his industry, but still used badly in others.”

I think its clear enough that they arent well used in his industry though, if they’re used to send someone to get coffee. Whatever happened to the days when someone used to be paid to run to the shops, make the tea etc? That was/is a real genuine job, all thats happened is theyve undercut it with free labour
At the very least these days most places deliver for bulk orders

Ahhh. Now I see. You understand that there is a difference between trading and banking right? Just because both things happen in the same building doesn’t make them the same. If you think the financial crisis was caused by trading you’re not really on the right page. Since you seem to be more interested in making hyperbolic reactionary comments than trying to understand the difference, I’ll just leave it there.

“reactionary”
That word…. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Trader Joe @ 113:
Adoboli and Kerviel were traders employed by banks, though. More widely, didn’t the lack of a clear dividing line between different types of activity in the financial sector make 2008 much worse than it could have been?

There is another real loss in having a menial get coffee (even more so if the senior staff get menials to get coffee) and that is the chance to talk to that person who you couldn’t get a real meeting with in the line!