Last week, Intern X interviewed the new interns. This week, Interns B and C started working at the TV production company. They're both unpaid, they're both blanked by senior staff, but they have seriously different interning styles...
B and C, the interns it was up to me to interview, began work on Monday to a minimum of fanfare and what, for one of them, would turn into a maximum of fuss.
The production company are looking to cast a planned reality series set in a countryside farming community, are in the process of editing the pilot of a consumer affairs programme, and are waving off various team members to film interviews in New York, the Netherlands and, um, Norwich for a show about architecture and design that I can virtually guarantee no one will ever watch. So, even though the new interns are much needed, no one (apart from me) has found the time to say hello to them, let alone discuss the work they’re meant to be doing.
Intern B, an immensely likable student whose initial shyness decreased dramatically as the Valium she’d taken to help her recover from the weekend wore off, seems unbothered by this. She’ll later tell me, apparently to make conversation, that she was a “little bit stoned” at her interview too. Her main role will eventually be to help M promote shows via Twitter, Facebook and other social media, for which she apparently need not be fully sentient. She’s spent the last few days getting some practice in by spending her time instant messaging her friends about plans for next weekend, and more pressingly, asking me if I have any codeine or anti-nausea pills she could take?
Intern C is a different character altogether. She gained an interest in a television career when, aged 16, she appeared in an especially cankerous reality series about good-looking young people that was shown as part of a terrestrial channel’s Sunday morning hangover slot. She was an offered an internship not just because of this previous experience – by God, can the girl bore on about TV production and camera angles – but also because of her ambition. There’s no doubt she has the looks to turn her goal of becoming a presenter into a reality and, bearing in mind what happened next, the balls.
After being introduced to the office on their first morning, B and C were treated to the opinions of one of the company’s production managers, a woman so insecure that she dislikes anyone without at least her level of seniority – and, for that matter, a penis – sitting next to her lest she miss out on any conversations or alliances that could prove useful to her career.
“The thing about interns,” she sighed loudly, “is that we really need them to do the donkey work but it is so time-consuming and irritating to have to talk to them.”
“Are you talking about me?” asked C, who was standing next to her, waiting to be allocated a desk and PC, at the time.
The production manager, never usually a woman to gesture when verbalised rudeness will do, declined to answer, and instead raised a single eyebrow in what one might term “challenge”.
“Well, you can f**k off,” said C.
Next week: find out what happened next...
More Intern X:
Interviewing your replacement
NYC vs London
Image: good secretary by anniebee, available under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.