Once again I identify with boy, though at least I got a job at the end of it. Also it was called ‘work experience’, and I had nothing else to do with those two weeks anyway.
In all a better outcome than Creative Industry School, where I paid to learn that I have no place in Creative Industry.
Augh. High School work experience at an IT shop. Learned more about the 4 employees’ coffee preferences than about computers in that week. All I really did was fetch coffee and Subway – I never even got to see a computer being built, let alone get to touch any components. I got free coffee and Subway for a week though.
…I just got my first internship today, I’ll be helping relocate refugees all summer. And it seems I’m in Boy’s camp–no school credit, no pay, just there for the exposure and experience.
Internships: The luxury (to be excited for the ‘opportunity’) to work for free, usually granted because one knows the right people, as an additional requirement to be ‘qualified’ to work for money. Glad we’ve outgrown nepotism. Capitalists do it ruthlessly indeed – or at least that’s what I call getting screwed…
See also: journalism. Where an internship is billed as “experience” and “networking” but is really the students form of slave labor. One intern who worked for a magazine in Ottawa got to pack and ship magazines to the places they sold the magazine; four months and no pay.
Man, I can see why this sort of thing you have to do in your early twenties. No way in hell I’d be down to work for free for anyone anymore. I’d have a hard enough time working for the same guy what signs my paychecks nowadays.
At least with government jobs, it’s all at something of a remove, yes? Your boss may be a prick, but he doesn’t control your access to food and shelter.
I don’t think I would do work experience again, but my life choices are what I like to euphemistically call ‘badly informed’. Five years after high school, some useless degrees and no real history of employment… no contacts whatsoever… I’m not too proud to work for free to learn ANYTHING that might help me get an actual job.
had you been reading/were you aware of the concurrence of this theme in the nyt? that article was so depressing…even more so since i was never the type to have connections that would land me the privilege of being used by others…i had to earn all my workplace abuse with lots of earwax and elbow grease. O_O <–sad innocent lower class waif face
Gibbon said something to the effect that luxury is how wealth is redistributed to the poor. I think that nowadays minor luxuries are how they keep us working.
I mean, if not for computers, and internet access, and cars and hotel parties and good whiskey and road trips and energy drinks and fast food and cable television and then and then and then. . . I’d barely have to work at all. But I think I’d be sad. I don’t want to be left out of all the fun, do I? So I spend the majority of my waking hours working.
April 22, 2010
First in!!!
I’m employing an intern at my office this summer. Yes, she’ll get credit AND be paid. No, I don’t have any more openings…
April 22, 2010
Ouch… that one touched a nerve…
April 22, 2010
Damn, Boy. I wouldn’t want to be exposed as the person who works for free.
April 22, 2010
Once again I identify with boy, though at least I got a job at the end of it. Also it was called ‘work experience’, and I had nothing else to do with those two weeks anyway.
In all a better outcome than Creative Industry School, where I paid to learn that I have no place in Creative Industry.
April 22, 2010
Augh. High School work experience at an IT shop. Learned more about the 4 employees’ coffee preferences than about computers in that week. All I really did was fetch coffee and Subway – I never even got to see a computer being built, let alone get to touch any components. I got free coffee and Subway for a week though.
April 22, 2010
…I just got my first internship today, I’ll be helping relocate refugees all summer. And it seems I’m in Boy’s camp–no school credit, no pay, just there for the exposure and experience.
April 23, 2010
Internships: The luxury (to be excited for the ‘opportunity’) to work for free, usually granted because one knows the right people, as an additional requirement to be ‘qualified’ to work for money. Glad we’ve outgrown nepotism. Capitalists do it ruthlessly indeed – or at least that’s what I call getting screwed…
April 23, 2010
See also: careers in the arts.
April 24, 2010
I look forward to reading these comments as much as the comic itself.
April 24, 2010
See also: journalism. Where an internship is billed as “experience” and “networking” but is really the students form of slave labor. One intern who worked for a magazine in Ottawa got to pack and ship magazines to the places they sold the magazine; four months and no pay.
April 24, 2010
Man, I can see why this sort of thing you have to do in your early twenties. No way in hell I’d be down to work for free for anyone anymore. I’d have a hard enough time working for the same guy what signs my paychecks nowadays.
At least with government jobs, it’s all at something of a remove, yes? Your boss may be a prick, but he doesn’t control your access to food and shelter.
Not that I’m a closet collectivist.
April 24, 2010
I don’t think I would do work experience again, but my life choices are what I like to euphemistically call ‘badly informed’. Five years after high school, some useless degrees and no real history of employment… no contacts whatsoever… I’m not too proud to work for free to learn ANYTHING that might help me get an actual job.
I like to think of myself as a cautionary tale.
April 25, 2010
il mow my parents yard for free and then pay a kid $15 to mow my own. i feel like i may be missing something…
April 26, 2010
had you been reading/were you aware of the concurrence of this theme in the nyt? that article was so depressing…even more so since i was never the type to have connections that would land me the privilege of being used by others…i had to earn all my workplace abuse with lots of earwax and elbow grease. O_O <–sad innocent lower class waif face
April 30, 2010
Gibbon said something to the effect that luxury is how wealth is redistributed to the poor. I think that nowadays minor luxuries are how they keep us working.
I mean, if not for computers, and internet access, and cars and hotel parties and good whiskey and road trips and energy drinks and fast food and cable television and then and then and then. . . I’d barely have to work at all. But I think I’d be sad. I don’t want to be left out of all the fun, do I? So I spend the majority of my waking hours working.
June 7, 2010
And the moral of the story is… USSR was the best country in the world which had guaranteed and obligatory employment for 100% population!
September 17, 2013
That’s so 2000s … oh , wait, still in there.