When I graduated from Carleton last June, I already had an interview lined up for a graphic design internship at a nearby marketing group. I feel comfortable writing about this now because six months have passed, and I now have a steady part-time job at a legitimate Twin Cities institution (note emphasis). I’m still not going to mention the name of the marketing group (like Lord Voldemort) except by the initials JMG (which I also feel comfortable doing because there are many, far more legitimate establishments with the same initials). This is the story of my six-week stay as a graphic design intern at JMG. This is the story of the worst internship.
At the time I interviewed for the internship, I was using Craiglist to look for design-related jobs, which I know now only leads to dead ends and sleazy marketing jobs. Virtually all the internships listed are unpaid (which is a necessary evil) and for small businesses, and the part- or full-time jobs are generally for service or entertainment industry establishments in the far suburbs of the Twin Cities. One thing about the far suburbs: while I’m sure they’re fine places for raising kids, and they’re less expensive places than cities, the businesses you find there are exactly the ones you’d expect to take advantage of cheap property and low taxes. The kind that don’t care about being in a competitive, innovative environment and would rather focus exclusively on making money — including hiring unpaid labor.
The president and CEO of JMG contacted me a few hours after applying for the job, and I interviewed the following Monday. There’s one warning sign right off the bat: a company whose president interviews candidates for an internship (much less an entry-level job) clearly doesn’t have enough employees or work to constitute needing interns. But JMG did want interns, in large numbers. Later that day, after emailing the president (from here on out, whom I’m calling “Bossman”) to thank him for the interview, I got a reply saying welcome aboard, I’d be working four days a week, seven hours a day. It’s a stretch, but maybe not outrageous, for a company to expect student interns who are getting college credit to work 28 hours a week without pay. But I was a college graduate, as were two of my fellow interns (one with kids, at that). I was desperate, and didn’t know anything about internships, or design, even. So I was happy to start working for Bossman.
The next week, I showed up for the first day of my internship. I met Bossman’s assistant, who took me upstairs to meet the other interns. There were three of them, two Indian women in their late 20s or early 30s and a Ukrainian guy with a year left at the University of Minnesota. I thought it was weird that there were only two full-time, paid employees, and twice as many interns. But that’s just how business goes, I guessed! The big project of the summer, which the programmers were already working on was a personal finance management system. The product is good in theory — like Mint.com, it keeps watch over your expenses, draws up charts, graphs, that sort of thing. Unlike Mint, which is free to use, JMG’s system costs a ridiculous $60 a month. It was clearly doomed from the start, actually being less easy to use (and a good deal uglier) than every other finance management software and site. Of course, if the project is being supported by unpaid labor, the actual costs of web hosting, servers, etc. can be made up by just a few subscribers to the site. Had I stayed much longer than I did, I’m sure I would have been asked to get myself an account and start tracking my spending.
I only know a bit of HTML and CSS, so my involvement with the project was less intense than the actual coders. I got a company account to download some stock photos (don’t get me started), and resized a few other images, but that was about it, other than working on the logo. My first day in I was real excited to make a new, minimalist logo in the style of Mint, rather than the overly formal, serrif-ed logo Bossman had in place. I spent a couple of days on it, with the most constructive comment from Bossman being “Can you make it look like it’s made of gold bars?” before reverting to the original logo. Oh well. Since I wasn’t needed for the website as much, I ended up spending some time on promotional materials for Bossman’s speaking tour. In addition to being the head of a marketing group, he had written a book on getting out of debt. I took a look at a copy lying around, and thought I had picked up a Bible by mistake — there were almost more quotes from scripture than there was text written by Bossman. Religious references have their place, and that place is definitely not a book on getting out of debt. The rest was made up of incredibly vague information that was almost certainly a waste of money for anybody who purchased it.
It should be pretty clear that this wasn’t actually the worst internship in the history of unpaid employment. I’m a little bitter that I was stupid enough to waste a month at JMG under Bossman. Toward the end of July, I sent an ultimatum to him that, in a nutshell, asked to be paid or I was leaving. Bossman’s response not only wished me on my way, but also claimed that he had a check ready to show his appreciation for me that I wouldn’t be getting. He was spiteful, stupid, and greedy, and I have no doubt that it was for the best that I left the internship early. Bottom line, kids — you shouldn’t take an internship that doesn’t fulfill at least one of these three criteria:
- A reasonable monetary compensation.
- The business/group has a name that means something.
- The boss is not greedy, spiteful, and stupid.
And if you can get all three of those in an internship, well then hot damn, you’re doing pretty well for yourself.
