Welcome to Intern Horrors, the weekly feature wherein hard-working kids with good heads on their shoulders try to get a leg up in the working world, and bosses complain about the sadsacks wasting everyone's time for four credit hours at State U.
This week, we have a theme. That theme is sexual harassment. I'm keeping all the submissions anonymous because I think—depending on the state—crimes have been committed. Without further delay, let's get to the nitty-gritty.
Anonymous:
I was a chef for the better part of my adult life, and as anyone in the kitchen can tell you...interns take an absolute beating. Mostly verbal and emotional, but sometimes physical.
I was a senior line cook at a hotel a few years back, and we got a new group of interns. Our internship was notoriously difficult, as we were busy as all hell, and a bunch of complete jerks to "newbies". Most of us did it in fun, and knew the line, and ended up teaching them many valuable lessons they will never use again.
In this new group of interns was a kid who was about 6'8", 290 lbs...imagine JaMarcus Russell with a brain in his head. Smart kid, but pretty quiet. Quiet in a professional kitchen is like blood in a shark tank, so the vicious ones show their teeth. I felt sorry for the kid and tried to help him out, as I could see he wasn't dealing well with the hazing. One night, a cook locked him in the walk-in refrigerator...this is where it gets ugly...and why you don't fuck with people too much in a kitchen.
I get into the kitchen area, where everyone is laughing hysterically, just as this kid kicks the door down from the inside of the walk-in. He's pissed...I mean, badly pissed. He figures out in short order who did the deed, and picks up a knife to go after the guy. It ends with me talking gently to him to give me the knife as he's crying and screaming at the cook he's just cornered, and will soon dismember. He gives the knife up, cries in the fetal position, and later drives himself home(I didn't call the cops...I felt way too bad for the kid).
Needless to say, he never came back. The bright point was that another intern, who was all of 5' and 100 lbs with giant tits, gave me blowjobs all summer because she accidentally cut my finger. Bonus!
This one isn't so much a sexual harassment issue, but there is definitely an unsafe work place vibe going on here. And why just use the part about getting a beej for the end. Were they bad blowies? How many more stupid terms for oral sex can I throw in here?
Anonymous II:
I really do wish this was a drunken hook up story instead of an intern story. I am a pharmacist, 7 years ago I had a pharmacy student interning during her summer break. She was not attractive but was fun to be around and not really ugly. We soon started flirting; I arranged the schedule to maximize the amount of time we worked together. Soon there was incidental contact; our hands would touch reaching for tape or handing off bottles. During slow times we started giving each other shoulder rubs, oh it so hard and stressful working in a pharmacy, the shoulder rubs turned into back rubs, during one extremely slow Saturday, the back rubs turned into front rubs, when the cashier went on break, we slipped in the back of the pharmacy where no one can see us, She bent over the office chair, her skirt went up and panties off, I start pounding her, as we were finishing up we heard someone coughing and clearing their throat at the register, she walked out and waited on the customer, I went back to the pharmacy counter, I look over, she is ringing up someone's prescription, spooge running during her leg, yes I am a MAN. Turns out not enough ran down her leg, she ended pregnant. We got married (not the smartest thing I have ever done, but hey I am the guy having unprotected sex with a case of condoms less than 2 feet away) We had a baby, we got divorced, I get to pay child support for about 10 more years. Oh yeah I got another intern this summer, she is old for an intern (35 ish) and married, I am so going to fuck her before the end of July.
Didn't you learn your lesson? Stop fucking people in the pharmacy! That's where I would get my asthma inhalers if I needed asthma inhalers!
Anonymous III:
So I worked for the oil and gas company out of Houston and we always hired a lot of interns. The interns that were in my group were living in the small town in East Texas that the wells that we were operating were in. In order to start the job, you have to get a physical. There is not any real physical exertion in this job, but it was still company policy. So these kids are all typically 18-22 years old. The physical form is designed for all possible situations. On one section of the form is the portion that is for the prostate exam. Needless to say, most doctors just hit that with an N/A and move on. Never had I heard of any intern actually having to go through this process. Remember, they are 18-22 year old kids, no need to check their oil. Until this summer. We had three interns this summer. One went to his own doctor in his college town and was cleared to work when he arrived. The other two, not so forward looking. They both go to the doctor together on their first day to get checked out. Let's just say, the doctor in this East Texas town was, well, very thorough. These two kids then made one fatal mistake. They came back and told someone. The oilfield is quite a crude place to work, so, let's just say these guys were the butt of many jokes for the rest of their time there.
It sounds like that doctor might be a kiddy diddler. Everything I have ever heard about the subject—yeah, I read about butt health from time to time, just like the rest of you—is that prostate exams aren't really necessary until you're in your 40s. Or is that just when you need to get annual exams? I used to play sports and needed a physical for each season, there wasn't a lot of butt stuff going on in the exam rooms, I tells you. Call the police on that country doctor.
Finally this from Anonymous IV:
I found this internship where all crazy internship and sexual encounters occur, Craigslist. It was with a small music licensing company that was struggling with the drop in advertisers using overpriced licenses for their commercials. It was started by a very rich and very crazy guy who made it big the 80s as one of the founders of a popular cable television station dedicated to music videos. The idea was to take the large library the company had and use it to make money. The problem was how to do that.
My boss was having some crazy issues with his sort of girlfriend and was on the phone with her for my entire first day. From what I gathered from the phone calls, (very small office so I heard everything from his side) I'm not calling her a gold digger, but that Kanye song was in my head the entire day. Between obscenities yelled over the phone he tried to tell me about the messed up situation. Apparently, this broad wanted to live at an apartment that he paid for while sleeping with some other guy. I thought at the time that he should probably take this skanky hoe out to the skanky hoe dump, but I didn't know what to say to the guy so I said "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one" and the office (all four of us) exploded with laughter. Remember this is my first day.
Just when I thought my first day couldn't get weirder, after work my colleagues said there was a book signing that they wanted me to go to with them. It was for a book written by Tommy James and was at the Gibson guitar studio on the west side. The studio was amazing and had an open bar and free food. So I immediately hit the bar, but didn't get too crazy because you know, first day.
So you're probably wondering, Who the fuck is Tommy James? Well, you may not realize, but you do know Tommy James and the Shondells. They brought the world some classic hits like "Monay Monay" which is still played at sports stadiums today. As well as other classics pop hits like "I Think We're Alone Now", "Crimson and Clovers" and "Hanky Panky". So Tommy James shows up after a slight delay, and we are mingling with these real important venue promoters and music executive types. People are talking to us because they know that we work for my boss who sent us as a sort of proxy. My colleagues pitch the idea of an indie music website and the music licensing to the suits while I sit back and make friends with the bartender since I don't really know what to say about the company other than talk about the female problems that my boss is having. Anyway, Tommy starts the show and bangs out all the hits in the studio. We got a private concert, free booze and finger food. It was a pretty good first day.
Over the next couple of weeks things got weirder, and I got more responsibilities without a pay raise. I was earning about 50 dollars a day, sometimes when my boss had some cash. My internship responsibilities turned out to be writing the business plan for the start-up website, not usually a job that is done by the intern, but I gave it my best shot.
So my boss was wildly wealthy since he was a part of the group that started a certain music video cable television stations back in the 80s and that worked out well for him. But somewhere down the line he became absolutely bat shit crazy. He also had some serious lady issues. Everyday I came into work he just dealt with this "ex-girlfriend" and talked to her all day while at work. Except for when he was avoiding calls from collection agencies and lawyers who apparently were trying to sue him more often than you would like from your employer. Also, we moved offices across the hall to a smaller office so my desk was up against his, looking directly at each other.
One day while one of the other people in the office was in Dallas trying to close an account for the music licensing business, and the other bro was out doing something in the city, so it was just me and my boss in the office, he started telling the whole saga of him and his "ex-girlfriend".
Apparently he was in trouble for lying to the "ex-girlfriend" about talking to his ex-wife and not telling the "ex-girlfriend" about it. So in retaliation she called and went on a date with a guy who I call Baseball Player John.
**side bar**
My boss said that Baseball Player John was a former Mets. Through my shoddy research I found that in the history of the New York Mets there have been 25 Mets' named John in team history:
Jon Adkins
John Candelaria
John Cangelosi
John Christensen
John Demerit
John Franco
John Gibbons
John Hudek
Jonathan Hurst
Johnny Lewis
John Maine
Jon Matlack
John Milner
John Mitchell
Jonathan Niese
Jon Nunnally
John Olerud
John Pacella
John Stearns
John Stephenson
John Strohmayer
John Sullivan
Jon Switzer
John Thomson
John Valentin
I never met Baseball Player John and all of the following is just what my boss discussed with me while I was trying to work for him for free.
**end of side bar**
My boss tells me that the trouble started when he took his now "ex-girlfriend" to this sex club that he calls "Sodom and Gomorrah". He approached a couple and asked if they wanted to go into a room and fuck. I imagine this is a totally normal conversation at a sex club. The now "ex-girlfriend" wasn't feeling it, but she went along anyway. The other couple happened to be Baseball Player John and some random girl who he brought to Sodom and Gomorrah.
According to my boss, the four of them enter the room and my boss took Baseball Player John's lady and banged it out while Baseball Player John and the "ex-girlfriend" rounded third for a homerun. Unfortunately for my boss he didn't last that long with Baseball Player John's lady of the night. While "ex-girlfriend" and Baseball Player John had something special going on. They continued to screw for an hour and a half using toys and sexual positions that I had never heard of. Now, my boss said that he got a little upset about this because it'd been over 90 minutes, and he just sat there watching them go at it while Baseball Player John's girl left. Apparently, Baseball Player John tried to get my boss involved, with what I imagine was a reference to a pickle, but the "ex-girlfriend" was not feeling it. So my boss tells me he did what any self respecting person who has been watching his girlfriend get bang by a former baseball player for an hour and a half and started playing with himself. When they finally finished, my boss says he saw "the ex-girlfriend" give Baseball Player John's random hoe her number, who in turn gave it to Baseball Player John.
My boss went into further and more horrifying detail, and apparently trouble started back up about a month before I started my internship when the "ex-girlfriend" called up Baseball Player John when she was in a fight with my boss and started sleeping with Baseball Player John on a regular basis while living in an apartment my boss was paying for.
I have no idea why he told me this and didn't ask any questions. I just listened while trying to do projections for how much ad revenue we could expect from online radio stations. It turns out to be between 10 million dollars a week and zero dollars a year.
Anyway, this drama with my boss and the "ex-girlfriend" was still going on and he kept asking me and the other two people in the office advice on what to put in his text messages to her. I tried to stay out of it or just give him simple advice like "kick this bitch out of your house", "stop giving her money", "stop calling her" and "stop being a little bitch", not in those exact words.
I quit that internship a couple of weeks later after I had been promised to see some cash but never did. I did write a 40-page business plan for him though with plenty of business jargon and did my best to play the Dear Abby role. I would say that the internship was a big waste of time, but that is pretty normal for an internship. On the bright side it was really weird, and I do enjoy weird encounters. I did learn a valuable lesson from the internship: Never invite a baseball player to have a foursome with your girlfriend at a sex club because they have stamina.
First off, it was probably Olerud, and you know he wore his batting helmet the whole time. Secondly: You quit "a couple weeks later"? If Daulerio told me graphic stories about his exploits at a swingers club—instead of the PG ones he does now—I would quit as soon as the free lunches and booze ran out. Then again, I'd probably want to go because it's probably some crazy "media swingers club" and Soledad O'Brien would be there.
Interns! Do not be like these anonymous submitters! If things are getting weird, get the hell out of there. Do research on your bosses if you have to. Employers: quit being skeevy. Get ass the way everyone else does: hooking up with people who are on the same career level as you.
That concludes this week's episode. We'll return to some more wholesome programming next week. In the meantime, if you've ever been a particularly tormented intern or justly tormented a particularly bad intern, send in your stories. Subject line: Intern Horrors.