Universal Intern Eval

Let's talk about job evals, shall we?

This is the first company out of the six I've graced with my presences that has decided to include me in the job evaluation cycle.

See, the company I work for just did a little eval of themselves, found themselves unsatisfactory and went through a name change. Ah, change is in the air...I smell a reorg. These are fun to watch, especially when you're only tangentially involved. Sometimes, like my last job that I'll call "publishing" from now on, I move from one cube to another to make way for the poor bastards who had to move from the headquarters office (two blocks away) to my office (shared with many people, all of whom were far more important than us--our keycards often failed and we were last on the upgrade li$t). Other times, I'm either doing more or less, depending on how much...or little...my boss was doing prior to the eval.

In this case, they called us into a lunch meeting. It's clever, really, these lunch meetings. They get you to work for another hour by paying for your lunch that you didn't want anyway. I guess that's what creative people do--they create new ways to keep their employees working longer hours for the same amount of money. Everyone froze when HR walked in.

They assured everyone, they were only doing a survey, that they were indeed curious as to what we did on the other side of the office. Someone got brave and asked what happens when you have the same title as someone else--but do different things. The response was a clever demotion/promotion: "We'll probably reassign titles." I thought of business cards...but they were thinking salary.

That's one of the few perks of being an intern--that we're paid by the hour....but that's for another day. (Don't forget, interns are usually paid around minimum wage. They can't really demote us, we're the bottom).

Anyway, the entire point of this is that I failed to sign up for a job eval because I thought, as most people do, that interns are basically redundant universally. I was wrong. I got a perky email from my recently-engaged, former model, HR assistant (she enjoys volunteering all this information) asking me when I could meet for a job eval. She was slightly snubbed that I'd failed to sign up earlier.

Today was my eval. We chit chatted, then she preceeded to tape record everything I said because she types slower than Helen Keller.

The questions were beyond redundant:
Q: What does your job entail:
A: Writing press releases, pitches, putting together media lists, making portfolios

Q: What skills does your job require:
A: Writing ability and organization.

Q: Describe your typical day:
A: (I'll spare you)

Q: Who do you report to:
A: *names of my two bosses*

Q: How do you decide what to do during the day:
A: Talk to my two bosses

Q: If there is a problem, how do you solve it?
A: I talk to my bosses.

Q: Do you report to anyone:
A: ...are you serious?

Let's face it folks. If there are 5 interns over here in the PR department, it stands to figure that at least one of us could give you all of the information you'll ever need about our job description and if you don't want to talk to any of us, then hell, just remember your days as an intern...since you interned here.

Since when are the questions: "How do you make your decisions" and "Does anyone report to you" ever applicable to interns? I love even more than HR asks us so seriously if there is anyone who reports to us. Of course not! We're babied with copy work until suddenly, they realize that we're capable...and move onto portfolio creation.

Interns of the world, I ask you this--does anyone ever report to you? No.
Perhaps we should be running the office if the people who are about to restructure us are asking us these kinds of questions.

Eval'ed,

The Intern