Saturday, October 15, 2011

Submitting Timesheets, OR "When I realized I desperately needed another job"

Actual email that I receive faithfully every two weeks:

All,
This email serves as a friendly reminder that timesheets are due by noon tomorrow.

Please keep in mind that if you are an intern, you must enter your hours using the drop down box selecting “intern" not "regular.”   

Also, Monday October 10th was a holiday.  Please adjust timesheets to reflect.

Log into [this site] to complete your time worked.

If you have already submitted a timesheet, please excuse this email.
Regards,
[Management of Aftan’s company]

I have an uncanny ability to cut through the diplomacy (living in DC is teaching me how to translate politically correct language) and this is what the email really says: 

Hey, you!
This email serves as a sharp and hopefully painful reminder that you are an unpaid intern. Tomorrow at noon – when everyone else is submitting their time sheets ON TIME – you will most likely be slumped in your desk chair, chin in hand (drool possibly running onto your fingers), eyes glazed over as you endlessly “conduct research.” 

Please remember, you are a valued member of our team.  However, you did not receive one of our coveted and rare-as-a-diamond-found-in-that-gross-alley paid internships. If you had, you would enter your hours using the drop down box labeled “scum”, “one step above scum” ,“intern.”

Also, Monday was a holiday. Everyone else enjoyed the day with the full realization that they were simultaneously playing touch football on the Mall and getting paid to play it. You were not getting paid, and you were probably not playing touch football because unpaid interns don’t have friends.

We will not let you log into [this site] to catalogue your hours until we’ve eked every last drop of free labor out of your thin, brittle fingers.

Remember, you are a valued member of our team. And you will continue to receive these emails reminding you of that. Until you die.

Never excuse these emails.

Regards,
[The People To Whom Aftan Sold Her Soul]


Dammit, I need a paying job.

3 comments:

  1. Wait tables!!
    also: you are clever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Remember Affles, employers read this too. Might avoid coloful metaphors

    ReplyDelete
  3. Even when you get paid, people still find ways to let you know that you are their minion. Mmm...

    ReplyDelete

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