Get in on the ground floor
“You’re terrific,” he tells me. “Your resume is terrific. You never know where you could end up.”
Which is all to say that the internship is unpaid.
“You make it sound like an elevator.”
“That’s the spirit.” He’s wearing a shirt that I suspect his wife picked out—a thin polo, mercerized cotton, different coloured pinstripes woven in at one-inch intervals. After four summers at Parker’s cleaners, I know what an entry-level position looks like.
“Would you consider offering an honorarium?” My friend, Bernice, likes to say If you don’t ask, the answer’s always no. Bernice hasn’t encountered a lot of no.
“Last year’s intern is now our social media specialist.”
Six months scouring Twitter for good re-tweets, writing service articles for their newsletters, and ghost-writing blog posts for the executive team. Last week, there was a notice with my student loan statement, the government reminding me to report any garnish-able wages.
“What does it say on the label of your shirt?”
“Eddie Bauer?”
“Where do you think the person who stitched it is now? The mezzanine? The basement?”
He looks at me perplexed. He’s just offered me the position and this is not the transaction of gratitude he was expecting.
“That’s the problem with an elevator.” I stand up and collect my clippings folder. “You don’t always know if it’s going up or down.”
(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson)
That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here
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