AIBU to want to push this intern out of the window

[Rosamund1]

I've got nice shoes older than he is but that's not why I am annoyed.

He is the son of one of the owners friends and he will finish uni next year. This is a small firm so excellent opportunity to get some experience.

I am looking after him and to get him started I asked him to write a couple of pages of the impact a change of legislation may have on our clients. I gave him a full day to produce something. I told him that I acknowledge that at uni you may have days or weeks to write and research, but on the ground clients want answers quickly so it was an excercise in speed as well as content. At the end of the day he said he's not ready. And the next day. FFS.

Then I asked him for a list of for example dentists in a five mile radius because we are going to write to them. A whole day later he produces a handwritten list. My local dentist is not on the list. I told him that the job is not glamorous, there is a lot of admin.

Next, we are having a meeting with a big client. I said he could sit in on the presentation. As preparation please read the file and prepare a one page summary of the background, clients needs & where we are to date. He didn't do it. He just attended the meeting, no prep. Obviously he would not be presenting but come on.

He is scruffy and he mumbles instead of talking. He gives the impression he does not want to be here - forced by parents perhaps. I have looked after other interns before but none like this.

Sometimes I walk past his screen and he has some random internet page open. I ask if he has anything to do and he says no. I told him at the beginning that we can't babysit him, if he is at a loose end he can ask anyone in the team for something.

I'm not going to point out his general lack of interest and uselessness to the boss, who is his mum's friend. I am not going to stick my neck out and say 'You need to stand up straight, tuck your shirt in and look lively.' I will just memorise his name and try and avoid him in a professional context. Or just push him out the window.

I think sit him down and say how you are worried he is not coping very well and that perhaps you have been asking too much of him. Then ask him to make you a cup of tea and say how you are going to really stage things carefully so he doesn't get overwhelmed again. Work up to giving him a duster to polish the computer screens.

My autocorrect changed "duster" to "sister"
I think that might be going a little far.

It does not sound like it's part of his course, it wasn't arranged by the university his parents know the boss.

Maybe this could be the root of the bad attitude?

My parents were both at work at age 16, no internships. Don't think expectations are higher now, think they are the same. At 16 I had work experience and I certainly went around asking how I could help and was given some responsible tasks alongside a LOT of photocopying. But, I turned up on time, was polite and friendly, did as I was told, etc. I never once thought they were expecting too much or too little.

As I worked through uni, those expectations may have changed up a little, but that would fit with having been at work before and maturity.

He sounds shocking. Ask him to write a definition of defenestration?

Also, yes, ask him how he thinks he is going to do tasks and also tell him off when doesn't do it.

If it had to be arranged by his parents it means he was too lazy to sort his own summer employment out - or, he wanted to be there and asked them to sort it for him. Either way, he's not behaving well.

Then give him something really boring and crap to do (Get him to pre prepare all the christmas card enveloppes for clients, hours of handwriting addresses on enveloppes ... or invent something if you have too...).

Anybody else thinking of Will the intern on W1A who messed up the invitations by not grasping that the invitations were pre-addressed and so were the envelopes so it did actually matter which one went into which envelope?

Reading this with interest, as my son has a temporary job at present which he got after a month's unpaid internship (obtained after months and months of emailing round his CV). It's a relief to think he must have been better than the plonkers on this thread!

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I didn't actually specify that the envelopes had to be used or even the client list real.....

This really pisses me off. As a university lecturer, time after time, I see spoilt, lazy students getting internships and jobs on the basis of their parents' connections, while things are so much harder for more talented and hardworking students who only have themselves to rely on. As a society, it holds us all back when we fail to award positions on the basis of merit.

One student (and, yes, it was the laziest, most entitled brat imaginable, with the most horrible attitude) recently tried to demand an extension fom me for an essay because her parents had lined up some work experience for her at the Telegraph over the vacation, and then she was going on holiday. I pointed out to her that most of the other students managed to juggle paid work and studies, and if she didn't feel able to cope with her workload, she should reconsider her holiday and internship. That didn't go down well. Clearly I was expected to bow down to her demands.

Coincidentally I recently spent a bit of time back with one of the first organisations I worked for as a young graduate. (Well not quite the same as they've been through all kinds of changes but anyway..)

It reminded me of how, when I started there (early 80s) I had a two week induction then spent a couple of months during which almost everything I did was supervised, followed by a further year 'on probation'. There is absolutely no comparison between the way I was coddled and the expectations they have of young staff now.

I guess this is colouring my views.

Then give him something really boring and crap to do (Get him to pre prepare all the christmas card enveloppes for clients, hours of handwriting addresses on enveloppes ... or invent something if you have too...).

Reminds me of a trainee we took on straight out of uni who thought he knew it all. We have him a stack of christmas cards, a list of names and addresses and a sheet of stamps and told him to write the envelopes.

Not only did he stick the stamps on the bottom left of the envelopes and write the name & address on the top right, his attention to detail was appalling - nothing but spelling errors, getting the post code wrong, and even some where he missed whole lines of the address. The whole lot had to be shredded and done again - but we made him cut out all the stamps to re-use on the next batch.

That was just one of many examples of his sheer uselessness - he didn't last long but still walked away blaming us all.

Just about to say he sounds like Will from W1A, but Gasp0de beat me to it! Suggest you arrange a short meeting with him, OP; make it like a mini-appraisal so you're both giving feedback. If that doesn't go well, his next task should be opening your office window Very Wide Indeed as you creep up behind him with a big stick !

I feel your pain. I've had a bunch of work experience and intern students and most of them were OK, some amazingly naive but learnt at a reasonable rate, but there was one (with a First from a university that I now can't rate at all, who I had for the summer before he returned to do a PhD) who was a nightmare. Despite his degree in an essay subject he really could not put a two-sentence email together that was even comprehensible, let alone spell-checked, using standard grammar, or with an appropriate tone. Once I banned him from using any semi-colons or commas he could just about manage a sentence that made sense.

Our filing at the time was simple - people wrote a number on the corner of papers, each file had a number, papers got added to the file in date order. So I got him to do a lot of filing, in between grammar lessons.
Until the day we found that hundreds of papers had just been added to files at random and it took our admin staff a week to sort it out, standing over him to make him help. He seriously did not seem to comprehend the problem!

He seemed like a pleasant chap who could hold a conversation, but was just 100% useless!

I still remember fondly the lad who not only was really helpful for a month, but in spare moments made impressive sculptures out of bulldog clips.

You know if the intern is doing any actual work he has to be paid, unless he's doing it as part of his course, or is of school age, or working for a voluntary organisation. So if you want him to actually do any work, pay him.

If it's work experience of the shadowing variety, then he neither does any work, nor gets paid.

Queen, I don't think 'I'm not being paid' justifies 'I'll do no work'.

Why would someone take on an unpaid internship and then waste it doing sweet FA?

If OP's employer is somehow falling foul of labour laws, that's a separate issue.

My nephew has just finished an internship abroad after an intensive course to learn the language. The employers obviously have the same experiences as posters on this thread, because they were surprised and delighted when they realised my nephew would actually turn up on time and do a full day's work.

My best work experience kid was a delight over the two days he was with me. Only at the end, he apologised if he had seemed passive or underwhelmed, but he was having a flare-up of his sickle cell anaemia! I was amazed and told him he had been great.

My workplace has banned children of mates and contacts except school-age children on work experience. We have also joined a scheme to include and fund disadvantaged students on our internship programme, which I am pleased about.

There used to be no end of disgruntlement about people taking the offspring of useful contacts then trying to palm them off on junior colleagues for the duration.

When I have got interns I try to be kind about work/appearance/general cluelessness but I will not tolerate rudeness or dismissiveness AT ALL. I haven't put in all these years to be sneered at by someone who needs help using the big stapler.

It sounds like he doesn't want to be there.

I think I'm going to bow out of this thread. I've worked with interns too ('volunteers' at my workplace) and all I can say is that this isn't my experience at all. I can't remember any being lazy or sneery. A bit gobby and immature and hard work sometimes but then so was I at their age.

My main complaint is that they're so eager to please that when you give them some work that you hope will keep them busy (and out of your hair) for most of the day, they've finished it in a couple of hours. And it does drive me nuts that none of them seem to know the difference between 'there', 'their' and 'they're' but hey.

I guess we must have been lucky and I'm sure there are some very difficult individuals. I'm also not a fan of the internship system full stop. But I'm finding some of the comments on here (not the op's who sounds mostly frustrated) a bit unpleasant to be honest.

Ah - well there you go.

Not being paid means he probably assumes he's there more to observe, like a shadowing position.

Why would you take on any responsibility in admin tasks if not being paid?

He probably resents it as much as you do, tbh. Unpaid internships are a complete disgrace.

In fairness Flo, this is the first time I've experienced someone this bad so I would have agreed with you six months ago.

I also agree that internships should be paid and allocated by merit rather than nepotism, but I don't see the point of signing up for an unpaid internship and yet still not bothering to do the work. It seems a waste of everyone's time to me.

I think internships are a big con, too. Like Flo I was 'inducted', trained to within an inch of my life, and had to pass various benchmarks before becoming a full member of staff. I was paid throughout. I hope & believe I did the same for my trainees later on.

There's a glaring flaw in the idea that unpaid internships exist to prepare young people for the world of serious work, and the responsibility that comes with it. "Work" implies payment. And responsibility brings rewards.

It doesn't even sound as if most of these kids get any structured training in exchange for their time?

Poor millennials. They could sign up for JSA and get £50 a week to be sent on pointless work placements, if that's all their internships are. I do feel for those of you with dozy interns, though - it's not fair on you either! Hope some of them can be enthused with a bit more involvement & explanation.

Personally, I would talk to your boss in a low key way for advice on how she would like you to handle this.

Say, you feel he's not really seizing the opportunity, but given the social relationship here you don't want to push him without her backing.

Basically say, in different words, if you want him babysat, fine, but if this were normal hire, I'd be telling you we've got a problem with him.

Not doing any work unless you are paid sounds very 'work to live' or 'work to rule'.

Fine to live by but won't go far in life (and it clearly going nowhere in the OP's office).

One can make any job or task interesting by going beyond the task and finding out more about how things tick within an organisation. Why waste a few weeks just because it is unpaid when there is so much others can teach you? Knowledge never goes to waste.

It is short sighted in extremis to throw any work experience, paid or unpaid, away.

Wistful , I am very aware he is unpaid and because of this I have been trying to keep his work researched based. I would have bitten off someone's hand to do a piece of work referencing my studies at his age. We are all aware some interns are just given stacks of photocopying but this is patently not the case here. I explained at the beginning that there would be some admin because that is a realistic reflection of the work everyone here does to some extent.
Yes, the work experience is shadowing etc. but as I wrote earlier, he was going to shadow someone but refused to do any prep so he ended up going in blind. To get the most benefit he would have at least read the file beforehand at a minimum, to do the research I told him to do would have been even better. We are hardly being slave drivers.

Also I don't think people are being overly harsh, some people have been fortunate in their interns but let's face it, they are not all going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager but bumbling. Some just don't give a s**t.

With regards to employment law, they are very careful not to create a contractual obligation and it is legal not to pay him.

One can make any job or task interesting by going beyond the task and finding out more about how things tick within an organisation.

100% true and very important - but is not intuitive knowledge, it has to be taught :)

Rosamund I get that. I've actually done my fair share of unpaid work - as somebody upthread says, you don't get far in life if you aren't prepared to do it, that's just the way of the world. In my case though, it wasn't an internship as such - the work was very flexible/ from home, alongside some paid work, and in a field I'm extremely passionate about. It sounds like your guy is simply not that interested - and that's really why I hate unpaid internships.

They mean the disappearance of entry level positions for people who really fucking want to be in that career.

Also though, if you only have a lukewarm interest in the job, then you certainly ain't going to work properly for free. You'll try to coast along, with a vague hope you're doing ok and will get a reference. Unless you're somebody who can muster up the interest to give 110% and go the extra mile no matter what job you're in - but I don't think everyone's like this, I'm certainly not I need to be interested in some aspect!

Rosamund - email trail before you give up on the lad. Email him tasks. Email your sadness he's not completed them, including your recommendations about what he could do to improve/ surprise he hasn't come in late/gone off early.

Then your backside is covered when you suggest to his parents he's not best suited to it all and you can write a ?recommendation?

Ok he sounds like he has a really poor attitude, regardless of being pushed in/not being paid.

But you are the important one here and should look out for yourself. In your position, I'd write down everything that he has done and not done, include conversations such as the Olympic one as that shows a poor effort to get on with coworkers. I would keep the document safe in case you are asked for details (eg maybe his mummy will come in wanting a word with you if he tells her he didn't enjoy his time with you).

I wouldn't submit it as a report, if asked for a report, I'd give a brief summary and just use the longer document as a record for yourself.