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Be Careful What You Wish For

By Chloe Bohne · March 31, 2010

So I guess before I delve into the horrors of my day-to-day experience as a entertainment industry writer's intern, I should provide you with some insight into how I got the damn job in the first place.  Like many college students, I was looking for the internship of my dreams.  I sent out something like three-thousand (probably more like thirty, but who’s counting?) resumes and cover letters before I got the gig.  Of course, all that hard work was for nothing.  I got the job through a friend; it was through no part of my talent or ability.  Had I not been so stoked on this ‘opportunity,’ I probably would have noticed that this was a red flag number one. 

I had been playing phone tag all week with this guy.  “Come in this day…Oh, wait, can you do this day?  Can we reschedule for next week?”  Red flag number two.  So, finally this guy, who is supposed to be my new boss, can “squeeze me in” on a Friday at 5 o' clock! 

Now let’s take a moment to think about this:  Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon.  Anyone else see what the hell is wrong with this picture?  Yes, traffic.  And how am I going to get there you ask?  Oh, you know: the bus. 

Of course he did not let me know that he wanted me to come in until the night before and I did not have a hard copy of my resume on hand.  (This is more my fault than his, but I am comfortable blaming him for it).  This means that I had to make a stop before I got there: Kinkos.  Being that none of my resumes had landed me my dream internship; I needed to make sure that this was “the one.”  I worked on it all night, but wanted to make ensure that it spoke for itself.  And how do we do this?  Well, with that fancy resume paper, of course.  So, I splurged.  I got that thirty-cent per page paper and was ready for my hour and half bus ride to an interview that took two weeks to set up.  This resume was going to do it for me; this fancy paper and the dedication I had exerted just to set up an interview, was going to land me the gig. 

After finally arriving, I am ignored.  He was on the phone and running around like a madman, with absolutely no interest in my presence.  So, I sit and wait.  And wait.  Finally, he comes down.  He apologizes for his insolence and just seems like a really cool dude.  And, I like him for that.  I’m thinking, Okay, so all of this may have been worth it. And then he asks if we can conduct the interview outside.  Why not?  It’s only a hundred degrees outside, who needs air-conditioning?  I agree.

When we get outside, he recognizes that I am holding my resume.  He lights up a cigarette, takes it from me, glances at it, and folds it up!  He folded it up!  My resume!  The key to my future; this holy document that I have spent days, weeks, months working on; all my hard work: unrecognized, unappreciated, worthless.  Red flag number three.  

After smoking about fifteen cigarettes, and I hate cigarettes, and only glancing at my resume for a moment before wasting my thirty-cents and the cost of that extra bus ride to Kinkos, I am pretty perturbed, to say the least.  I decide then, I do not like him.  He begins to ask all those interview questions, “What do you hope to do with this experience…How can you contribute?”  And I’m thinking,  I hope to get a fuckin’ job out of this…I plan on contributing FREE WORK, what the hell do you think I’m gonna contribute?  Being suffocated by second-hand smoke (a first-rate killer), sweating my ass off (not from nervousness), and just plain angry, I say, “I don’t really know anything about this industry and I’m just taking advantage of our mutual friend,” or, something of that nature.  Just as I hear myself basically seal my fate – as the girl who submitted dozens of resumes and therefore spent an entire summer interning as an “intern applicant” for nothing – he says, “I like your attitude. You’re hired.”  

To conclude the interview, he tosses my resume in the trash as he escorts me off the property and tells me to stop by the same time next week for a “meet and greet.”  And so it goes…the impetus of being a writer's intern…