You want me to do what?

I’ve come to an understanding that interns do the scut work. I guess deep down I always knew that as an intern I would be doing all of the tasks others did not want to do, but I’ve taken on that mentality and have been performing my remedial tasks to the best of my ability. However, last week I discovered where I would draw the line. I found my personal jumping off point and I jumped ship.

Last week the organization I’m interning at encountered a bit of an issue with their community forums. They were supposed to set up forums inviting the community to come voice their opinions on the things that hinder them from living a healthy lifestyle. These forums were not incentivized and poorly advertised. On the night of the first community forum they had a grand total of 0 people show up. This in some way can be viewed as a monumental embarrassment for my organization and one of the sub-department heads got an earful from upper management. To fix this attendance rate before the next 8 forums all employees, and by extension interns, were given manila envelopes full of flyers advertising a particular forum location. Their job was to take the flyers and distribute them at the locations near home or places you already had to go. Being the intern I was given all of the places where people did not live, and of course not being from Oklahoma every location I was given was an area where I had never been.

No big deal, I was looking for a way to get out of my cubicle anyway (even though the cube is beginning to grow on me which I find entirely too frightening). I was sent to a library in Edmond, Oklahoma, a 25-minute drive into the burbs. I walked into the library, flyers in hand, and asked them if they would mind me handing them out. They had issues with me approaching individuals in the library so I was relegated to outside. It was 105 degrees. I don’t have much in the way of a summer work wardrobe. My work clothes consist of one of my 4 pairs of pants matched with one of my 1 billion button-up shirts…and either my black shoes or my brown shoes. I don’t have t-shirts; I don’t have short-sleeves; I’m not allowed to wear shorts. Basically I was this poor melty woman chasing people down after they left the library begging them to take a flyer (I wasn’t allowed to leave until all the flyers were gone).

One man decided this was a good time to ask me my thoughts on Obamacare. Without thinking (or remembering that I was in Oklahoma) I responded I thought insuring 45 million people was a good thing. He shot back “well they’re planning on taking my Medicare, did you hear that?” Feeling backed into a corner I took a professional stance and declared I was pretty certain his Medicare was safe. Apparently my professional stance was quite unimpressive (it’s hard to look important when your orange striped shirt is dripping and your hair is stuck to your forehead) and he turned to me and said “you look like a dyed in the wool liberal, I can just tell”. At this point I was tired of him and wanted him to go away, he clearly didn’t want a flyer and I was wasting precious library patron stalking time standing here talking to a nut. I just said, “yeah I’m a liberal and I’m proud of it”. He then called me a flaming socialist communist. This guy looks like he could be my grandpa. He had on nice khaki slacks and a good old fashion red plaid shirt; his grandson was hugging his knees. Why was grandpa ripping me a new one? I was hot, pissed, and REALLY wanted him gone so I said, in a slightly louder more affirming tone, “communism and socialism are really very different you know…Medicare is pretty socialist when you think about it”. He didn’t like that; he asked me what I was reading that was spewing this crap. Grandpa why? Why are you ruining the sacred image of the happy old man? I didn’t even answer his question, I said there were people here that might be interested in what my organization was trying to do and he was bothering me. He finally left me alone. I thought about crying but figured people would mistake tears for sweat and it wouldn’t get me anywhere.