Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Some situations just seem to invite abuse, you know?
We have been gifted with an intern. Some college kid with a powerful parent has been indentured to our group for the summer. Let us take a moment to consider the I.T. education he will be getting, and then let us take another moment to feel bad for him.
Yesterday, after he completed the reams of paperwork that accompany all new hires, we had him lift and move some heavy things, exploiting his youthful muscles while we concentrated on long-overdue documentation.
Tomorrow, he will inventory ports throughout the building. This job would take the often-interrupted regular staff months. In fact, it has. But we think the n00bie should be able to get it cranked out in a day.
Wednesday, we have decided to give him a cardboard box and send him across the freeway -- not to return until the box is filled with pornography and flapjacks.
Actually, we could find pornography pretty easily by scanning the user drives. We are running low on flapjacks, though. What kind of I.T. Taskforce can function without flapjacks? Not a very good one, as our young intern is about to learn.
Thursday he will discover our new weekly tradition of "Cable Tightening Thursday" which we have developed since being granted an intern. It should keep him in the server room most of the day, though some of the cables across my desk look a little wiggly, too. It all falls under the "intern responsibilities" for Thursday, either way.
The joy of casual jeans Friday will not be lost on our intern, either, as we will send him to wash various cars and have him transcribe various technical documents from English, to Spanish, to Dutch, to Japanese and then back to English using the Google translation engine. He can then read the amusing parts to us aloud while we partake of more delicious flapjacks, probably.
The simple joys of enriching a young mind bring a tiny little tear to my eye.
A tear that our new intern can wipe away for me when he takes a break from sorting ethernet cables by length and arranging them alphabetically by color. Those are valuable I.T. skills, too.

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