Top image: Shiva Bharathi Gupta / RICE File Photo
Between lunch chats and 7-Eleven runs, I’ve learned a lot about being a working adult as an intern at RICE.
I can say that I’ve fulfilled my internship goals: to learn more about journalism, to meet industry professionals, and to organise an event or two; all good stuff that’ll smooth out my career pathways.
Other takeaways are better off staying in my head; my school careers office doesn’t need to know about the art of taking breaks when my boss looks like she might assign me more work.
All interns—or the ones in my social circles, at least—have come to our own conclusions on the realities of the workplace. Our thoughts are borne from hangout sessions with loose-lipped associates, passive-aggressive email threads between middle management, and simple keen observation.
Whether the lessons we’ve learned are necessarily 100 percent objectively true is up for debate, but they’re certainly true to us.
So: here’s a portrait of the modern Singaporean workplace, from the mouths of precocious interns.
Lesson #1: Companies Will Tell You About Work-Life Balance. Don’t Fall For It.
What is it they say about internships–it’s to give us the experiences they don’t teach you in school?
The problem comes when HR, invested in maintaining a supply of fresh blood, conflicts with everyone else who might want to show us the realities of work.
At a law firm internship, Nick* asked his supervisor if he could be given the ‘real trainee experience’, so he could see what being a trainee lawyer might look like.
His supervisor gave him a flat ‘no’. Everyone involved in the firm’s internship programme had been instructed not to overwork the interns, and to let them go home by 6 PM.
“They’d block our card access from 7 PM onwards—the rationale was to force us to leave by then,” Nick says.
But interns aren’t stupid. (Well, maybe a little bit, but you knew that when you hired us.) We know companies aren’t as perfect as they present themselves. Anyone with eyes knows that lawyers don’t do that ‘going home at a reasonable hour’ nonsense.
Nick knew it. His supervisor knew it. But he still wasn’t allowed to receive any more work than prescribed.
At a glance, Nick’s is the opposite of an intern horror story—he got to go home at 6 every day, which is more than lots of other interns can say.
But if our future colleagues won’t tell it like it is, then what’s the point of these ‘real world experiences’?
Lesson #2: People Are The Most Honest When They Complain, So Listen
When I meet my intern friends, we don’t really talk about what learning outcomes we’ve achieved or how much redundancy we’ve helped eliminate.
It’s easy to forget that interns are people too. Of course we gossip.
I don’t remember what most of my friends even do at their jobs. But I do remember the names of the C-suite execs who make their subordinates run errands. And I definitely remember which banks are alleged hotbeds of uncontrolled intra-office… fraternising.
Sharmila*, a sales intern, says: “The first time I felt like I was really learning something, I was in a cab with the full-timers when they started complaining about upper management.”
From that cab ride, she learnt the following: Her company isn’t hiring enough people, they play favourites when allocating resources to departments, and her boss really hates their big boss.
Allegedly.
Lesson #3: To Understand Your Colleagues, Eat Together
Junwei*, an analyst intern, complains that his current team doesn’t eat lunch together. He thinks it’s a good way to get to know people. People lower their guard and relax when it’s time to eat, like animals at a watering hole, so food is the best way to get to know who someone really is.
That’s true. Once, I ate a piece of chicken my editor-in-chief was saving for a snack. He still brings it up. From the bottom of my heart, Ilyas—my bad.
Lesson #4: Becoming Full-Time Won’t Change The Fact That We Are All Ultimately Replaceable
Here’s a question: If you convert from an intern to a full-timer, do you have to stop talking to the interns? The intern-turned-full-timer makes more money. They’re an actual adult now, and barring the worst circumstances, they don’t get to leave after three months.
Full-time employment is a spanner thrown into the works of intern friendships.
Sometimes, though, it feels like there’s no difference in the way we’re treated.
Shelly*, who worked as a marketing intern, says: “I met this guy who’d been there for a long time. It was his first job ever; he had shares in the company—that’s how old he was.”
For all his seniority, though, he was unceremoniously fired along with the rest of upper management one day. To rub salt into the cruel wound, he was fired while on holiday and had to sign his exit papers after stepping off the plane.
Being terminally online means that my generation of interns is exceedingly aware of the transactionality of internships. We get a name on our CVs; you get labour.
You’d think a full-timer would be treated with more grace.
“I just remember looking at him and thinking: ‘How could they make you feel as disposable as an intern?'” Shelly says.
“The government always tells us the only way to avoid retrenchment is to upskill yourself, right? He did everything he was supposed to do. But in the end, he was still fired in such a cruel way.”
Interns and full-timers aren’t that different when it comes to how volatile our jobs are.
That’s class solidarity, I guess.
Lesson #5: Drama Doesn’t End; Petty Interns Become Petty Full-Timers
My friend Stephanie* tells me: “I had a fight with another intern last week.”
The group of interns at her workplace has their own fair share of hysterics and drama, but she’s aware that this probably isn’t the reality of working life. Working adults, for one, definitely aren’t that petty. They’ve got better things to do.
Right?
I ask my full-timer colleague Alfieyah to confirm this, but she grimaces. I use my intern powers of keen observation to figure the rest out.
Lesson #6: Middle Management is Unfortunately Necessary
My friend JJ* was hired into a discombobulated videography team at a local media outlet. According to her, there were never scripts, structures, or deadlines. It made her feel like she’d been thrown into the deep end.
It furthers my hypothesis that Singaporean companies only hire interns in two situations, with no middle ground.
They’re either (a) well-established enough that they can have interns coast and do nothing, or (b) absolutely slammed with work and in need of someone to offload it onto at a discounted rate.
(There’s something to be said here about how terribly jealous I felt hearing about $5,000 banking internship salaries, but that’s for another day.)
“It makes more sense to train people to stay longer rather than going through a revolving door of talent,” JJ says. “I didn’t realise how important management was until I worked with people who couldn’t delegate work.”
Part of why there was no team lead was because the turnover rate was so high—no one would stay long enough to be promoted.
“I just think a company needs more structure before they accept interns. Don’t hire an intern if you don’t even have a team lead.”
Us Fruity Few
Adults say we’re strawberries, easily upset, overly idealistic, and lacking work ethic.
I’d argue the opposite. Gen Z interns are like watermelons: We’re down in the dirt with everyone else. We’re impressionable, but we’ll grow how we want to if we aren’t given guidance.
(Context: To get square watermelons, you put them in cubes while they’re still growing. I’m not saying we do that to interns, but if you think about it, a cubicle is kind of the same shape. Do what you will with that.)
If we’re fragile, it’s not because we’re more delicate than anyone else. Everyone is a little sensitive when they’re in their early 20s, especially if they’re bracing for the world to mercilessly chew them up.
In the meantime, we’re just taking advantage of our internships to learn more about the real world. And yes, we might explode under excessive stress, but what did you expect when you piled all that onto a watermelon?
To further the watermelon analogy, you can scoop our insides out and fill us with Sprite to make hwachae—sorry, wrong article.
Not everything is bad. I think my friends and I have heard so many horror stories that we can appreciate the good ones for what they are.
For me, I can attest firsthand. When I started writing this article, I was shocked that other people had so many bad things to say about their internships. But I just can’t relate to that.
My full-time supervisors dote on me, all my pitches get accepted with applause, and my editors sign off all their comments on my drafts with “I love this. You’re an asset to our company”.
I suppose not everyone is as lucky.