We come in, meet the team, receive a desk and sometimes even a phone number and email address by which we are contactable.

We drink the company coffee, learn by example and if we’re really lucky, we actually contribute rather than merely examine the colour scheme of the office, or the efficiency of their recycling procedures.

The word ‘Intern’ suggests to me that we ‘in turn’ might… make the coffee, get a by-line, be offered a job…? I suppose I should acknowledge the fact ‘intern’ doesn’t stem from the combining of the two above words. Such is life.

As an Intern, you never actually admit to your powerlessness. On speaking to clients or companies over the phone, you confidently lead them into a false sense of security. “My name’s Laura and I work at the ‘insert your company here’”.

Again, you live and breathe as though you were a tax paying, benefits accruing, hard-working, company employee.

It doesn’t matter that, in fact, the only thing you share with your ‘colleagues’ is the fact that you buy your lunch at Waitrose; they use their neat salary, you use your £5 lunch allowance, keen to maintain appearances of grandeur and secretly determined to spend every penny of your essentially free lunch.

When you do get a by-line, it stares back at you from the page, as incredulous as to how it got there as you are.

No matter, it is there for the world (or in some cases a slightly smaller percentile) to see, absorb and ultimately judge. It’s slightly like hanging your undies on the washing line on the day your brother invites all his friends over for a beer and BBQ.

Building up a portfolio of work is, I think, the same as compiling a photo album.

It’s self-absorbing, ego-boosting (like having a great tan line in that photo) and it is that all important proof that you have not simply wiled away the summer watching re-runs of Dawson’s Creek and Hollyoaks.

It’s something to look back on in years to come and show the family. “Here’s what I did that summer after I graduated,” says an older, and more wrinkled you flicking through pages of neat prose and copy.

Hours and hours and hundreds more hours of unpaid work. “That’s great Granny. Can I go on my skateboard now?” Perhaps not quite the reaction you were after.

Outrage at Grazia magazine after an intern who was sent out regularly to buy skinny lattes for the beauty desk announced at the end of her stint on the mag that she had in fact been buying them all full-fat ones. Cue much spluttering from the staff and a mass rush to the nearest set of weighing scales. Actually Monkey just made that last bit up, but feels after pulling a stunt like that, the intern’s future in the industry is assured.

REVENGE!

From Guardian Media Monkey

42 books are pretty heavy – these weren’t slim little Beatrix Potter type things – so when I dragged them into the office, covered in sweat and with a back like Quasimodo’s, the least I expected was a thank you. I got concerned and shocked looks from my fellow ‘unpaids’, but nothing from my boss.

I saw the email my boss sent to the guy I was picking the books up from. He said “I’ll send someone over”. That’s the mentality of the internship-slave-driver. I don’t know if he was an only child, or abused as a kid – but there is something ingrained in certain people that means if a job needs doing they will pass the buck without thinking. I’m only the intern – but I’m here, and working unpaid, because I want to learn and get experience. This didn’t teach my anything, its abuse, and I take it because I am willing and desperate.