I was fired from my internship for proposing a more flexible dress code
askamanager.org
askamanager.org
Now, what would I have done instead? Quit, heck, I wouldn't even have interviewed there (although I'm older so cannot compare). First of all I value input from everybody INCLUDING interns and secondly if I don't want the customer to see butt cracks there's no need to require the whole company to wear matching suits (aka, there are much milder ways).
I'm not surprised they were fired. The environment has become so toxic.
In France, I personally pay my interns (no great credit to me though, it's a legal obligation), give them a bonus (usually one month's wages) at the end of the internship unless their performance / attitude has been abysmal, and make sure I devote some of my time to training them (although to be faire it probably averages under 1h a day). It's probably not the best deal in the world, but I certainly wouldn't call slave labour...
Unpaid internship. Aka exploitation.
"Managers are assholes" is not very valuable information, you can pick that up from sitcoms and Dilbert. But you can learn a lot from bad jobs and the mistakes of others, including managers.
The "managers are assholes" bit was meant as a joke, and I learned loads from that internship. It's just that when you're that young and self centered, you tend to see what you didn't get rather than what you did.
Of course not. But unpaid internship is always exploitation.
I've only been alive a few decades and I've seen the corporations convert "entry level jobs" into "internships" in that timespan. So it is exploitative and it is a form of slave labor.
Yes, a petition is really aggressive/s
Added: if they fire a whole group of interns to teach the group a lesson, why the hell did they have interns? They were, apparently, of no actual value to the company? In that case, the internships were effectively BS jobs to begin with.
Added 2: there are companies that still require women to wear heels? (TIL...)
Added 3: something something ACLU wrongful termination lawsuit something...
That's a big assumption to make. I doubt the company ever tested whether their business made more or less money without dress code.
If the interns placed so much stock in what they were required to wear during their internship, they should have asked about it during the interview, and withdrew themselves from consideration upon learning of the dress code.
But no, they felt that the company should change its policies to suit them. Because they're that darn special.
I'm confused by this.
Why would I want to take an internship where I was considered a net-negative?
If the institution of learning that is placing these interns is slotting people into internships, and they are worth than useless -- net negatives, as you say -- where is that institution's accountability here?
Why would any intern walk into that situation? Why would a company take them on under those circumstances?
Sure, I would expect an intern to be very inexperienced, to need mentoring, to need training, but the idea is that I'd get free or nearly-free labor in exchange for some of this required mentoring and training... and potentially have some partially trained future employees in the pipeline.
It would be, I think, crazy to expect that interns walk in already completely hammered into the appropriately shaped pegs to slot into jobs.
I'd fire the person who fired the interns -- I mean, how much time and effort on the part of the people who arranged those internships, did that person waste by being a dick? How does it affect the department plans to get work done with these interns?
If the answer is "not at all," why the !@#$% do they take on interns? Some kind of tax break thing?
When I was an intern [sometime mumble mumble nineteen-eighty-mumble], I spent a year earning a tiny stipend and working crazy hours because I did tedious work that my organization wanted done but no one had time or inclination to do. I learned a lot, including how to work with people in my department, but I did not learn "I'm worthless and should never question authority because I'll be immediately fired."
And, p.s., I've worked with and supervised interns before in several different workplaces.
Some internships are basically a form of charity, the mild negative effect on everyday work is at least partially balanced by the longer term potential of an intern becoming a good candidate for a staff position or by the positive effect on reputation of taking such interns.
In my specific area, the interns are a net-negative for the time they're with us but when they work with another group, I think they're (minimally) a net positive.
Edit: Honestly, reading the comments, I want to find out where all these people work and cross off all their employers as places I'll never even consider applying to. No open door policy == broken culture.
Personally, I think the fired interns were given a valuable life lesson, if they choose to learn something from it. If an employee wants to work for a company, it's incumbent upon them to adapt to the company's standards, not the other way around.
This, to me, is an example of the "special snowflake" mindset that colleges foster in students these days.
Any company with a healthy culture has an open-door policy. I've never worked for a company that doesn't have an open-door policy, and I never will.
And "special snowflake" is a slur used to attack LGBT people 90% of the time.
And haphazardly laying claim to a perjorative in order to impugn someone? Get over yourself.
Got a reference for that?
Sarcastically calling people, especially young naive people, "snowflake" as a rejection of their projection of uniqueness or specialness has been around for decades. It's applied without sexual or gender connotations.
Example of alternate declarative form from Fight Club, "Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
So it's mainly uttered by fascists? (Tyler Durden is a textbook fascist) Sounds about right.
Proof by assertion?
There is a big difference between an open-door policy and allowing a group of interns, most of which are a net-negative for the company while they are interns, to petition the company's leadership to change their culture. The intern writing the letter even stated that they had already had a conversation with their manager about it. Sounded like that convo went pretty well. "We appreciate your view, but no, the dress code is not changing". That is a good open door sounding culture.
"Special Snowflake" is pretty fitting here. You want to band together with fellow interns to make changes at the company with which you are interning? Make that company some money. That's why they are in business. That's what they will listen to. You are a "Special Snowflake" if the dress code is the sword you are going to fall on. It's nuts and these kids need to grow up.
Just because they were denied doesn't mean they weren't able to make their case.
Coming back with a piece of paper that essentially says "look how many we are, surely you're wrong and we're right" is aggravating, especially from interns who have no experience and would better spend their time trying to understand why things work a certain way rather than assume they're right.
Dismissing them is a bit harsh, but we don't really know how aggravating they were nor how much of management's time they wasted. If this whole thing turned into a 1 hour long meeting where they refused to be told no, then I might also have thought this particular bunch might be more trouble than they're worth.
You might have a much higher tolerance to your time being wasted than I do, and that probably does make you the better person. I can take a fair amount of rudeness, lateness and incompetence. Wasting what little time I have on matters that I have already made clear were not up for discussion though, that'll get to me.
So aggressive and aggravating!/s
>a reasonable decision
Who says the dress code is a reasonable decision?
I'll tell you who doesn't get to say whether it is or is not: interns (unless the dress code is illegal, but that doesn't appear to have been the case).