EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — Newly hired intern Rebecca Boulanger will earn time-and-a-half experience for her work on Labor Day from her temporary employer Right Now Booking Agency, fellow employees confirmed.
“I just can’t believe how well they’ve been treating me,” Boulanger said, holding an empty coffee pot. “Not only am I getting time-and-a-half experience on a holiday where most people automatically get paid time off, but my boss said I could have whatever coffee is left at the end of the pot after he’s done drinking it. So far, he hasn’t left me any coffee, but the severe caffeine withdrawals are totally worth being able to write ‘office intern’ on my LinkedIn profile. I just wish he would call me by my name — not ‘intern,’ or ‘the kid.’”
Agency management provided the extra experience by assigning her 1.5 times more tasks than her normal load on the Labor Day holiday.
“Will the intern earn extra experience on Labor Day while I get rip-roaring drunk and tell inappropriate jokes at my sister’s barbeque? You bet your ass she will,” manager Jeremiah Willingsford noted. “The trick is to get your employees to believe their personal brand aligns with their job — then, you can get them to do pretty much anything. The intern loves music, so she shouldn’t mind working extra on a holiday to schedule bands for us. Isn’t that what Labor Day is all about? Being at the job you love?”
Capitalist labor experts agree that companies offering experience over monetary compensation is beneficial to potential employees, and even more so to business owners seeking to meet quarterly budgets.
“In this economy, we all know that real world experience is worth way more than actual legal tender,” free market expert Richard Alouetta said. “Most entry-level jobs require at least five years’ experience, and the only way to acquire that is to serve time at unpaid internships. In the old days, one internship was enough… but today, you should have at least five or six internships before you can expect to be paid a living wage. That’s capitalism, baby.”
At press time, Boulanger was subscribing to every productivity podcast she could find after her employers informed her that listening to them might possibly strengthen her chances of receiving part-time work from the booking agency on weekends.