Dear potential interns,

My name is John Lago and my memoir slash DIY guide, The Intern’s Handbook, is currently on the shelves in the US and abroad. As you can imagine, interns and internships are an obsession of mine (hence the book title) and I am quite outspoken on the topic. Recent developments in Manhattan, my home and the greatest city in the world, have inspired me to chime in on a hot button issue in the world of interns. Please read on if you hunger for a very different perspective than you’ll find churning within the 24 hour news spin cycle.

Corporate America is an ecosystem. Like most ecosystems, Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection asserts itself daily like an open hand bitch slap from a Silverback Gorilla. In other words, the Alpha does not take shit from the Omega. This is how it is and how it always shall be. So when Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law a measure that would give unpaid New York interns the right to sue if they are harassed or discriminated against by an employer, he might as well have signed their death warrants.

Here’s why: The idea of a person who has volunteered for something—from which he or she could voluntarily exit at any time—claiming discrimination or harassment (categories reserved for people whose rights have truly been violated) for laboring under circumstances universally understood to be the definition of “intern,” is absurd. And that’s why the first intern attempting to sue anyone connected to the power elite will be summarily crushed under the (Italian-made) boot heel of American progress.

Now it seems more than ever, interns blather incessantly about having to endure long hours, the tedium of menial labor, and bottom of the totem pole anonymity—for no pay and even less glory. Welcome to the pecking order, pansies! Labor in the ancient and modern world was founded on hierarchical dynamics. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it certainly wasn’t built by greenies that thought an aqueduct was another name for a water park.

There was a time when getting your foot in the door—even if that door had been slammed on you repeatedly—was a major victory. All interns wanted was precious face time with the powers-that-be. If that meant making coffee, picking up dry cleaning, washing cars, buying tampons, rubbing feet, cleaning bird cages, siphoning gas, changing diapers, sleeping in concert ticket lines, burying dead pets, or setting up karaoke machines in airstream trailers outside Barstow, you did it with a smile. And after a few months or a year of “eating it,” you were on the payroll and rolling turkeys on the bowling team.

Because you paid your dues.

Anyone too good or entitled to pay his or her dues is a delusional goldbricker with a future consisting of lotto scratchers and government cheese. Interns should respect the opportunity to apprentice at the feet of greatness. If the feet of greatness stink to high heaven, WALK AWAY! Be thankful that you can, unlike the real indentured servants brought illegally to this country by the boatload every day. And if your rights have truly been violated, don’t wait around for Bill de Blasio to hold your hand in court. Americans don’t need to be “given the right to sue.” We’ve been doing it for decades without campaign bumper sticker legislation. Just watch late night TV if you need a referral.

Okay, maybe you’re pissed about my point of view but I didn’t make the rules! And I realize that for every crybaby looking for corporate guilt sucker money, there are hundreds of you hard working young ballers just gunning for a paying gig and, despite reports to the contrary, the job market is as fertile as a Byzantine eunuch. For all of you, I have nothing but respect. And to show my appreciation for the hustlers looking to take a poke at the American Pie, I give you a job opportunity in which working at the bottom can take you right to the top:

Assassination.

I know, it seems so . . . upsetting when all you really wanted was that junior copywriter gig on the Petco account. Is it more upsetting than busting your ass for free for two years only to have the HR Director hire his nephew’s girlfriend fresh out of cosmetology school for the job you sold your pride to get? Is it more upsetting than the daily humiliation that comes with being called Josh when your name is Kevin? Or worse, when your name is Denise?

Once you get the hang of it, being a highly trained assassin is far more interesting and lucrative than any career on Wall Street or Madison Ave. And being an intern is the perfect cover! Interns are invisible. You know that you can tell executives your name a hundred times and they’ll never remember it because they don’t respect you. The irony is that they’ll heap work on you with total abandon. The more work you accept, the deeper you get, simultaneously acquiring TRUST AND ACCESS. Ultimately, your target will trust you with his life and that is when you will take it.

How’s that for empowerment in the workplace? And talk about justice. Instead of serving your employer a subpoena, why not serve him his own death certificate? Turn that pink slip frown upside down and get a real job. Coffee’s on me.

Yours truly,

John Lago

The Intern’s Handbook, the memoir of John Lago, written by Shane Kuhn, published by Simon & Schuster, is available here: http://bit.ly/NLx6Bo