My Intern Request
Brace yourself for the opportunity of a lifetime.
Dear HR representative, person, individual, or other office-appropriate, non-gender specific label I’m required to use as a result of the holiday party pineapple codpiece incident,
Good day! Apologies up front for the red exclamation mark, CAPS LOCK subject line and flashing siren gif at the conclusion of this email. You know how it is — interoffice politics, and all — and since I’m no longer allowed on your floor, because that’s where Susie sits (re: the pineapple), I had to pull out the stops and use all the inoffensive emoji at my disposal to ensure this request was noticed.
I require an intern.
This may come as a surprise. Typically, I write your office with pre-emptive apologies, inquiries about corporate counsel, or for the location of the portable defibrillators, but I assure you this request is nothing like the last six or seven. This one is serious.
I’m busy with important business things, you see, and I need a helping hand. But not just any hand. Not just any naïve, fresh-faced rube will do. The aforementioned helping hand must be attached to lithe, coordinated limbs. These limbs must perform an elaborate, methodical dance, worthy of corporate culture song. The dance will result in coffee.
Obviously, the intern will not just “make” coffee. Any Keurig can do that. Instead, the intern will concoct. They will craft. They will conjure up invigorating brews and elaborate Arabica potions. They will eschew non-dairy creamer, because it gives me gas.
The intern will have an innate understanding of perfect coffee presentation. If the coffee is too hot or cold, or if it is so laden with sugar that it becomes a thick, saccharine mix of enamel-eating granules and latent diabetes, I will belittle them with my white-collar words and cast them back into the sea of unemployment. Woe be the intern whose mawkish blend scrunches up my lips like a sphincter. I will not suffer service that keeps my face in a constant state of “about to take a dump.”
The intern must not be some classically trained barista from Starbucks or anything fancy like that. Their creations mustn’t taste of 9–5 work schedules, nor shall they smell like an individual who’s enjoyed the fruits of Obamacare or childhood vaccinations. Above all else, the coffee they produce will be saturated with the hopeless desperation of an individual who knows even a minor carafe burn could result in a soul-crushing $15,000 hospital stay.
If health is a concern, I will allow a concession: the intern may be a robot. And by that I do not mean quiet, reserved or “high spectrum autistic.” I mean literally. They may literally be made from synthetic components and rare earth metals, and have their superhuman actions controlled by cold, calculating software.
On the date of hire, the intern should be legally blind, Stevie Wonder blind, or at the very least blinded with a phosphorous flare. The most desirable candidate was raised from birth in a pitch-black subterranean cave, with fleshy troglobite patches instead of eyes. If sightlessness is not in the cards, the intern should own a tie, to be fastened around the eyes like a blindfold. Silk is preferred; silk knit is not. I will not tolerate pilling, even on the blind.
Lastly, the intern must be short. Shorter than me, I should say. At present, I do not know how tall I am, because I do not own a ruler. We should probably hire a pre-intern of some kind to measure me in a dark room, just to be safe. We will then dispose of the pre-intern in a manner that does not attract attention or reveal my height to others. Don’t tell him I told you this, but Fred in Finance has experience with this kind of thing. Ask him about “Troy” and the Kyrgyzstani orphanage last summer, but say little else. In any case, Fred’s your man.
And that’s about it. From where I’m sitting, which is far, far from Susie, this is a simple, modest request for a complex task. A complex task that — you know what? Now that I think about it, you should probably send me two.
Let’s begin again.
