Stand Up For the Chicago Brokeolympics
The Way We Live Now: Standing. There are so many unpaid interns, we can't even find seats for them all. It's good practice. The 2016 Chicago Olympics' hot new sports are "Standing on the unemployment line" and "Standing there, drunk."
The job market has gotten so bad that even unpaid internships with no hope of advancement into an actual job and no actual duties and no chair are the hottest commodities on the market. The Brooklyn DA's office pulled almost 200 interns this summer—180 of whom were probably heartbroken that corporate offices are now using their actual attorneys as interns—and many of them are only valued as ringers on the office softball team. The rest of the time, they lean against the wall, like so many vagrants.
Are these the kids who will support the $5-per-slice Brooklyn pizza industry? Hardly. These kids couldn't even afford a condo in San Diego—now cheaper than a Brooklyn pizza!
So what are we actually "training" these fledgling ambulance-chasers for, really? We're training their calf muscles for their upcoming career as $10/ hr. line-standers, buying tickets for rich people at the 2016 Olympics in Chicago, where the mayor laid off 400 city workers on the same day he pressed for the city to get the games, which will cost $3.3 billion. By the time they roll around, Chicago will be a city of hobos, overrun by out-of-town hobos streaming in for the Hobolympics. Perfect.
In the meantime, I can offer an exciting unpaid "internship" to anyone who cares to fetch me lunch daily! Email me!
[Pic via]