The First Day of an Intern (During the Pandemic)

The intern walks into the office, and sanitizes his hands every five feet or so with the wall mounted sanitizers once inside. Then he is escorted by an employee (not from HR, who are working from home) to the IT room where he is supposed to receive his company-issued laptop. Then he waits till the tech guys in the IT room installs the required software and adds his details to the (whatever) directory the company is using. Then he waits a little more because the software is taking longer to install and there is another intern sitting next (well next to the next chair, since social-distancing is mandatory and there are big red no-signs pasted on chairs immediately to his left and right). And both of them chat a little about each other’s previous work places and the people they know (because this intern is a Site Reliability Engineer and the same people just switch between the companies in this part of the world). Then the IT guy (the only IT guy in the office since the pandemic) walks over to each of them and explains the usage protocols, all the while desperately maintaining a distance of exactly 1-meter. Then walks in the intern’s reporting manager (wearing a mask, obviously!). And he says to the intern to meet him on the 15th floor (the office is in a tall building maintained by a construction company). Then after receiving his brand-new million-buck zero-privacy laptop, the intern walks to meet the reporting manager, but he is shocked to see the manager leisurely IMing on one of the two big displays sitting on his desk.

“Oh well,” says the manager.

And the intern sees just enough to know that is where all the people working from home are meeting, in plain English ‘the unofficial group in (insert your IM app of choice)’. The manager does another thing that upsets the intern: shake hands with the intern. The intern’s reluctantly outstretched hand returns and does not touch anything (and in his mind, he’s trying to locate the nearest wall mounted sanitizer). And the manager wants the intern to sit on the chair next (again, not technically the next) to him. So the intern sits (and he tries so hard to keep his shirts’s back from touching the chair he almost bends to a quarter-arc). And the manager says what all reporting managers say to an intern on their first day at the office in this part of the world.

“I don’t have any work to assign you right away…”

But, the last few lines are different, and they are the most important.

“Tomorrow everyone from our team are working from home. Actually, we come to office only on three days in a week. I’ll catch you on <whatever official meet-app>. "

The intern is very understanding. He says thank you and leaves the office–to go home and kill some time for the rest of his first day at the new company.

This was written as a story to laugh at, if you find it offensive or to contain suggestions of bad taste, please note those are unintended consequences of this work, and please bear with the story. Thank you.