-Prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, which makes me wonder – were whores the first summer interns?  I can just imagine the young and eager interns spending the bulk of their June and July doing mindless busywork like answering the pimp’s phone and putting everyone’s blood test results into a big spreadsheet.  This summer, the tradition continues (I’m talking about interns now, not whores, though I’m sure there’s another joke in there somewhere).  Millions of impressionable college students have descended upon the globe’s major cities in the hopes of adding a bullet point to their resumes and will leave in August with nothing more than the experience of dialing “9” and wearing an undershirt for the first time in their lives.  The summer is a soap opera and I love to watch…as the world interns.

-Tradition dictates that the summer intern gets the worst seat in the office, that is, the seat where everybody else can see your computer screen.  This blows of course because now that asshole sitting behind you who brings tuna salad in a Tupperware container for lunch every day can clearly see that you’re reading my column right now instead of doing work.  When they sense someone coming up behind them while they’re jerking around on the Internet, most summer interns will quickly alt-tab to another document.  I’ve found this to be a rookie mistake because it implies guilt.  If tuna salad-man rolls up on you while you’re half an hour deep into collegehumor.com, hold your ground.  Most likely you won’t be questioned.  If you are, explain that you’re doing research into targeting highly coveted demographics and ask where he got that marvelous Tupperware from.

-One really fun game that you and your fellow interns can play during downtime (i.e. always) is something I like to call “Guess Who’s Fucking!”  Each intern picks two people in the office who might be doing the nasty.  Whoever guesses correctly (confirmation can be discreetly obtained from the assistants who know everything), gets free beers all night from the other interns.  Bonus points for extra-marital.  For added fun, once drunk, yell, “Guess…Who’s…Fucking!” out loud very slowly and with extra emphasis on the last word – just like the announcer from “Wheel of Fortune.”

-After celebrating your victory in “Guess Who’s Fucking!” with about fifteen Sam Adams Summer Ales, you’ll be hungover in the office the next day and want to nap.  I suggest utilizing a two-man spotter system.  When tired at my old job, I’d call out a number to my buddy Chi in the next cube.  That number would be the amount of minutes I wanted him to let me sleep before throwing a stress ball at my head to wake me up.  And of course, I’d do the same for him.  Only problem was, I tended to forget to wake Chi up.  He has really tall, spiky hair and also kept a shitload of Post-it notes stuck to his computer screen.  When he slept for more than eight minutes, his face would lean in toward his monitor and his hair would knock the Post-it notes off.  I’d usually remember to wake him up when I found him passed out on the keyboard and his cubicle filled with tiny scraps of paper swirling in the air like a deleted scene from “Edward Scissorhands.”