facts of life: number 86 presents the intern's edition

Number 86's Guide: What to Know about Working in an Office Environment if You Are the Designated Lackey

If I have learned anything from my internship so far, they are:

-You will be worshiped whenever you fix the jammed copying machine.
-Don't use a pen when trying to fix a stuck paper-cutter, because inevitably it will fall apart and you'll get ink all over your shirt and hands and pants. And if you do have to use a pen (large paperclips work reasonably well), don't choose a black or dark blue one or any dark colors. Then again, magenta ink isn't very nice either. Ignore what I just said about the pen colours because they're all bad.
-If you are about to procrastinate on work or do something kind of embarrassing you'll be caught by your co-workers and occasionally your supervisor if you're doing something really embarassing. You'll also catch a lot of people slacking off and guilt them into working again as a sort of unitentional retribution.
-If you want to use a laminator properly, leave it on for at least three minutes so that you can actually melt the stupid plastic onto the paper or cardboard or whatever.
-Invitations are more time-consuming to make than they appear.
-If you don't want to lick four hundred envelopes, you can seal them by using a glue stick. Very useful to know.
-The (wo)man who invented the stick-on stamp is a goddess.
-If you want to be called back promptly, repeat your telephone number twice and slowly. Your caller will love you and might be tempted to give you their leftover tickets.
-People in marketing, event planning and PR think that you are a technology god(dess) if you start babbling about meta tags even if you don't know what you're talking about.
-Last names beginning with the letters "k" and "s" typically sound the funniest.
-Watch TV. You don't sound like a workaholic if you can talk about early 90's TV shows. Skip reality ones if you don't want to be mocked.
-You will be mocked if you read Sinclair Lewis for fun. Either that or your co-workers will threaten to call the psychiatric wardens.
-If you work in PR and event planning, you have absolutely no need of science and or complex math. If you can add and subtract and compare two numbers, then you're their Einstein.
-When in doubt, make your supervisor do it ("But wait a minute, I don't understand! What is this caller saying!"). Actually, I haven't done that one yet, but I've watched others get away with it.
-Learn how to alphabetize things. This is surprisingly handy. Unfortunately I don't really remember the alphabet so well, so I've written it out on a piece of paper above my organizers.
-Bring CD's so that when you have to do something really boring like filing or stuffing envelopes or more filing you can listen to music.

Best day at work so far, but am stressed out about the upcoming concert for a 70's soft rock star dude whom I've never heard of before. This year's performer is Kenny Loggins, and my God he's expensive. But I don't know how much other rock stars charge for performing. But the amount of money involved in general is ghastly. Slightly stupidly I volunteered to stick up Summer Symphony posters around Pleasantview's downtown because I figured that there are lots of people old enough who are interested in Kenny Loggins, or so I hope. Most of the people who've ordered tickets so far seem to be at least in their early 40's. But somehow we're still really behind on ticket sales by about $20,000. Eek. We only got three orders today, and those were all single seats. But there's supposed to be a massive ad campaign coming out on Friday, so next week will hopefully be busier.

Can someone please buy tickets? Prank calls are also welcome.

and an addendum to the intern's guide

Oh, and people at non-profits are absolutely obsessed about getting the day's mail. And recieving sums of money greater than $500. And they like to make fun of donors behind their backs.