
I was fired from my internship for proposing a more flexible dress code - rhapsodic
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-internship-for-writing-a-proposal-for-a-more-flexible-dress-code.html
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devnonymous
I call bs! The whole scenario appears to have been concocted in the mind of
this columnist. Who fires a bunch of interns for a dress code petition? If
this is true (and that's a big if), methinks these interns are better off not
working at such a place.

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sorincos
The mere existence of such a strict dress code should have been already a
warning sign against petitions, but yeah a greenhorn could not know this -
millennial or not. It's very true that businesses should not be equated with
democracies.

Now, what would I have done instead? Quit, heck, I wouldn't even have
interviewed there (although I'm older so cannot compare). First of all I value
input from everybody INCLUDING interns and secondly if I don't want the
customer to see butt cracks there's no need to require the whole company to
wear matching suits (aka, there are much milder ways).

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simbalion
Working for other people is a scam. The majority of 'employees' are never paid
what they're worth. Employees are usually mistreated or taken advantage of,
heck the entire 'internship' thing has become an exploitative form of slave
labor.

I'm not surprised they were fired. The environment has become so toxic.

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nrinaudo
Slave labour? I assume you're talking about internship in the US, how does
that work?

In France, I personally pay my interns (no great credit to me though, it's a
legal obligation), give them a bonus (usually one month's wages) at the end of
the internship unless their performance / attitude has been abysmal, and make
sure I devote some of my time to training them (although to be faire it
probably averages under 1h a day). It's probably not the best deal in the
world, but I certainly wouldn't call slave labour...

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Kristine1975
_> how does that work?_

Unpaid internship. Aka exploitation.

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extra88
It depends on the value the intern provides vs. the value the intern receives.
In general, I think it's better for interns to receive some pay but money is
not the only thing of value an internship can (or should) provide.

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Kristine1975
_> but money is not the only thing of value an internship can (or should)
provide._

Of course not. But unpaid internship is always exploitation.

~~~
aries1980
…and illegal in many countries, including the US unless “the employer that
provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of
the intern” what I can hardly imagine it can realistically happen.
[http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf)

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Kristine1975
_> to push back on it in such an aggressive way._

Yes, a petition is really aggressive/s

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paulrpotts
So much this. I am absolutely disgusted Green's attitude in response. Green,
apparently, never was young, or arrogant, or inexperienced in dealing with
work culture, and now stands wholly as a representative of some noxious
company's status quo. She tells the fired intern that she "squandered" her
opportunity. No, her opportunity was squashed by impatient arseholes eager to
bully Millennials. Whelp, I guess learned an important lesson about just how
respected their views will be, in their future workplaces! Or something.

Added: if they fire a whole group of interns to teach the group a lesson, why
the hell did they have interns? They were, apparently, of no actual value to
the company? In that case, the internships were effectively BS jobs to begin
with.

Added 2: there are companies that still require women to wear heels? (TIL...)

Added 3: something something ACLU wrongful termination lawsuit something...

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jnevill
Banding together with other interns and petitioning the company to change
their culture is crazy levels of naive. As an intern, you are most likely a
net-negative. At best, consider yourself on a long term interview. It's not
the time to ask that the company change its culture. If you happened to get
picked up by the company and find yourself in a job, it's still not the time.
It's not a democracy. The business was built to make money and it was
determined long before you got there that the dress code would help them
achieve that goal. Unless you can put some money where your dumb petition is,
your best hope is some extreme eye rolling.

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paulrpotts
>As an intern, you are most likely a net-negative

I'm confused by this.

Why would I want to take an internship where I was considered a net-negative?

If the institution of learning that is placing these interns is slotting
people into internships, and they are worth than useless -- net negatives, as
you say -- where is that institution's accountability here?

Why would any intern walk into that situation? Why would a company take them
on under those circumstances?

Sure, I would expect an intern to be very inexperienced, to need mentoring, to
need training, but the idea is that I'd get free or nearly-free labor in
exchange for some of this required mentoring and training... and potentially
have some partially trained future employees in the pipeline.

It would be, I think, crazy to expect that interns walk in already completely
hammered into the appropriately shaped pegs to slot into jobs.

I'd fire the person who fired the interns -- I mean, how much time and effort
on the part of the people who arranged those internships, did that person
waste by being a dick? How does it affect the department plans to get work
done with these interns?

If the answer is "not at all," why the !@#$% do they take on interns? Some
kind of tax break thing?

When I was an intern [sometime mumble mumble nineteen-eighty-mumble], I spent
a year earning a tiny stipend and working crazy hours because I did tedious
work that my organization wanted done but no one had time or inclination to
do. I learned a lot, including how to work with people in my department, but I
did not learn "I'm worthless and should never question authority because I'll
be immediately fired."

And, p.s., I've worked with and supervised interns before in several different
workplaces.

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extra88
Many internships are not like what you did. Many require a lot of supervision
but even if an intern is mostly shadowing a staff member, they'll be a net
negative as the staff member will either work more slowly or take the time to
explain what they're doing or what they did.

Some internships are basically a form of charity, the mild negative effect on
everyday work is at least partially balanced by the longer term potential of
an intern becoming a good candidate for a staff position or by the positive
effect on reputation of taking such interns.

In my specific area, the interns are a net-negative for the time they're with
us but when they work with another group, I think they're (minimally) a net
positive.

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wushupork
This. As someone who hires interns, it takes a lot of time and effort to train
them to be effective. It takes away our resources, and we're essentially
PAYING them to train them. (I have not done unpaid internships). To have a
bunch of know-it-alls think they will come in and make business decisions
rather that focusing on learning and becoming effective speaks volumes of
those people and they need to be removed. It's not about teaching a lesson.
There's just no room for that if you want to be a well-oiled ship.

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amyjess
I honestly want to find out what company Alison Green works for just so I can
remind myself to _never ever work there_. Any company that fosters that kind
of attitude has a broken culture.

Edit: Honestly, reading the comments, I want to find out where all these
people work and cross off all their employers as places I'll never even
consider applying to. No open door policy == broken culture.

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rhapsodic
Alison Green is the advice columnist. She doesn't work for the company that
fired the interns.

Personally, I think the fired interns were given a valuable life lesson, if
they choose to learn something from it. If an employee wants to work for a
company, it's incumbent upon them to adapt to the company's standards, not the
other way around.

This, to me, is an example of the "special snowflake" mindset that colleges
foster in students these days.

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amyjess
If you say that someone deserves to be fired because they gave management a
proposal, I would not want to work for any company that would have you.
Period.

Any company with a healthy culture has an open-door policy. I've never worked
for a company that doesn't have an open-door policy, and I never will.

And "special snowflake" is a slur used to attack LGBT people 90% of the time.

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nrinaudo
There might very well be an open door policy in that company - apparently, all
interns had talked to their managers about the issue, so managers _are_
available.

Just because they were denied doesn't mean they weren't able to make their
case.

Coming back with a piece of paper that essentially says "look how many we are,
surely you're wrong and we're right" is aggravating, especially from interns
who have no experience and would better spend their time trying to understand
why things work a certain way rather than assume they're right.

Dismissing them is a bit harsh, but we don't really know how aggravating they
were nor how much of management's time they wasted. If this whole thing turned
into a 1 hour long meeting where they refused to be told no, then I might also
have thought this particular bunch might be more trouble than they're worth.

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Kristine1975
Oh yes, _so_ aggravating/s

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nrinaudo
When n (for n >= 2) interns are all told separately no, then gang up and
demand more time and attention be devoted to their problem, a problem for
which a reasonable decision has already been taken and made clear, it _is_
aggravating.

You might have a much higher tolerance to your time being wasted than I do,
and that probably does make you the better person. I can take a fair amount of
rudeness, lateness and incompetence. Wasting what little time I have on
matters that I have already made clear were not up for discussion though,
_that_ 'll get to me.

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Kristine1975
_> gang up_

So aggressive and aggravating!/s

 _> a reasonable decision_

Who says the dress code is a reasonable decision?

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nrinaudo
> Who says the dress code is a reasonable decision?

I'll tell you who doesn't get to say whether it is or is not: interns (unless
the dress code is illegal, but that doesn't appear to have been the case).

