5 ms·

Is there possibly more to this story? As it stands it looks like the interns made a polite request and fired for it. I understand the "intern is a guest" argume

by anu7df 10y ago

Is there possibly more to this story? As it stands it looks like the interns made a polite request and fired for it. I understand the "intern is a guest" argument, but he/she is also a future employee playing that part and would like to be treated as such. If any polite request is countered by firing I can't imagine that will be a good place to work.

cddotdotslash 10y ago
A polite request is asking their respective managers about the dress code and whether it can be relaxed. Creating a petition, circling it among the entire intern group, and essentially demanding change at a place that was generous enough to hire them for a learning experience is not a polite request. I interned at four separate companies when I was younger. I would have never even conceived the idea of doing something like this. Besides the fact that it's three months (seriously, they couldn't wear dress clothes for three months?), a company is not a democracy. I think this might be a side effect of my generation being told they can change anything they want in the world just by signing a petition.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > A polite request is asking their respective managers about the dress code and whether it can be relaxed Which, according to the original source, is exactly what they did with the supporting argument that at least one employee didn't follow dress code, resulting in them being shut down with no answer: > I felt the dress code was overly strict but I wasn’t going to say anything, until I noticed one of the workers always wore flat shoes that were made from a fabric other than leather, or running shoes, even though both of these things were contrary to the dress code. > I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it. I soon found out that many of the other interns felt the same way, and the ones who asked their managers about it were told the same thing as me.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Maybe the other employee had a health issue that prevented them from wearing dress shoes, and management didn't want to share that private information? It definitely sounds like management would prefer to force the lone employee to follow dress code than to allow everyone else to break it.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > Maybe the other employee had a health issue They did, they had lost a leg, which the interns didn't know beforehand. > management didn't want to share that private information? Except they shared that information… after firing all the interns: > We were told to hand in our ID badges and to gather our things and leave the property ASAP. […] just before the meeting ended, one of the managers told us that the worker who was allowed to disobey the dress code was a former soldier who lost her leg and was therefore given permission to wear whatever kind of shoes she could walk in.
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        Ah, right, I didn't read this article (I read the one that was on the front page again earlier today). I think the interns were excessive in making a petition just for changing the dress code, because that can be interpreted as a hostile move, and the company was excessive in firing them, because that's tyrannical and destroys morale. Pretty much everyone involved here was being a dick.
        dogma1138 10y ago
        How's the company was excessive? this is the only thing you can do really in this case. She talked to her manager and was stricken down, then she decided to make a petition in order to bully her bosses? She knew exactly what she was doing "oh I don't have much experience in the work force" ehm yeah I'm pretty sure everyone has at least limited understanding of how management works - it's not a democracy, you don't get want you want and you especially don't get it by forcing the hands of your employers. So no not everyone involved here was a dick, there was a brat on one side that decided to effectively unionize the internets over shoes and a company that would not be able to function if a petition means that employees not to mention interns get whatever they want. Day 1 - petition for shoes. Day 3 - petition for bagels. Day 7 - ????
- raverbashing 10y ago
  > demanding change at a place that was generous enough to hire them for a learning experience Oh what a load of crap Generous? Companies use interns for cheap labour (sometimes free). There's nothing generous from their part
  - throwanem 10y ago
    And, conversely, interns' labor has minimal value (sometimes none), so it's not as though the pay scale's unfair. You don't sign up for the college + internship track without expecting to give away some labor.
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      > interns' labor has minimal value (sometimes none) I find it very hard to believe they are doing nothing of value whatsoever. Really hard Not paying interns seems to be a USA thing though. As an intern I worked with C software, both in Linux and Windows, of course I had less experience and needed "more" supervision, but it was far from worthless. My code ended up in actual products sold by the company. And yes, I was paid for it. See how much Google pays their interns.
      - emn13 10y ago
        Interns cost money by requiring training and a place to work, and by being a distraction. I bet interns bring value, but depending on the kind of work it may well be that the value they bring would have cost an experienced employee less time to realize than they spent bringing the intern up to speed. There are lots of intangible benefits too, but I can well imagine that in a straightforward reckoning the net value is close to zero, especially for short internships.
  - cddotdotslash 10y ago
    Perhaps you interned at the wrong places, but every internship I've had not only paid me well, but also taught me more real-world skills than I learned during my four-year degree. The world is not black and white; just because some companies use interns as cheap labor doesn't mean that's always the case.
- belorn 10y ago
  If we are going to throw out blame, what about the generation that feel entitled to treat interns like dirts, just because they can? If a company has a rule which does not benefit the company and is only there to humiliate interns, what is the moral argument for it?
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Being required to maintain a professional dress code by you is "treated like dirt"? Good Lord.
  - cddotdotslash 10y ago
    Being asked to wear business clothes is "being treated like dirt?" I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or perhaps I'm missing something.
- emn13 10y ago
  Requiring people to adhere to a negotiation strategy that essentially means begging for goodwill doesn't sound reasonable to me. The power disparity between an individual and a large company is huge; so if you really want to effect change, you're going to need to address that - for example by banding together. I don't think it's healthy for any social group (not just companies) to be as inflexible as today's companies have grown. A bit of friction and disagreement is a low price to pay for adaptability. And of course, this kind of inflexibility is symptomatic of entrenched power imbalance which leads to wealth inequality which causes its own host of societal problems. To be clear, I don't think correlation is causation here: the company isn't at fault for creating wealth inequality, but I do worry that we're busy ignoring warning signals that might bite us all in the a if we're not careful.
- anu7df 10y ago
  Apparently they did make a polite request to the manager directly and was turned down. I missed that line somehow when I first read the article.. At that point they should have abandoned this cause. Instead they decided to hold everyone to ransom and paid a heavy price. I guess everyone acted somewhat inappropriately.
empthought 10y ago
Individual polite requests would likely have been denied without the firing. However, the group participated in collective action, which many employers simply cannot tolerate, whether it's about dress codes, compensation, working conditions, or anything else.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > which many employers simply cannot tolerate They certainly can, they just don't want to.
  - empthought 10y ago
    No, in the long run they can't, because if they do the very concept of "employer" falls to anarchosyndicalism.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- k__ 10y ago
  you mean "simply will not tolerate" if companies fear the actions of their employees, why hire them in the first place. Sounds like an abusive relationship to me
- notacoward 10y ago
  > However, the group participated in collective action That's the key. The actual issue at hand probably didn't matter as much as the fact that the lowest of the low had figured out how to work together outside the official hierarchy. That made it a threat not to policy, not even to the people who could have simply said yes or no, but to the hierarchy itself. What happens when you attack the hierarchy? Scorched earth, baby. Yes, it was a bit entitled of the interns to expect a change in the dress code. A simple "no" would have sufficed if that were the real issue, but it wasn't.
Spooky23 10y ago
The formalized collective action in the form petition was the problem. That's a bat-signal. Given the current legal and regulatory environment, any good corporate counsel or HR person sees that as a step towards organization, and will stamp it out.
GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
The askmanager.com post linked from the article has more details from one of the interns who organized the petition: http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-internship-for-writing-a-proposal-for-a-more-flexible-dress-code.html http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-inter... With the facts given, both the advice columnist and commenters don't seem to be particularly sympathetic to the interns.

by anu7df 10y ago

cddotdotslash 10y ago

A polite request is asking their respective managers about the dress code and whether it can be relaxed. Creating a petition, circling it among the entire intern group, and essentially demanding change at a place that was generous enough to hire them for a learning experience is not a polite request. I interned at four separate companies when I was younger. I would have never even conceived the idea of doing something like this. Besides the fact that it's three months (seriously, they couldn't wear dress clothes for three months?), a company is not a democracy. I think this might be a side effect of my generation being told they can change anything they want in the world just by signing a petition.

masklinn 10y ago
> A polite request is asking their respective managers about the dress code and whether it can be relaxed Which, according to the original source, is exactly what they did with the supporting argument that at least one employee didn't follow dress code, resulting in them being shut down with no answer: > I felt the dress code was overly strict but I wasn’t going to say anything, until I noticed one of the workers always wore flat shoes that were made from a fabric other than leather, or running shoes, even though both of these things were contrary to the dress code. > I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it. I soon found out that many of the other interns felt the same way, and the ones who asked their managers about it were told the same thing as me.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Maybe the other employee had a health issue that prevented them from wearing dress shoes, and management didn't want to share that private information? It definitely sounds like management would prefer to force the lone employee to follow dress code than to allow everyone else to break it.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > Maybe the other employee had a health issue They did, they had lost a leg, which the interns didn't know beforehand. > management didn't want to share that private information? Except they shared that information… after firing all the interns: > We were told to hand in our ID badges and to gather our things and leave the property ASAP. […] just before the meeting ended, one of the managers told us that the worker who was allowed to disobey the dress code was a former soldier who lost her leg and was therefore given permission to wear whatever kind of shoes she could walk in.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      Ah, right, I didn't read this article (I read the one that was on the front page again earlier today). I think the interns were excessive in making a petition just for changing the dress code, because that can be interpreted as a hostile move, and the company was excessive in firing them, because that's tyrannical and destroys morale. Pretty much everyone involved here was being a dick.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        How's the company was excessive? this is the only thing you can do really in this case. She talked to her manager and was stricken down, then she decided to make a petition in order to bully her bosses? She knew exactly what she was doing "oh I don't have much experience in the work force" ehm yeah I'm pretty sure everyone has at least limited understanding of how management works - it's not a democracy, you don't get want you want and you especially don't get it by forcing the hands of your employers. So no not everyone involved here was a dick, there was a brat on one side that decided to effectively unionize the internets over shoes and a company that would not be able to function if a petition means that employees not to mention interns get whatever they want. Day 1 - petition for shoes. Day 3 - petition for bagels. Day 7 - ????
raverbashing 10y ago
> demanding change at a place that was generous enough to hire them for a learning experience Oh what a load of crap Generous? Companies use interns for cheap labour (sometimes free). There's nothing generous from their part
- throwanem 10y ago
  And, conversely, interns' labor has minimal value (sometimes none), so it's not as though the pay scale's unfair. You don't sign up for the college + internship track without expecting to give away some labor.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    > interns' labor has minimal value (sometimes none) I find it very hard to believe they are doing nothing of value whatsoever. Really hard Not paying interns seems to be a USA thing though. As an intern I worked with C software, both in Linux and Windows, of course I had less experience and needed "more" supervision, but it was far from worthless. My code ended up in actual products sold by the company. And yes, I was paid for it. See how much Google pays their interns.
    - emn13 10y ago
      Interns cost money by requiring training and a place to work, and by being a distraction. I bet interns bring value, but depending on the kind of work it may well be that the value they bring would have cost an experienced employee less time to realize than they spent bringing the intern up to speed. There are lots of intangible benefits too, but I can well imagine that in a straightforward reckoning the net value is close to zero, especially for short internships.
- cddotdotslash 10y ago
  Perhaps you interned at the wrong places, but every internship I've had not only paid me well, but also taught me more real-world skills than I learned during my four-year degree. The world is not black and white; just because some companies use interns as cheap labor doesn't mean that's always the case.
belorn 10y ago
If we are going to throw out blame, what about the generation that feel entitled to treat interns like dirts, just because they can? If a company has a rule which does not benefit the company and is only there to humiliate interns, what is the moral argument for it?
- throwanem 10y ago
  Being required to maintain a professional dress code by you is "treated like dirt"? Good Lord.
- cddotdotslash 10y ago
  Being asked to wear business clothes is "being treated like dirt?" I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or perhaps I'm missing something.
emn13 10y ago
Requiring people to adhere to a negotiation strategy that essentially means begging for goodwill doesn't sound reasonable to me. The power disparity between an individual and a large company is huge; so if you really want to effect change, you're going to need to address that - for example by banding together. I don't think it's healthy for any social group (not just companies) to be as inflexible as today's companies have grown. A bit of friction and disagreement is a low price to pay for adaptability. And of course, this kind of inflexibility is symptomatic of entrenched power imbalance which leads to wealth inequality which causes its own host of societal problems. To be clear, I don't think correlation is causation here: the company isn't at fault for creating wealth inequality, but I do worry that we're busy ignoring warning signals that might bite us all in the a if we're not careful.
anu7df 10y ago
Apparently they did make a polite request to the manager directly and was turned down. I missed that line somehow when I first read the article.. At that point they should have abandoned this cause. Instead they decided to hold everyone to ransom and paid a heavy price. I guess everyone acted somewhat inappropriately.

empthought 10y ago

Individual polite requests would likely have been denied without the firing. However, the group participated in collective action, which many employers simply cannot tolerate, whether it's about dress codes, compensation, working conditions, or anything else.

masklinn 10y ago
> which many employers simply cannot tolerate They certainly can, they just don't want to.
- empthought 10y ago
  No, in the long run they can't, because if they do the very concept of "employer" falls to anarchosyndicalism.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
k__ 10y ago
you mean "simply will not tolerate" if companies fear the actions of their employees, why hire them in the first place. Sounds like an abusive relationship to me
notacoward 10y ago
> However, the group participated in collective action That's the key. The actual issue at hand probably didn't matter as much as the fact that the lowest of the low had figured out how to work together outside the official hierarchy. That made it a threat not to policy, not even to the people who could have simply said yes or no, but to the hierarchy itself. What happens when you attack the hierarchy? Scorched earth, baby. Yes, it was a bit entitled of the interns to expect a change in the dress code. A simple "no" would have sufficed if that were the real issue, but it wasn't.

Spooky23 10y ago

The formalized collective action in the form petition was the problem. That's a bat-signal. Given the current legal and regulatory environment, any good corporate counsel or HR person sees that as a step towards organization, and will stamp it out.

GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago

The askmanager.com post linked from the article has more details from one of the interns who organized the petition: http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-internship-for-writing-a-proposal-for-a-more-flexible-dress-code.html http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-inter... With the facts given, both the advice columnist and commenters don't seem to be particularly sympathetic to the interns.