Strongly Worded

Intern-al Issues

So as I mentioned, I'm doing a contract/consulting project, and it's a huge scary undertaking that involves working with a 19-year-old intern. My client hired her to deal with the day-to-day business of this undertaking, and hired me as kind of a project manager. Which is odd because I'm off-site, she's on-site, and because the client keeps referring to both of us as interns. This makes me insane, because, as you know, I'm 30, I have an master's degree, and, as of four days ago, I was running an entire god-forsaken organization.

Alas. This project has many cool and challenging aspects, and I am incredibly grateful to have the work. One of the most challenging aspects is managing my relationship with Cara, the 19-year-old intern. If I had been hipper and more fun in college, and had better fashion sense, then I would have been a lot like Cara. The chick is ambitious, uber-organized, and has that same wet-behind-the-ears arrogance that I also possessed.

On the day I met Cara, she had already divvied up the work for herself and me, despite the fact that I, as I mentioned, am 30 and have a master's degree, and was, a the time, running an entire god-forsaken organization. She was responsive when I later reneged on her workplan, and has been, in general, receptive to feedback.

The weird thing is her 19-year-old-ness. I have worked with interns before, but they have been guys, and had a very different set of shortcomings. Cara checks her email and cell phone obsessively. During one of our meetings, she answered the phone and said "Hey, bitch! How's it going? Awesome .... great ... definitely. Send me a facebook message, OK? You have my facebook address?" When she hung up, she apologized for the interruption and indicated that she had just been talking to her professor. On the same day, she commented on the demonstration outside the building, which had convened in response to recent fracas about equal marriage in our state. She rolled her eyes and said: "Those bastard Republicans. Such idiots. Can't believe they're opposing this."

I put on my mentoring cap and told her that while I totally agreed with her, she had no way of knowing that I would, and she could have just inadvertently offended me. "I don't care. I have plenty of friends who are Republican. They know me, they know how I am, I'm not going to censor myself. You seem liberal enough." Later, she got into a tiff with the Chief of Staff about office supplies. Then she argued with my client (the president of the organization) about the semantics of his memo.

The thing is, when she's not being brazen, Cara apologizes for every tiny thing she does. When presenting her generally very fine work, she says things like "this is probably not what you wanted at all, and we can totally change it ..." She says "sorry" when her printer takes too long to print, and at least 20 times in every conversation. Yesterday I told her to stop doing this, that we women undermine ourselves and our capabilities by apologizing constantly. Her eyes lit up. "You would have been proud of me yesterday! I stood up to the Chief of Staff about those office supplies! I almost emailed you to vent about it!"

I backtracked and expressed the need to balance humility and respect for hierarchy with confidence, but I'm not sure I got through to her. And while I want to be a mentor and forge a good working relationship with her, my allegiance is to the Chief of Staff and the President and anyone else who might someday hire or recommend me. This is a tricky line to toe.

Posted by Dori at 11:13 AM