The Intern

The listing said “unpaid internship.” It also said “bachelor’s degree required.” A four-year degree to qualify for a job that pays nothing.

She applied from her parents’ house because that’s the only way an unpaid internship works — you need someone else paying your rent while you work for free. The kid whose parents can’t cover rent doesn’t apply. The kid whose parents don’t live in the city where the internship exists doesn’t apply. The institution calls this “opportunity.” The opportunity is available to the people who can afford it. That’s the filter working as designed.

She works forty hours a week. She is not an employee. She is a “learning experience.” The learning: how to do the job she’s not being paid for. She writes copy, builds presentations, sits in client meetings, and produces deliverables that bill at $200 an hour. Her share of the $200 is zero.

The legal standard is that the internship must primarily benefit the intern. It primarily benefits the company. Everyone knows this. The compliance department has a memo about it. The memo is next to the one about unpaid overtime the interns don’t report because interns don’t report anything — reporting is a privilege that belongs to people the institution plans to keep.

After six months, two of the twelve interns will be offered positions. The institution will describe this as a twelve-person cohort with a strong conversion rate. The ten who weren’t converted will describe it as six months of unpaid labor that qualified them to apply for entry-level positions at other companies that also require internship experience.

The internship didn’t open a door. It was the door. And the price of walking through it was working for free while pretending that was the opportunity.