Hypothetical Scenario:

Intern is about to finish his internship. He had a great time and got along well with everyone else. Also, he did a better-than-necessary job.

The question is: Should the intern buy a present for the business owner/his boss/internship coordinator or should the boss be the one buying the present?

A caveat: While it is true that a gift is in no way expected or required in most situations, a token of appreciation is always nice and should therefore be considered.

What do YOU think?

you probably made coffee, ran errands, cleaned toilets, and took out
garbage so that you could watch the "magic" happen, and you did it
free of charge.

getting on your knees and finishing the job is present enough.

it has been your pleasure.
best,
brian

If the intern is now going to be hired on at the same place of business, then the intern should probably buy the gift. If he's leaving to pursue other options, then the company should buy him a gift as sort of a "thanks and goodbye". If you were included in the company's "secret santa" drawing during the holidays, then call it even.

A gift to an employer? For allowing you to bust your ass there with absolutely no added expense to them?

This internship shit is getting totally out of hand! It's not even as if when you're done with your servitude you get to join the IBEW and coast in neutral, sipping coffee, for the rest of your life (like an apprentice).

I'm amazed at the number of college graduates that will work for free nowdays. As if these fucking corporations don't have enough money to pay people (recording studios aside). Fuckin' eh, if you don't have mommy and daddy to still support you through this....might as well move to Bangladesh to stitch fucking Dockers for 14 hours a day for next to nothing while you're at it.

They owe you the gift! They owe you a glowing reference! They owe you some goddamn sincere appreciation (assuming you did a fine job for them)!

You don't owe them a goddamn thing. Your "thank you" should have happened when they first took you on.....Sheesh!

A gift to an employer? For allowing you to bust your ass there with absolutely no added expense to them?

Absolutely. You have an obligation to show appreciation for the experience you received. A small gift is perfectly reasonable. And what the fuck do you mean by "with no added expense to them"? What a crock of shit. You don't seem to have any respect for the fact that accomodating an intern can be a huge pain in the ass for a small business. An intern can significantly affect the quality and efficiency of daily operations. A bad intern has the potential to hinder productivity, damage gear, offend clients, or just be a general annoyance.

I'm amazed at the number of college graduates that will work for free nowdays. As if these fucking corporations don't have enough money to pay people (recording studios aside).

I have been an intern in Japan, a country where gift-giving plays a pretty significant cultural role. The company I worked for held a welcoming party for me when I arrived. As a new, low-ranking person entering their office, I presented them with a gift (some scotch) to show my appreciation for the warm welcome, and for being hired (accepted into the group). When they threw me a "sayonara" party at the end of my internship, I gave another gift (a book), this time showing my appreciation for their kindness, hospitality, and tolerance towards my mistakes. I liked this system, and I got used to it. I wasn't paid very much money, but I learned a lot and was treated well. I compromised on salary for the chance to have a unique experience that would hold it's value over time. This is why people are willing to work for free.

They owe you the gift! They owe you a glowing reference! They owe you some goddamn sincere appreciation (assuming you did a fine job for them)!

Ha ha! What an awesome sense of entitlement you have! Seriously, I don't know any successful people with this kind of attitude. But then again, you could always change career paths and join the Xmen. Perhaps your mutant power could be the superhuman ability to deflect all sense of obligation and duty.

You don't owe them a goddamn thing. Your "thank you" should have happened when they first took you on.....Sheesh!

If you could poll all of the former Electrical Audio interns, I'd bet my shirt that none of them would agree with you. I know a few of them, and they are grateful for every second they were on staff. You owe respect. You have benefitted from an older person's generosity in sharing their knowledge with you. Quite a few engineers have been kind enough to explain something to me (slowly) when they could have been doing something else. I appreciate that.

Working for no pay is stressful, and not all experiences are positive. But the bigger picture is that the pursuit of a fulfilling career is a noble and honorable endeavor worth the time, effort, and sacrifice.

Bonati,

I can appreciate much of your agruement, but I must disagree.

These internships are not full-fledged appreticeships. They mostly amount to free labor to take care of a company's shitwork.

You can't tell me that taking the role of janitor, gofer, and butler at a studio is a full professional course of education. To intern at a recording studio for a summer at 20 years old is not the same as as having a masters degree and interning for a multinational corporation, in a position that once paid $42K.

Today, many corporations are using unpaid internships to replace positions that were once full-time, full-benefit entry level positions.

This internship craze is a slippery slope. When do four month unpaid internships start becoming one year, or two year unpaid internships? At which point does your "education" become exploitation? Internships make sense in some career areas, obviously, but those also tend to be areas where the interns are paid.

To speak of respect....if a company values the labor that an intern can provide, they should be compensated justly. If the intern is in the way and not providing value, then perhaps the intern owe's a great deal of gratitude, but my take has been that most interns bust their ass to do a good job and make a good impression.

Perhaps it is easy in a society where young people are dependant upon their parents well into adulthood to work for free. For those who lack a privileged backgroud; are they restricted from certain career paths nowdays because they cannot work full time for free?

I just feel compelled to question the current culture of internship. In my earlier post I was expressing anger at what I perceive to be a epidemic of low-return indenture.

i infrequently still question whether it was a good or bad move to forego interning while i was in college. ultimately, i tend to think i made the right choice in not doing so. while i learned loads of important concepts and theories, and applications of them (with the courses including having to actually "do it" rather than just write about it on a test), from my classes, i can say i really didn't have time for an internship because i devoted all my free time to playing and recording my own music. i tend to think that this combination is plenty good, assuming an education as good as that which they provide at columbia. i think the task of producing the highest-quality recordings you can with total crap equipment, well only makes it easier when you have a chance to work with good equipment. assuming you get to work with good equipment at school, like i did.

so this all makes me think that having a generic "internship" wouldn't have been as beneficial to me as just going to school and spending all my free time actually recording on my own.

but as far as an internship at *electrical*, though i know nothing about them, i would expect this to be *way* beyond valuable. based solely on the amount of sharing (vis a vis education) that electrical does though this site alone, it makes me tend to think that interning there would be an experience overflowing with benefits, knowledge, etc.

plus, and again i don't know if i have this all wrong, don't interns on occasion get a chance to use the studio to record their own band, for no charge, just the cost of tape and the promise to put everything back where they got it in as-good-or-better condition than they found it, etc? i dunno if electrical does that, but i've heard of that as being a nice benefit of interning at other studios. that's kinda like getting paid, i think. not having to pay money to buy all that expensive gear, or to rent the room, but just getting to use it some night when nothing's going on, or everybody's off at somebody's wedding, etc? fuck yeah, i'd love a shot at that, in a balls-out studio anyways.

all that being said, unless i could intern for someone with mad, mad skillz and a cool personality, i think i'd just as soon spend all my time doing it on my own. cause at least then i'd be playing music at the same time, progressing in that arena rather than the wonderful world of dish-washing.

but g,

To speak of respect....if a company values the labor that an intern can provide, they should be compensated justly.

one way to look at it is this:

i paid tens of thousands of dollars for a kick-ass education in all things audio, including live and studio recording. i do not doubt for one second that i got my money's worth. the internship, especially at a place with good people who have hefty skills, doesn't cost you tens of thousands of dollars. it costs you some elbow grease, some leg work, and maybe an occasional handjob if somebody's a little too drunk and belligerent.

but i expect that both the great college education and the great internship probably present the student with a similar wealth of knowledge and experience. but in one case, you gotta do some shitwork to get that schooling. do shitwork, or pay tens of thousands of dollars... which one do you think an underprivlidged person is better off doing?

yeah, yeah, fallacy of limited alternatives, what about "read books on your own, read articles, spend all your (modest amount of) money on gear, spend all your time recording, etc..."

one thing an internship presents that books and personal time spend self-educating certainly do not is the opportunity to become real-world familiar with some of the actual people in the industry... spending time having face-to-face conversations with guys like steve or bob, or getting coffee for some fucking killer bands that record there, these are in my estimation some of the most valuable experiences one could hope for as a 20-year-old looking to make a move in the rock world.

to spend four months hanging out (to whatever extent) with the staff and bands at electrical, i mean, c'mon. i'm making fine money in my career now, and i'd *still* spend an hour washing fucking dishes if it meant i could spend an hour having conversations with steve or bob in their downtime. wouldn't you? i don't mean this as pandering, though it always feels like it would appear as such to say, but since i see it as fact... i really believe that just getting the chance to ask one fucking question of someone who's both as accomplished and as busy as these guys, and getting an answer, the value of that is immeasurable. based solely on the wealth of *GOOD* information i've gotten from this site (which they maintain and offer at no charge to members), i feel like i should go wash some of their dishes already, y'know?

shit, i guess this all well-speak of internships presupposes an opportunity to intern at electrical or some other electrical-caliber studio, too, which is probably not anything like the norm. interning at some shitbox studio would not likely carry these same benefits.

and one thing you might want to weigh in when you view internships as exploitation... in an industry like recording, i'll betcha there's a whole lot more people that wanna work in the fancy studio than there are fancy studios struggling to find people to work there. it's an employers market. at that point, if you're trying to get your "big break" into the industry, maybe you put on your gratitude hat and fucking suck it up for a little while. the idea that things should just be handed to us with minimal effort on our parts is something that i think will ultimately be our downfall, "us" being post-WWII americans.

now this is making me want to open up a thread about the whole concept of working in a studio that isn't on the top of the heap, and how many total absolute suckfest piece of shit bands you'll have to record simply because they're the ones willing to give you some money. or maybe a poll for folks who've worked in recording studios, whether the total package is more or less similar to their ideal that they went in with...

here's what they say at the company i work for... maybe you spend some of your free time reading up on industry stuff, maybe you take some classes and pay for them yourself, maybe you work a few hours and don't bill for them, sometimes you bite the bullet and do what looks like screwing yourself in the short-term, because you have the foresight to recognize that ultimately it's an investment in your future.

i couldn't manage that thought process for shit when i was in college, which is part of why i never interned. the other part is that i was fortunate enough to be extremely internally motivated to play and record music on my own, so i didn't suffer any for it.

so to get on topic with this thread, after all of that off-topic nonsense...

The question is: Should the intern buy a present for the business owner/his boss/internship coordinator or should the boss be the one buying the present?

What do YOU think?

i think that nobody "should" buy a present.

i think the employer could, if they felt compelled to, maybe give you a funny hat, or a tshirt if they want, maybe one that says "this isn't a bald spot, it's a solar panel for a sex machine".

and you could give them something for the studio itself, something that would be memorable and durable, and would benefit most if not all of the folks who roll through. for your consideration : the studio i used to live in back in the late 90's was given a gift of this caliber... one year's worth of AVN magazines. i don't think a single person who rolled through after that would not be able to distinctly recall the first time they saw a picture of Chance Rider.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:plus, and again i don't know if i have this all wrong, don't interns on occasion get a chance to use the studio to record their own band, for no charge, just the cost of tape and the promise to put everything back where they got it in as-good-or-better condition than they found it, etc? i dunno if electrical does that, but i've heard of that as being a nice benefit of interning at other studios. that's kinda like getting paid, i think. not having to pay money to buy all that expensive gear, or to rent the room, but just getting to use it some night when nothing's going on, or everybody's off at somebody's wedding, etc?

I'm curious, is this common practice?

hmm...........ya think a studio with a six figure ssl or neve console is going to let a intern record their friends band with it...........let alone use a studer to record them..30/60K.......hmm............maybe they can record on a pro tools rig..........hmm........oh yeh I forgot 20/30k for a HD. system..........If you are able to record you are in real good with one of the Engineers and they give you the green light.....cool beans.......usually not the case.........or...you and some other intern decide to take fate into your own hands and record late night when no ones around...............oh yeh no permission = instant end of internship..................If you had a porshe and I washed it would you let me drive it for the night

A poem by Jimpy Mendrix

hmm
ya think a studio
with a six figure ssl or neve console
is going to let a intern record their friends band with it
let alone use a studer
to record them..30/60K
hmm
maybe they can
record on a pro tools rig
hmm
oh yeh I forgot 20/30k for a HD.
system
If you are able to record
you are in real good with one of the Engineers and they
give you the green light
cool beans
usually not the case or
you and some other intern
decide to take fate into your own hands and record late night when no ones around
oh yeh
no permission = instant end of internship
If you had a porshe and I washed it
would you let me drive it for the night