Community: Real Life

My internship from hell


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Working for free puts you at risk of exploitation. Sarah* tells us about her hellish unpaid internship in London.

Working for free puts you at risk of exploitation. Sarah* tells us about her hellish unpaid internship in London.

It's 3am and I've just finished a sixteen hour working day - nine hours as an unpaid intern at a public affairs firm, followed by seven hours at my bar job.

I live at home with my mother, a disabled single parent living in social housing, and my younger sister, a first year university student. The concept of interning is alien to them. They can't understand why, with five As at A-level and a strong degree from a top university, I have to work for free. And I don't blame them. No one should work for free when their family can't afford basic household necessities, like a washing machine and a cooker.  No one should work for free when they need to help their family pay for food and rent and textbooks. Therefore I shouldn't work for free...yet I do.

At first I thought it was OK. Because I was getting valuable experience at a company where I was proving what I can do and could work my way up. But I was so wrong.

My 'valuable experience' mainly consists of stocking the fridge full of clients' favourite goodies, making tea, and picking up my boss's coat when he leaves it at various supermarkets around London. The exploitation is truly awful. I took this particular internship because they were advertising a graduate vacancy. I started the internship only to find that they did not, in fact, have that vacancy. They told me they deliberately lie about vacancies, for 'business purposes', as it looks good if they appear to be continually recruiting.

The company survives on interns. Without them, it would need to pay two, or maybe three, more members of staff. It's a small place and the number of interns actually outweighs the number of paid staff. But while they save money, I lose money.

My travel expenses aren't covered, so I have to pay £400 a month for a peak train to London. One day I had to phone in sick because I couldn't afford the fare. The suit I wear everyday-my only suit-is from Primark, because it's all I can afford. I've cut all the tags out so they don't find out where I got it. My coworkers eat lunch at a restaurant, while I live off sneaked biscuits from their office collection.

Luckily, this nightmare is coming to an end and I've got a much better internship lined up. They've actually said they'll pay for my transport. I don't know if it will lead to a job, but I'm ready to leave this joke-of-a-job behind me and look to the future.  

*Names have been changed.

Updated: 30/07/2012


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