Don't make 'em like they used to...

(Just an email that was forwarded to me--didn't write it--thought it was good for a cheap laugh)

Editorial: Interns – They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

Where the hell is the summer guy? Pete, or whatever the fuck his name is. I need him to make some photocopies and buy me a Coke. Wait a minute. He’s home? Resting? It’s only 2am. He’s sick? What the hell is that? The guy’s only been here ten weeks and he’s got mono? What a pussy. Boy, they don’t make summer interns like they used to.

When I was an intern two years ago, I never went home to rest. In fact, I didn’t even have a home. I lived in my cubicle. Under my desk. I literally had a futon and mini-frig down there. And a poster of Anna Kournikouva with a can of beer. That’s all I needed. No NYU dorm room or Murray Hill sublet for me. The floor was perfectly fine.

But who needs an apartment when you never sleep? When I was a summer analyst, I worked for three months and slept 23 hours. Total. And even when I was sleeping I was dreaming about banking. Granted I was usually late to work in the dreams. And naked. But they were still work-related.

To stay awake the other 2,000-plus hours, I had a Mountain Dew IV hooked up to my arm. I had to keep myself lucid. I was there to work, not get my beauty rest. You don’t get an offer at the end of the summer by being a hedonist who sleeps four hours a night. You get an offer because you worked your ass off and made the lives easier for everyone else in your group. No matter how shitty the work.

When I was an intern, I took everything they gave me – photocopies, dinner runs, comps, massages. Yes massages. One time I was getting ready to crawl behind the garbage can in my cube to take a nap, and this analyst asked for a rub down. And I didn’t say ‘Sorry, I’m only here to build LBO models and work on live deals, not oil you up. ’Instead, I said ‘Do you want Thai or Shiatsu? With or without release?’

But we were a different breed of intern way back in 2003. We didn’t wear skirts. We were fucking animals. I often kept on turning pitchbooks after meetings just to get them right. I was a perfectionist. But I’ll have to admit, I wasn’t Superman. I got sick, too. But I just dealt with it differently. When I had to get an emergency appendectomy, I had them use local anesthesia only so I’d be lucid during the operation. By the time that little organ was removed, I had scrubbed a merger model, written an institutional sales memo and had Fedex come to the OR to pick up a package.

And it wasn’t just all work and no play for me that summer either. I did have sexual relations every once and a while. But I multitasked while doing it. I only had intercourse from the missionary position so I could use my laptop. Every time I got fellatio I sent seven to eight emails on my blackberry before orgasm. And if the bed didn’t have a speakerphone next to it, forget about it. I’d do the deed myself. In my cubicle. Wearing a headset of course.

The interns these days, they’re all weak. They’ve had everything handed to them on a silver platter. They don’t want to work. They just want to drink their soda pop, play their video games and listen to their rock-and-roll music. They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

It makes me sad to be an investment banker.