The Intern!

The newest member of the team, an intern, was a very enthusiastic kid. His dream was to work in a good IT organization and this internship got his dream much closer. “I want to learn and learn more “ was his usual answer with a big smile on his face. He would be the first one to reach the office and the last to leave; always found rummaging through various books, trying to find solutions to technical problems. He treated all the team meetings with such importance that he would take notes, verbatim, and especially when his Project Lead ran the meetings.

The onsite team members who visited the offshore facility for knowledge transfer and training wanted to go sightseeing over the week-end. All the team members had some excuse or the other when asked to take the onsite team for sight seeing.When the Project lead asked the intern , the intern could not refuse as he had great respect for his project lead. He cancelled his week-end plan and did good amount of homework to ensure the outing will be a memorable one for the onsite team.

He met the team at their Hotel post lunch and for the next few hours he took the team around showing them various historic and other tourist spots in the city.  He was so involved in the role, the tourist guides at various historic spots felt threatened by the new guide, who looked quite educated and more informed.

As the evening approached the team was tired and hungry and wanted to go back to the Hotel. The intern was also tired and hungry as he was doing most of the talking and running around buying entry tickets and going out of the way to keep his team happy. Soon they reached the fancy Hotel where the team was staying and all of them decided to meet at the restaurant in 10 minutes time for dinner.

The offshore Project lead also arrived at the Hotel along with a couple of senior team members. He thanked the Intern and told him that he could leave as he felt that the intern was too young to sit together and have dinner with such senior folks. Seniors, Juniors, Hierarchies, pretty much sums up the culture of companies where the power distance is high and titles matter more than the person. The intern was a little disappointed that he wasn’t invited for the dinner. Hiding his disappointment, he managed to smile and leave.

As he was too hungry, he changed his mind and decided to have dinner at the restaurant even though it was a little above his budget.  His table incidentally was close to where his team was seated a little later. The onsite team and his lead did notice him at the restaurant. He smiled and waved his hand to the team and continued with his dinner.  

The lead walked up to the intern, sat at his table and asked him what he was trying to prove. The intern with a puzzled look on his face said that he was hungry and that was all to it. The Lead got into a lecture mode and started listing out various qualities in him that he should correct. The intern took a paper out of his backpack and as his usual practice was, made a note of all that his Lead said, verbatim… “No humility, Proud,Lack of respect for seniors, Arrogant, insensitive, too big for your boots”, and the list kept going on. The intern made a list of all the areas of improvement and was pondering over what was just said. The lead left the table happy that he taught the kid a lesson.

The kid finished his dinner, walked up to the table where his lead sat, handed over the paper to him and said “You need this paper more than me “and walked away.