interns? am i being abused?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris Jahn
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Chris Jahn

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If your reading this and you are now or have in the past interned at a studio tell me what you think about this.

I understand that being an intern in any profession means doing the shit work, and i accept that fully. but i had to do something yesterday that may or may not have pushed the boundries and im wondering what people think.

The studio i intern for is moving, the new location is a huge loft in brooklyn, but this huge loft is a MESS cuz it was an old wood shop for years. So my job yesterday was to be up on a ladder for 8 hours straight (in the building by myself) and scrape the paint chips off the 15 foot ceiling, and get the saw dust off the pipes and fixtures so it can be painted before the gear is moved in.

i have no problem with hard work ( and this was HARD) but is this what an unpaid intern in a recording studio should be doing? Should i have said no? or at least expected some cash, i get paid 25 and hour to do this kinda stuff when i do freelance work?
 
Tough call - I have heard interns get paid nothing for being a gopher but that kind of labor sounds excessive. If it was just one day I would let it pass, but if we're talking weeks then maybe I would be upset....Not sure what you would say without jeopardizing your position though. They have you by the short and curlies..... ;)
 
Chris Jahn said:
If your reading this and you are now or have in the past interned at a studio tell me what you think about this.

I understand that being an intern in any profession means doing the shit work, and i accept that fully. but i had to do something yesterday that may or may not have pushed the boundries and im wondering what people think.

The studio i intern for is moving, the new location is a huge loft in brooklyn, but this huge loft is a MESS cuz it was an old wood shop for years. So my job yesterday was to be up on a ladder for 8 hours straight (in the building by myself) and scrape the paint chips off the 15 foot ceiling, and get the saw dust off the pipes and fixtures so it can be painted before the gear is moved in.

i have no problem with hard work ( and this was HARD) but is this what an unpaid intern in a recording studio should be doing? Should i have said no? or at least expected some cash, i get paid 25 and hour to do this kinda stuff when i do freelance work?
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Interning at a studio should at least ROUGHLY have SOME connection to audio. I would have walked out right then and there, but that is me. Some studio owners today are such scum.
 
haha...that SUCKS. i think you just were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

i could handle making the coffee and cleaning the bathroom once in a while...cord wrapping, being the mic stand guy.

it seems like that's a job that would have been done by the regulars, but since you're there, they don't want to do it.

but think about if you weren't there. who would do it? not one of them ALONE, for 8 hours.

maybe ask if everyone could do it for one morning/afternoon. i'm sure boredom/motivation would be helped if 5 other guys were in there with you. when i was in college, i worked with 6 or so other college kids cleaning my highschool in the summer. basically, we took the jobs the other guys didn't want to do.

cleaning walls ALONE...you sorta doze off, slack a lot, and just not care. it wears on you. when you're with just one other person, its a lot better.

anyways...it would be really hard to ask i guess, but if they say no, i would seriously do just a really quick quick job of it. make sure you take breaks man. like...half hour breaks. multiple ones.

i guess sometimes i can be a perfectionist, and i found that cleaning a locker so every piece of tape was off and all of its stick was gone...wasn't really necessary.

if they don't like your work and they think you suck, well. that makes sense. you're wanting to be an engineer, not a 'this old house' guy.
 
I wonder if there is any legal issues of you peforming contractor construction work without being a member of the union. If they are moving into this area, and they are having it remodeled, there will certainly be constuction permits to be filed, inspections to be made.

General cleaning.. ok... putting YOUR health at risk by exposing you to paint chips (possible leaded) would be illegal.
 
They better give you a lot of good hands on experience for helping them out like that. :eek:
 
michaelst said:
I wonder if there is any legal issues of you peforming contractor construction work without being a member of the union. If they are moving into this area, and they are having it remodeled, there will certainly be constuction permits to be filed, inspections to be made.

General cleaning.. ok... putting YOUR health at risk by exposing you to paint chips (possible leaded) would be illegal.
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These are the first questions that popped into my head too. I hope you were wearing a respirator, because depending on the age of that paint, you *really* don't want to be breathing it. Were the pipes coated with asbestos or was the dust directly on the metal?

The work that's asked of an intern can be varied and extensive, but I think in this case what you were doing was not directly audio or studio related. They were using you for free labor so they wouldn't have to hire anyone. There's a difference between that and having you intern at their studio, in my opinion.

On the other hand, you did them a big favor and they should be grateful for that. You are also learning what it takes to build a studio from the ground up. If you stick with the process all the way through you could learn a lot.

If they are decent people they will appreciate what you did. This should result in giving you some more interesting work to do in the future. At the least, they should toss some cash your way no matter what. Even if not much, just something to say thank you.

Since you've already done the work, my suggestion is to be cool about it and don't show any attitude at all. Collect your brownie points, in other words. The thing is, part of getting work and getting ahead is making yourself indispensable and valuable. You are doing the ugly grunt work today, but try taking the long view for a while.

I know that when I was starting out as an assistant conductor I got stuck with all the lousy jobs the music director didn't want to do. It's just part of the business, and is actually how you learn how it all works.
 
Wax on, Wax off. You're certainly paying your dues! The question you have to ask yourself is, do these people like you? Do they have integrity? Is the studio growing, or doing enough business that you can see youself getting off the ladder and behind the desk in the future? Watch how they treat other people, including business to business transactions. If they dick people around, they're likely dicking you around.
 
Pretty much everyone said in one way or another what i was thinking, that if he (the owner and head engineer) is a good dude, then he will take my efforts and remember them when its time to bump up the next intern to a paid posistion.

and so far , he seems to be exactly that kind of person, further more, hes moving to a neighborhood were the clientel might change considerably, and im the person who is dialed in to that neigborhoods music scene, and i really believe i can bring in new clients he had never really reached. The manhatten local music scens compared to the brooklyn scene is very differnt, and i know exactly where to go to scare up new business.

So ill do the work and hope i dont get screwed in the end, but i dont think i will!!!!
 
Chris Jahn said:
So ill do the work and hope i dont get screwed in the end, but i dont think i will!!!!
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And you'll learn a lot in the process, and that's what it's all about being an intern.
 
Chris Jahn said:
If your reading this and you are now or have in the past interned at a studio tell me what you think about this.

I understand that being an intern in any profession means doing the shit work, and i accept that fully. but i had to do something yesterday that may or may not have pushed the boundries and im wondering what people think.

The studio i intern for is moving, the new location is a huge loft in brooklyn, but this huge loft is a MESS cuz it was an old wood shop for years. So my job yesterday was to be up on a ladder for 8 hours straight (in the building by myself) and scrape the paint chips off the 15 foot ceiling, and get the saw dust off the pipes and fixtures so it can be painted before the gear is moved in.

i have no problem with hard work ( and this was HARD) but is this what an unpaid intern in a recording studio should be doing? Should i have said no? or at least expected some cash, i get paid 25 and hour to do this kinda stuff when i do freelance work?
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From my personal experience,

the correct answer is get it done, get it done quickly, do it with a smile, and never talk back.

And if you do talk back, you better hope to god your someone important.

You see Chris, there is a level of loyalty that's expected of you. Besides, your boss has a million other things he has to do right now, especially if he's moving into a new place.

So I would say you're far from being abused.

Besides, you stick around long enough and eventually you can do the same thing to your interns ;).
 
interning to me is helping/learning things that are related to the craft. To me ,they just got a freebie.
 
I would do that shit every day for a year if I eventually got to 2nd engineer with someone really good.
 
did the same thing....
the studio i was interning at was also moving and i moved rock at the new location.

huge f'n rock. some of them it took 3 or 4 people just to roll!!!!!!!!

but in my case every one but the owner (engineer) was in on it, assistant, manager, and me.... not me alone.
 
BRIEFCASEMANX said:
I would do that shit every day for a year if I eventually got to 2nd engineer with someone really good.
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I dont think he's interning with Al Schmitt! Is there an agreement? Or are you just their lacky.
 
You're being abused but get over it. You'll be telling some intern 20 years from now how tuff you had it back when :)
 
jmorris said:
I dont think he's interning with Al Schmitt!
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Def not. I checked out the studios samples. Chris will outgrow the studio in no time, I would imagine.
 
Yeah like...when I was an intern 20 years ago we had to make our own hard drives! I walked up a 4 mile hill with no shoes to get the metal from the mine to hand craft the microphone shell..... :p and we were happy to have an intern job!
 
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