The Intern
Thanks to the new intern, the bagels are plentiful and varied in flavor, all things necessary to stoke the furnaces of digitalization during these trying times. I love her for that. I'll spare you the disastrous state of the bagel situation before the intern's arrival, but suffice to say it was sub par. I get to the office early and have my first bagel of the day (everything, toasted, whipped butter). I turn on my computer and I have ten emails from the lead general counsel. See me ASAP, is the gist of all ten. So I go to his office. "There's been a development in the case," he says. "What's that?" I ask. "As I'm sure you've heard, this is the big one." "I've heard." "Well, it just got a helluva lot bigger. They're claiming we've taken books without permission." "Of course we had permission." "Of course we did. Which is why I need you to pull the files and bring me coptes. "Pull all the files?" "Yes." "And copy them all?" "You betcha." "But there are tens of thousands of files. It will take my whole team a week." "No can do. We need your team doing what they do best: scanning. We need to present a fac;:ade of normalcy so that this lawsuit doesn't cause any hiccups in the DP's stock." "It can't be done." "It has to be done." "It can't." "Let me ask you this, you're up for a promotion right?" I am, and let's just say I need it. With the promotion comes mo re money and with more money comes a happy wife who won't leave me and take the twins along with her. She's never said this was going to happen, but I get the feeling it's imminent. There are certain things that make me think this way, the first and foremost being that we no longer share a bed. Frankly, I don't really care about my wife. The flame burned out long ago, I'm afraid, and my mind began to wander. But when I think of the twins, it all seems worth it. "Yes," I say. "OK. Just wondering. Don't forget that as lead general counsel, I have some sway." "So what am I supposed to do?" "You have an intern, right?" 0
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Summer. Fall 2008
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