A Day In The Life Of A Four Pins Intern

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

Interning at Four Pins is a pretty good gig. I see a lot of new product first, I dick around with my boss on Twitter and I get to sit in a chair all day making terrible jokes about whatever the fuck it is I feel like. It's a good deal for sure. The thing that people seem to not realize is that we’re actually doing work over here in the office regardless if it is the bare minimum. We try to make your shitty lives a little bit better while you sit in your cube pulling up Excel spreadsheets. That’s what we do. People think we’re just chilling and chopping it up with rappers and big booty bitches all day when in reality it’s just a bunch of dudes sitting in a cubicle our boss tells people is his office trying to sound cool. I’m going to give you guys a little insight into what my day-to-day usually entails. Sorry about this not being a video segment, we’re broke as shit. Tell the white dudes who cut our checks to step their fucking benevolence up.

10:30 – I roll in to the office and get stopped at the door. I’m a piece of shit intern that doesn’t have security clearance to get into the building so I get questioned by three security guards at two different checkpoints every FUCKING day. I can’t believe it to be honest. These assholes see me every Monday and Friday. Bros, why do you feel the need to ask me my name and what floor I’m going to after I just gave you half of my sandwich last week? Fuck you guys.

10:40 – I walk in the front door, suck in my gut and puff out my chest to impress all of the fly honies that work in the office. I don’t even know why I think I have a chance. These are, like, professional ass women. What the fuck could they ever possibly want with a broke 21-year-old college student that still lives with his mom?

10:41 – Get to Four Pins HQ just as my boss is leaving to smoke his 3rd cigarette of the day. Like, how is that shit even possible? I can’t even brush my teeth then drink a glass of orange juice in the morning. The last thing I could possibly think of after my morning rub and tug is to smoke a stick of tar and shit.

11:00 – Lawrence is back and we settle in for the day. Awkward silence ensues.

11:15 - Go over to the Tres Bien website looking for product. Moy has literally written about every item on the entire fucking site. This guy is running a monopoly on the product game right now and it's bullshit.

11:30 – Just did a good 20 minutes of decent work surfing the Internet. Time for a Twitter break.

11:35 – Awkward silence.

11:43 - My boss finds a new picture of Kanye West he’s never seen before. He says some shit like, “Ah, dude. Mad ill” in his raspy white boy voice. He posts it to his Tumblr.

12:00 – I'm told to “shut the fuck up” because I’m always sick and sniffling all of the time like a baby.

12:15 – Lawrence asks me if I’ve found any new product. I give him the “Moy has written about everything” excuse to buy some extra time on Twitter.

12:30 – Awkward silence.

12:40 – Jian stops by looking for Lawrence who isn't around. He calls me by my first name for the first time in three months. It's the little victories that count.

12:45 - Lawrence straight up denies a product I ask to write about like he's Dikembe Mutombo. I feel like a piece of shit.

1:00 – I finally find a product Lawrence says is cool and I’m midway through the write up. I’ve been doing this for a while now so I have to leave out all of my racist jokes or Lawrence gets upset.

1:15 – Lawrence fires me via Twitter for the third time in a week.

1:30 – My product review is up and Lawrence edits absolutely everything in it. It’s not even the product I asked to write about. He basically just threw my shit into the garbage, did his own and put my name on it. Uh, thanks, dude, I guess.

1:50 – Pitch an article idea to my boss right before I step out for lunch. He says he will run it by the Senior Editor, Noah.

2:10 – I’m already back from lunch. I feel like a terrible intern that does nothing all day so I guilt myself into going to Jamba Juice so I don't waste any time actually chewing food.

2:13 – Overhear Lawrence pitch my idea. It usually goes like this:

Lawrence: “Yeah, so, James has this idea of writing about how much he sucks at life.”

Noah: “Who the fuck is James?”

Mind you, I’ve been at this place for 2 and a half months. Reminded again that I’m a piece of shit.

2:20 – My article is a no go. I just nod my head and say I understand. There's only so many times I can write about sucking at life.

2:45 – This is when my usual “big question of the day” comes where I annoy Lawrence about some mundane shit going on in my life and ask his advice. The guy somehow has this uncanny knack of showing me how stupid of a question it is. Every. Fucking. Time. Like, there hasn’t been ONE question that he hasn’t absolutely made me think I have an IQ of under 70 and should be considered legally retarded. I annoy the dude so bad I’m sure he’s contemplated punching me in my fucking face. The conversations ends with me feeling pretty bad about myself.

3:00 – I send over some more product reviews to Lawrence and don’t even try making them the least bit entertaining. He’s just going to edit it anyways. Like, nothing is going on the site unless he adds at least three or four of his own jokes. More Twitter time for me, what up.

3:10 – I'm alone and can finally play the new Riff Raff song. Super low volume, though. Don’t want to get caught with that shit.

3:14 – Lawrence walks in on me taking a photo booth shot. I need a new twitter avi, dude. Get off my nuts!

3:30 – Lawrence goes on a spree of shitting on dumb commenters.

3:45 – Awkward silence.

4:00 - I have to borrow Lawrence’s entire wallet to go to the bathroom because it has the key card in it I need to get past all of the top notch, super confidential security checkpoints. I wash my hands and look for some paper towels and you know what I see? A roll of fucking toilet paper to dry my hands. Like, not even 2-ply shit. Do you have any idea how much it sucks to dry my perfectly manicured hands on a single ply of toilet paper? Why the fuck are there never any paper towels in this place?

4:08 - Overhear the new Complex interns getting tours and receiving all of their security codes on their first day. You know what my boss did the first day? Nothing. I didn’t get shit. Lawrence showed me a swivel chair and a little corner desk and said, “Get to work.” It’s a fucking ruthless dictatorship at Four Pins, dude.

4:10 – Realize my boss is running a glorified sweatshop. I don’t even know what anything in the office looks like other than the wall right in front of my face. I think there’s a water fountain in the place because Daniel (another intern) is always sipping on a cup all obnoxious and shit while I die in the corner. Somebody call the FDA, ECC, NAACP or whatever agency it is that handles child labor and war crimes.

4:15 – Bossman looks over at my screen and Tweet Deck is the only thing open. I don’t even TRY to hide the fact I’m not doing any work.

4:45 – Awkward silence.

5:00 – Soo-Young comes into the cube and just absolutely ignores me. For those of you that don’t know Soo is a writer at Complex that works right next to us. I swear to god, she hasn’t acknowledged my existence once. One time there was an “alcohol” tasting thing at the office because Complex is just cool like that and I caught her walking down the hall and was all like, “This is your chance, James. Introduce yourself.” This is in one of the longest hallways I’ve ever seen, mind you. No bullshit, she didn’t even look at me. ZERO eye contact. It takes literally 3 minutes to walk through this hallway and I wasn’t even noticed. I'm worse than the janitor, yo.

5:30 – I send my last mediocre product review over to Lawrence and I’m done for the day. Boom. Easy as shit.

So, there it is. The glamorous life of a Four Pins intern. No, I’m not kicking it with the Ovadia brothers and smoking weed with Mark Mcnairy as many of you think, but it’s still pretty decent. In reality, I have a pretty good deal over here at Four Pins. I’ve never fetched coffee, Lawrence takes the time to amuse my nonsensical inquiries and nobody really knows my name so it's not like anyone can bother me. I mean, I'm not getting paid so it fucking sucks, but you get the point.

Latest in Style