“Got some liquor on the way; the weed is twistin’, you should stay.” Nineteen-year-old Mac Miller raps explicitly about weed, sex and alcohol in most of his songs. And he does this for a living. As an artist, he is certainly not shy about addressing the taboo subjects most of us wouldn’t be caught whispering about at our workplaces. It’s a pretty audacious move on his part — I can only imagine how quickly I would lose my fall internship if I ever quoted or referred to any of his songs during business hours.
But today I’d like you to give this some thought: Is it better to own up to those frowned upon actions (especially when they’re fairly obvious) or to try to cover them up? Does it show strength of character and honesty to admit to these college antics, or should you try to hide them?
Consider the following scenario:
“Oh, here, sweetheart, take all this home for your roommates. You girls need to save your money for beer, not food,” a superior at a past internship crooned as she thrust an entire tin of grilled chicken into my arms. She had already packed me two full bags of rolls, potato salad, coleslaw and cookies. But her comment made me fidget awkwardly and shuffle the food around as I mumbled my 30th “thank you” in the past 10 minutes.
I appreciated her consideration for any drinking tendencies I might have had, but did she really have to say that out loud? Not only was it inappropriate on her part, but it also put me on the spot. Even if I had been legally allowed to consume alcohol at the time, any discussions about beer, liquor, wine — even NyQuil — would have given her way too much inappropriate insight into my life. Those were conversations reserved for friends, not for colleagues and supervisors. I was doing just fine compartmentalizing those two lives, so why couldn’t she?
During your internships and first jobs after graduation, you may experience the uncomfortable phenomenon where your older colleagues have a regressive pull. They either believe they can relive their glorious college days by sharing stories with you, or they live vicariously through your experiences in a world with a whole different set of pressures, stresses and rewards. As if interns’ red eyes and “huh, what?” attitudes on Friday mornings weren’t enough to confirm that they do, in fact, blow their bucks on booze, why must colleagues and superiors attempt to engage their interns by talking about it?
As much as I love Mac Miller’s music, I don’t think I’ll be taking any leaves out of his book when it comes to topics of conversation at work. Whenever that awkward discussion seems imminent, I’ll either avoid it or change the subject. I respect Mac for being so frank and open in his music and for entertaining his audience. But the stage on which he performs is a lot different from the stage on which the rest of us perform at our various work sites, where we depend on our reputations more than anything else.
And even though our interning experiences are supposed to be filled with trials, errors, stumbles, bumps and (hopefully) a glimmer of success, I think you’ll find your superior colleagues and supervisors to be a little bit less receptive to your recounting drunken adventures than an audience full of college students would be to Mac Miller’s performance.
After all, tickets to hearing your life experiences didn’t sell out in 30 seconds.
Emily Kleiman is a junior communication major. She can be reached at kleiman@umdbk.com.
