High Heels or Fuzzy Bunny “Slippahs”
A few things that I had always presumed about government jobs have been discredited this week. First off. When picturing a government job I always pictured men in suits and women in heels and discussions around a round table and debates and what not. This is not the case whatsoever in my office. Although the attire was always stated as business professional, it has come to my attention that this can be viewed in a number of ways. On the one hand we have my boss David Young, the DCP Director, who wears a suit to work every day. He is a very tall black man with a very friendly demeanor about him but I can tell that he is still trying to juggle too many hats as he has explained to me before. As I believe I mentioned in my previous post, no one has been in David’s position in a few years so he is lacking the team that he needs to handle investigators and what not and instead only has me (the intern), Rebecca (who is wonderful and definitely one of my favorite people in the office but does not have a college degree and cannot act as more than a very helpful secretary to David much more than I can) and the temps who David has reported to me are not always reliable. I believe that Tim (David’s supervisor) tries to give him all this help with temps and unpaid interns when he can, however none of us are really qualified or trained to do the real things that David needs help with, so it can be frustrating at times because David is overwhelmed with work, and I am underwhelmed with a lack of tasks throughout the day despite the business of the department.
Next we have another version of business professional attire as interpreted by Tim St. Laurent (David’s boss). Tim has a presence about him that demands respect but he does this is a very friendly and easy going way. I remember how firm his handshake was when I met him and immediately thinking that this was an important person. But then being able to talk to him for a long time about Boston and my family and how the internship was going so far. When walking into Tim’s office you see a large makeshift closet to the left of the room with a zip down door, and nice shoes scattered along the floor along with a putter and a small fragment of fake grass for Tim to practice his golf in his free time between meetings. As he stood up to greet me I saw that he was wearing gym shorts and a tee shirt with his flip flops. He explained that he keeps his nice clothes around for when he needs them, but that he didn’t feel the need to wear them all the time…okay then.
My own wardrobe remains the business professional that I presumed it to be when I Googled the term said to be required in my acceptance emails despite other workers in the office wearing fuzzy slippers and things only a step or two up from a sweatshirt around the office. This is of course with the exception of the heels that I was wearing before because I do feel a little silly walking around in them when most of the office is wearing flip flops. I would describe my experience here so far as quite relaxed and independent and definitely still a great learning opportunity. However I am also realizing that you must keep a “dress for the job you want not the job you have” kind of mentality, not just for wardrobe purposes but also to remember that this is a great experience to show me what I do and do not want in a career environment in the future. I am keeping a positive attitude about this being such a great learning opportunity for me in the two months that I am here and I know that despite the greyness of the cubicles and lack of natural sunlight in the office. I believe this is just what being an intern entails most of the time and the beauty of the experience is that I will truly get out of it whatever I decide to put into it.
