rite of passage

15 of the fashion editors and assistants cleared out some space in our cluttered closet today for an "intern appreciation" chit chat. we all sat, somewhat alarmed at their informality & common-ness as they moved the racks and formed a circle - yes, even the fashion directors sat on the floor! in the center we had a box of huge cookies from dean & deluca (like melt in your mouth yummmooo...you know how i get with chocolate chip, enough said.) almost as shocking as seeing our fashion team of heros (heirs?) on the floor, was the fact that one of the editors herself recognized a need for milk and ran to the kitchen to get some for us...for...US. wow, it was like an imaginary red carpet being rolled out for us little interns. cookies passed and milk poured, we began what quickly turned into one of the most awwwwkward 15 minutes of "chatting." "no really guys, we just want to totally thank you for all your help!! you guys are so awesome, and we just want to, well, you know, let you know we appreciate you & we're totally here for suggestions or any comments you might want to make. go ahead, you know what, lets go around and give us one positive and one negative of working here!" "psh!" we all thought silently while stuffing our mouths like a twix commercial - making time to chew it over. like they were reeeally desperate to hear the negatives?? what they meant was thanks. a bunch. lets leave it there. needless to say, they prodded us long enough that eventually we opened up, over-emphasizing, of course, the positives that were oh so positive! to make matters worse, as awkward as it was telling our fashion seniors what could be done better, my very own supervisor had coached me into "heavily stressing" the fact that we need more interns. SHE needs more interns, but then again, she needs her own personal assistant the way she has me spinning, im sure. so when the proper segway presented itself, quiet little mousy me diplomatically expressed that "well, as much as we all love the fast paced day, it does get an eensy bit tough when we're shorthanded, because theres so much to do..." she thanked me immediately with a grin. mission accomplished. oh boy, what a special way to wrap up our afternoon :) queen B & i joked after hearing the rumor that we were going to have an intern appreciation meeting, that they'd probably send one of US out on a run to pick up cupcakes and then let us know that we can eat them after we send out 5 racks - but just not in the closet. matter of fact? take them home with you...at 9pm. luckily, we work for muuuch nicer editors, whew. i'm still mad i didnt think of suggesting a suggestion box - then we could annonymously snitch about the way it's inconvenient and counterproductive to be sending out personal packages to my supervisor's SISTER and going downtown to pick up her dry cleaning. ;)