Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

intern

2021-11-06 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
intern
Votey panel for intern
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic takes aim at exploitative internship practices. A boss approaches an employee named Stan and asks if he'd like to "intern here over the summer." Stan points out the obvious problem: he already works there. The boss clarifies the distinction -- Stan "works" here, but he doesn't "intern" here -- implying that interning is a separate, unpaid arrangement.

When Stan directly asks "Are you trying to not pay me over summer?", the boss responds with the classic justification used by employers who offer unpaid internships: "I am offering you valuable experience." The joke is that Stan already has the experience, since he already does the job -- the "internship" is transparently just a scheme to get free labor from someone already proven to be capable. The comic distills the absurdity of unpaid internships down to its essence: rebranding existing paid work as an "opportunity" to avoid compensation.

View History (1) Original Comic
← Previous Comic Next Comic →