Snickers was checking his email and going through the normal office memos (meeting tomorrow, the ketchup needs to be refilled in the breakroom, a reminder to not take lunch meeting food with someone else’s name on it, set up a conference room next week for a video conference, etc), when BadIntern returned to their shared cubicle. Having been missing at least an hour, BadIntern tried to creep in, but Snickers could see his reflection on his monitor. As Snickers turned in his chair towards him, BadIntern quickly put his hands in his unprofessionally baggy pants pockets, acting like he’d been there the entire time. Snickers patience had begun to severely wear thin several days ago, when BadIntern was re-assigned to his cubicle after repeatedly telling a female co-worker how nice she smelled (and other uncomfortable things).
Snickers: Please, whatever you’re doing, just stop. Sit down.
BadIntern thunked down into his chair.
Snickers returned to his work. Within a few seconds, BadIntern was playing with a wireless mouse. With a crack and a pop, a piece of plastic mouse shrapnel hit Snickers in the back of his head.
Snickers: STOP doing that!
BadIntern had a look of confusion and shrugged. Snickers rolled his eyes and glared.
BadIntern: Huh?
Snickers: Just… Stop…
This is where Selben, temporarily in a cubicle nearby, observed BadIntern choosing to do what any rational person would do in that situation, and threw the broken mouse over the cubicle wall. Fortunately, no other victims were hit.
A few days later, Snickers was working and heard BadIntern plop down in the chair behind him several hours later than normal. His heightened sense of smell insisted he inspect the situation as opposed to ignoring BadIntern as much as possible. He slowly turned to see BadIntern attempting to secretly eat a hoagie—the hoagie was half hiding in his sleeve—he froze upon being spotted. Snicker’s stomach rumbled in response, but he ignored it and turned back to continue working. After a few minutes his senses were again hit with a similar, yet different overwhelming smell, and turned to see BadIntern eating another hoagie, from his other shirt sleeve. Snickers noted this one had bell peppers and onions and was definitely a different sandwich. Before he could begin his questioning, he was distracted by a call.
By the time the call was over (a branch lost email access…their internet was down), BadIntern had disappeared yet again, leaving Snickers slightly confused and a bit suspicious.
The next day Snickers was on a break and chatting with Selben while BadIntern had been shuffled off to “work” with Selben. He was playing with some tweezers zip ties and kept getting his fingers stuck. Suddenly BadIntern looked up at what Selben was doing and shouted out like a young child.
BadIntern: OOOH! You’re playing video games at work! They said you can’t do that!
Snickers paused and looked around. Selben clearly had work on his machine. He had a website minimized with information about a game, but not an actual game. Selben explained you can browse the web during your breaks if it was in moderation and work safe. BadIntern seemed a bit perplexed by this but slowly nodded after pondering it over for several moments.
Soon after, Snickers was nominated to train the interns on a new process he had created. He was only able to locate two of them, with BadIntern missing again. After a brief search he gave up. Rather than crowd everyone into his two-man cubicle, he opted to take the interns into a conference room. They entered the darkened room and flipped on the lights. With a loud bang, BadIntern jerked up and hit his head on the table he had been, apparently, asleep under.
Snickers: Were you sleeping in…
BadIntern ran out of the room.
Snickers looked under the table and found a blanket, a cell phone and a small pile of crumbled sandwich wrappers. After a more careful inspection he saw different names on the wrappers and recognized many of them as people from different parts of the office.
It was explained to BadIntern that the “free sandwiches” that he had “found” were not, in fact, for him. He was reprimanded, and food for staff meetings seemed to go missing less often. BadIntern was caught napping in the conference rooms several more times and was warned he would lose his internship if he kept it up. He seemed to stop but would still randomly disappear at times.
A few weeks after his internship ended (which he did complete), a janitor made the discovery of “the nest” in a broom closet. He found the exact same blanket from the conference room and a large collection of snack wrappers. Fortunately, it didn’t look like it had been used recently.
Selben looked over at Snickers, who was starting to turn red with anger when they heard the news.
Selben: It’s okay, he’s gone now. Breathe.