All good things must come to an end, or at least that's how the saying goes. I'd like to address this experience as the least closest thing from being a good thing, because as much as I've enjoyed myself on specific days, I've suffered through all of them. Overall, it was a shitty experience, and I had to seriously act out a "good boy" and two faced smile persona for the entirety of it, while just keeping my rage, frustration, denial and anger caged up within me.
What started off as an excited mindset because I was going to learn about things like managing events, campaigns, digital media, client servicing, coordination, design and more - turned bitter and sour pretty fast after knowing that it was all a fraud from the get go, and I had no idea on what I was getting myself into for the next two (three) months of my life.
The original location stated and provided on the internship acceptance letter lead me to an abandoned place in the middle of nowhere, with a non-existent office, as I was pretty much facing a wall. You could get murdered there, and no one would find your body for up to three weeks! It was just that isolated. Apparently, it's the company's secretary place, which I'm sure is just a made up location and position to make things seem legit and official. I was given a website to go through, which allegedly contained all the company's information and whatsoever. But as I looked up the website, this is what I saw.
The original location stated and provided on the internship acceptance letter lead me to an abandoned place in the middle of nowhere, with a non-existent office, as I was pretty much facing a wall. You could get murdered there, and no one would find your body for up to three weeks! It was just that isolated. Apparently, it's the company's secretary place, which I'm sure is just a made up location and position to make things seem legit and official. I was given a website to go through, which allegedly contained all the company's information and whatsoever. But as I looked up the website, this is what I saw.
This was a direct and clear indication that this company probably isn't even established to begin with, which I started to see the clearer picture as the weeks progressed. I mean, if you're an established company, I'm sure you can afford to pay your website domain fees so that it stays open. But no, you're all too cheap to do so.
Workspace ; I didn't have one. The tour around the facilities at the office was definitely interesting, as there were all sorts of stuff that could be used for work, such as the swimming pool, gym, games room, lounge, the last floor of the office, gazebo, and many more. As good as that may seem, I've really only spent a combined time of about 5 days altogether, at the office. It's an extremely low amount of time, given that the span of the whole job was three months - or at least a week short from three months in total. As I speak of this office, I'd like to address that the location was actually an apartment....not an office.
General workplaces would provide you with your own desk to do your work, and possibly a desktop computer - which is where all your work will be done. I had none of those privileges. The desks were , not exactly desks to begin with. It was a very small table, and you're sitting on a couch. That was pretty much the office space. Pretty much everything that I had to do in the office required a WiFi connection, which was sadly not provided. I had to resort to using my mobile hotspot, which consumed both my mobile credit, and my phone's battery.
That meant that I would have to use an extra socket to charge my phone in order to keep it running, alongside with my laptop, running on its own power supply. The solution, a lot of extensions, which looked extremely untidy and very inconvenient to carry around, let alone set it up so that everyone doesn't trip and fall while walking. A router was set up with a 10 GB mobile plan, but that only lasted a few hours because everyone decided to start streaming music from both YouTube and Spotify, and drained up the quota almost immediately.
The whole job scope (originally), was all the nonsense I mentioned in the second paragraph, but instead - I ended up being a delivery boy for a stationery company that I now officially despise with everything in me. I was appointed as an official brand ambassador and was told that I should feel proud of this role, and that I function as a medium to gather consumer feedback and response. Sounded good at first, then the darkness showed itself as the work progressed.
On my first day of official work, I unloaded 85,000 units of stationery which were packed into boxes that ranged from the small and light, to the big and extremely heavy. There were two trolleys, no forklift, two lifts to bring us from the fifth floor to the thirteenth, and four manpower. It was an unbearable 4-5 hours just unloading all the boxes from the van into the office , nonstop. My back was aching, legs were about to break, hands went limp, and I could hardly stand at all. Dipping my feet into the pool later that day was probably the best relaxation period I've had, ever since being born!
That was just the tip of an extremely large iceberg, because the following day was "activation" day, or at least that's what the officials called it. What that meant was, DELIVERY DAY. I had to arrive to a school situated about 30 minutes away from my house, before 7 am, which meant, I had to wake up at around 5.30 am, just to get ready and wait for my taxi to fetch me up. I headed to about 8 schools that day, just to visit tons of classes and hand up stationery to as many students as possible, while taking pictures of the students holding the stationery because the client required proof. The Coup De Grâce of the whole day was that the client themselves, were following us around the school and into each class, to observe and monitor our work.
That was what I've been doing until I ended my time as an intern - which is the time I'm actually writing this. I've visited around 300 schools, give or take - and I officially have had enough of seeing anyone in a uniform, including myself. I had to wear a red uniform with black collars that were made out of cotton, and that absorbed heat like a magnet, as I was constantly walking around from class to class, or just standing under the Sun waiting for oblivion to happen. The only thing I can take out of this as positive was that I definitely lost weight, but I've gained just as much because of my excessive intake of carbonated drinks just to keep my deceased body functioning.
Work hours are usually and typically about 8 hours, but I've exceeded that to 12 hours in total, and still working even after reaching home, all tired and defeated. The earliest I've woken up for work was 4 am, and the latest I've slept due to work, was also 4 am. I had to wake up at 4 am just to prepare myself to fetch my colleague up from his house, which was situated 5 minutes away from my office, which is situated 30 minutes away from mine, only to drive all the way back to a location that's relatively close to my place. It's like ordering a middle finger statue from America, personally flying there just to collect it, and immediately fly back home to my current location, Malaysia. My dad was not happy, and for good reason.
Last Thursday, I decided to get done with the compilation of my report and move on with this internship with a two-faced smile, and ended up sleeping at 3 am, but got woken up at 4 am by my boss's spam messages because she was sending me pictures to add into my report, as I didn't have enough pictures to add into a few folders (pictures of high school kids posing for the camera while holding up the stationery that the team distributed). I headed to work on Friday extremely late, tired and drowsy, and brought up the topic of her waking me up by those messages, and she didn't even give a flying fuck. She just went "Oh, never mind that." Sorry, I do mind. My health has been deteriorating ever since I started this internship, and an excuse of "we're all solely responsible for each of our own well being", is just purely unacceptable.
A big highlight would have to be my trips to the states around this country, which were Melaka, Johor Bahru and Penang. The trip to Johor took forever, and I cramped my legs pretty badly for sitting in the car too long, but I'll take responsibility for not moving. The trip to Melaka from Johor was really rushed, as I overslept and couldn't shower in time. That ended up giving me an extreme case of migraine, which rendered me just squeezing my head constantly to get the pain to go away, which didn't work. I ended up having to rest at the hotel that we stayed in and was on medication for a few hours that day. Shortly after waking up, the team and I headed off to Hard Rock Cafe where I just ordered a smoothie while everyone else blew off 280 bucks on vodka, white wine and a pint of beer. I ended up paying their service charges because I didn't have enough small change with me to exactly pay up for my smoothie. The trip lasted from a Sunday to a Thursday, and I headed home.
The Penang trip took place about a month later, which was two weeks ago. I headed there on a Tuesday and came back the following day, expected to complete everything in a span of 24 hours - which wasn't possible and my boss had to spend another night there, without me. I took a bus home, which was expected to take 5 hours to reach, depending on traffic conditions as well. Traffic was completely fine, but the tire ran out of air, and burst midway, which stalled the journey for about two hours altogether. I ended up reaching at 11 pm, and had my "dinner" at midnight. After having dinner and showered, I slept at 3, and had to wake up at 6.30 just to prepare myself for calling up school teachers to ask them about an art survey that was both ridiculous and stupid. I was extremely tired and couldn't manage to follow the script that I had prepared before hand, and messed up pretty badly on two calls, but was decent on the rest. Funnily enough, those two calls actually gave me positive responses and I got two surveys answered - as compared to the other team members that were also calling and got zero positive responses altogether. My boss ended up mentioning that I was "not prepared" and that he was "very disappointed" with me. Well, fuck you too.
Continuing on from the previous paragraph, the team was required to record outgoing voice calls for evidence purposes, stated by our client. It's fine, as we could actually just create fraud answers on the survey sheet and call it legitimate, but the answers that every teacher gave were extremely identical anyways, so the whole purpose of it was kind of a fluke. I currently own an iPhone 7 Plus, which doesn't come with a built in voice recorder installed. The ones that are available on the Apple's App Store doesn't have the full version of it completely available to you, as you're required to make real money transactions inside the application to keep the voice recording functions up and running. Most of them, if not all - run on a "credit" system, where you expend credits based on how long the call is, and the credits are expended extremely quickly, probably within 30 seconds. That's around 1000 credits gone, and you'd have to spend real money in order to continue using the recording features.
It didn't come into mind that my dad still had his old Galaxy S5 sitting in a box, and generally there are more useful apps in the Android Play Store, than there are in Apple's App Store as a whole, so I didn't ask him for help in the recording section, until later on. I mentioned that my iPhone just couldn't record any sort of outgoing calls, but my boss wouldn't buy it. She started to act all smart and tell me to look into my settings as there will always be a setting that's turned off, which would be the voice recording function. I didn't find it, even after spending an hour looking for it like an idiot - and there aren't many settings to go through to begin with. She then told me to download some apps like "iPadio" which doesn't even exist at all, and a recorder app that was available, but it would cost me 13 bucks to purchase it. I could sense that she became irritated, because she then proceeded to Google up solutions, but the websites out there completely shut her up for good. All she did was reply me with "I understand your situation, you can't record stuff." and no sorries whatsoever.
The original salary that I was entitled to earn was a sum of 600, which could increase to 800, depending on how well I performed overall in that month alone. Not only did I get my pay 15 days later than the supposed date because of some alleged "internship policy" which stated that the interns working in the company would only get their salary after 45 days from their initial starting date and not 30 days - but I also had my pay cut down to 400, just because I brought in a friend along as he was struggling to find a company to intern for. It wasn't a big deal to me, as I'd be earning a pretty good sum at the end of it, when all the figures from each month were combined into one. However, there were tons of other external stuff, that made the word "bullshit" , actually sound like something that should be taken very, very seriously. There was talk about other expenses and stuff but come on, they hardly paid peanuts for anything. There was no WiFi installed, no proper working place installed, pretty much nothing was done - but the company was still short on money. The fuck?
The team headed off to Johor Bahru and Melaka prior to my two partners and I receiving our first month salary, as this trip was before the 45 day due period was up, so we were on our own when it came to pocket money. The food and all that in those two states aren't expensive if you're very good at budgeting yourself, but we still required some allowance money while traveling to those places. I personally was given a little bit of money from my dad to spend, which I ended up not using much of it so I had a lot of remainder. But it was still a necessity for us interns to receive some sort of allowance, even if it were to be in an extremely low amount. My two partners and I received 100 each, which was cool - until we were told that the money was being deducted from our first month paycheck.
Allowance and salary are two completely different things, but given the stinginess of the authority, we just had to roll with it. It was ridiculous. There's also another policy that states "food and lodging" provided, but only the latter was kept to the promise. Food was pretty much purchase them yourself, which is completely fine by me, and I'm not going to make a big hassle over that. After all, they did purchase cereal for breakfast, so who am I to complain...I love cereal !
The schools that we visited in JB and Melaka were horrible, as the students there were pretty much shy to the core, and that was a complete nuisance as the main objective of my job was to take as many pictures as possible. Heck, I could participate in the "Most Pictures Taken By A Person, Period" Guinness Award and win the record, alongside "Most Pathetic and Repetitive Pictures Taken By A Person". I'd have zero competition. It was extremely satisfying when it was time go head back to KL, and get some well deserved rest. Well, the trip wasn't all that glorious as my intern was blasting rock and roll on the radio that was synced to his Android that was running YouTube, so the ride home was unbearable for the most part. Not even my earphones worked, as the noise was just too loud.
Shortly after that, Hari Raya came around and we had our well deserved one week of rest, because schools were not open during that period, which meant that we couldn't operate our business. A week later, it was back to normal - distributing stationery to high schools once again. It was also the final week of doing this "activation", and that got me extremely excited because I was very much done with this nonsense, and so was Shaun, my colleague. This was the week when I got to visit my high school, and I bumped into my former class teacher. It was nice catching up with those days with her, and I loitered around the area for the rest of the time I had remaining. The very next day, I got sick. My head started throbbing like mad, and I had to rest in bed for the day. I informed my boss(es) pretty late and then the lady one replied stating that if I do not produce a medical leave letter by a doctor, I'd have my salary cut by 100 bucks, because it's "school activation" day. On any other regular day, it'll get cut by 50 bucks. So imagine if I didn't go to the doctor that day to get a medical leave letter, I'd have my salary cut down to 300, which is literally at 50% from what I'm originally entitled to in the first place (600).
The week after, I was working for a different client. This one was more relaxing because all the team had to do was organize two events; one held on a Monday, the other on a Wednesday. There was no delivery involved, so it was pretty nice. I was on green screen duty, which meant I was in charge of taking pictures of the teachers posing in front of the green screen, and I just had to edit the background out and place a different one in. Overall, it was repetitive and got boring pretty fast, so I kept myself awake by playing games on my phone, which ticked off my boss because I'm not supposed to be playing games during working hours. True, but I was behind a TV monitor. Nobody could see what I was doing, unless you directly walked up beside me to check on my work progress. Which brings me to a few days prior to the event. The team headed to the client's HQ for a briefing, and we were directed into a meeting room while we waited for our client to get off her phone call or something of that sort. While waiting, I was just collecting my daily bonuses and all that on my game, and it ticked off my boss, which he addressed it while we were in Penang just two weeks back. Hey, if the client isn't in the room, and we're just sitting down waiting for her, what's so wrong about me playing my game? Hell, while we're on our delivery service, other than the lunch and breakfast breaks - you require your cigarette and Clash Royale breaks - so tell me who's full of more shit right now? I did it once, you did it multiple times - so don't give me an attitude.
Overall, I learned a lot, both good and bad. I'm no longer affiliated with this company in any shape and form, and I never want to be affiliated with them in the coming future. I've had my fun, it's time to say goodbye.
