Dear Svehn,

We need to talk. I’ve been working as your intern architect for 5 weeks now and I’ve been noticing this very disturbing trend. You see, the longer I work for you, the more I feel like things are… off.

I’ve been asking around to my other friends and they inform me that things are not normal.

1. HR is staffed entirely by Swedes who speak no English. When I asked to see an employee handbook, they nodded Swedishly and pushed an IKEA catalogue towards me while gesturing emphatically at the Vika Veine desktop. While I do agree that it’s a lovely, compact minimalist design, I don’t understand…

2. After 5 weeks, I still can’t find the bathroom… or the lights.

3. The employee water fountains are filled exclusively by water from stainless steel cisterns placed under the gutters. It tastes funny. Like baby tears and optimism.

4. My cubicle neighbor keeps staring intensely at me from over his dark rim glasses with his eyebrow arched. I figured out this morning that the eyebrow is permanently tattooed on his face to make him look more, well…arch.

5. Everything is white… and marble. Including the computers… and the cat.

6. If I place my ear to the white marble floor, I can hear someone softly weeping.

7. When I draw something in AutoCAD and hit save, everything gets changed into 5′-0″ cube modules. This makes drawing toilets particularly difficult as the actual toilet is neither 5′-0″ nor a cube. My ass is not a 5′-0″ cube.

8. My supervisor keeps telling me that I am both “pedestrian and pedantic, but to keep up the good work.”

9. I can’t find any highlighters. All we have is white out.

10. Why aren’t we allowed to have colored food?

11. I keep finding pictures of models with asymmetrical haircuts slipped underneath my keyboard with “Just a thought” written on them with a Sharpie.

12. I just have doubts that a 70 hour work week is standard for the industry, especially since this is technically an unpaid internship.

13. Are all interns required to submit photos of their ankles in strappy sandals? Because my cubicle neighbor kept taking photos of my ankles and saying they were for the “website”.

14. Team meetings every 5 minutes seems a bit excessive. All we do is sigh and stare at each other.

15. Why are pants not allowed?

16. I get that sometimes, you have to be out of the office for client meetings, but there is a rumor that no one in the office has seen you since September of 98.

Please advise how I should approach these problems.

Thanks,

Genie

Dear Genie,

Vi älskar att ha dig och dina vrister på kontoret. Vänligen vistelse och njut avbarnet tårar. De kommer att göra dig stark vilja nordiska gudar.

Tack för din obetalda hjälp. Vi ser fram emot många fler år av slaveri.

Med vänliga hälsningar,

Svehn