The Intern Who Lived In Our Office, Unbeknownst To Us

Dillon Cheverere8 years ago

A former intern of ours lived in our office, ate our snacks over the weekends for sustenance, and slept on our break room couch. His only forms of entertainment being wifi and a Golden Tee machine. It took us months to figure it out.

This happened about two years ago. Since then, we’ve talked about it periodically because it’s just so damn hilarious, and absurd. It came up again during our weekly media meeting on Friday, and after the laughter once again subsided, it dawned on me that the story has never been told publicly. It’s time to tell it.

I think part of the reason we kept it under wraps is because this guy seems like a bit of a wildcard and I know there’s a decent chance he reads this. I’m not saying he’s the type to show up at Grandex HQ and wait for me in the parking lot, because he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, but I could never get a good read on him. That’s mostly because he was a really quiet dude during his few months with us. Head down at his cubicle type. He’d occasionally poke his head in my office to let me know he had written something and wanted me to read it and give him notes, but that was basically the extent of our interactions.

I knew very little about the guy. He was hired — not by me — without being interviewed first. He landed on our radar by sending in a hype video he made. Yes, a hype video. It was a montage of iconic moments throughout sports history. He never actually appeared in the video. It was just clips like MJ’s fist pump and the final seconds of The Miracle On Ice mashed together over an Aerosmith track. The implication was that he had star quality. That big things would happen during his time with us. The video worked and he was hired, again, not by me.

I don’t remember specifically what he was hired to do for us. He was a content intern, but I don’t recall if he was brought on to help us with aggregation, social media, to write, etc. I do remember, however, that he had an interest in making videos. We actually all remember this about him. He spent the entirety of his internship with us, about five months, “making a video” that never saw the light of day. None of us saw a single second of that video. He could have been lying for all we know, because he was let go before he got to finish it.

What was he filming? We don’t know. The only thing I know about his video project is that at least one scene was filmed in my office. He told me as much.

Intern: Hey, Dillon. If stuff in your office looks like it was moved around some it’s because I was filming in there.
Me: Oh. When?
Intern: Last night. I stayed after work.
Me. Oh. Okay.

I’m still waiting for an amateur snuff film that occurs in my office to hit the Hub. Nothing so far.

There were clues along the way that we ignored. People would stop by the office on a Saturday to get some work done or pick up a laptop charger and he would be there. He’d always say he was working on his video project so we didn’t think anything of it. Just a kid trying to make a good impression, we assumed.

He’d also keep food in the refrigerator. I’m not talking about a sack lunch that he brought in that morning. I’m talking groceries and shit. Plastic HEB bags filled with a week’s worth of Greek yogurt, Kraft singles, and two pounds of sliced turkey. GROCERIES.

The last clue, and probably the most damning, was about the automatically locking doors at the entry of our building. The doors lock automatically at 6 p.m. every Monday through Friday and automatically unlock each weekday morning at 6 a.m. They remain locked throughout the weekend. The only way to enter the building during off hours is with a key card. All full-time Grandex employees have key cards.

Interns do not. He did not have a key card. Nor did he have a key to enter our suite. What this means is when he was the first one in the office on Monday morning, and he was, it meant that he had stayed in the office the entire weekend. He couldn’t have left the building because he wouldn’t have gotten back in. Yeah maybe he leaves behind a shoe to leave the door propped open, but that’s a risky play. It’s too sketchy. Once he was in, he was in until Monday at 6 a.m.

We put the evidence together finally and it painted a pretty clear picture: Our office was his home. So yeah we had to fire him. We threw him out on the streets, which is an adage, but maybe in this case quite literal.

During the closed-door conversation during which he was let go, he even asked, “Is it because I’ve been sleeping here?” Yeah man that’s part of it..

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