Are Interns People?

I have interns and I am confused as to whether or not it is legal to strike them if they displease me. I recognize that interns are more or less mammals. They are obviously in some way related to me and you. They seem to be able to manipulate things with their opposable thumbs and occasionally they display a very rudimentary and underdeveloped problem-solving ability. They have what appears to be "feelings" though they rarely reveal them in sight of us. They have no concept of money or commerce (or else they would not be wallowing for no paycheck) and seem content to accept faint praise or doughnuts for their efforts.

 So, then shouldn't I be able to smack one of my interns around if they displease me or I'm in a "hit the 'tern" type of mood? After a close reading of the Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the by-laws of the Babysitters Club, I've determined that it is within your legal rights to unload, physically or biblically, on one of your office's interns.

If your office had a caste system- and considering that your company's management is actively trying to outsource your job to India, it soon will- interns would be the untouchables. They toil in obscurity, doing the jobs that we touchables deem beneath us. They exist only because we allow them to. The only interns that even come close to being considered human are the hot ones. And really it's only the hot chicks that count.

The women in your office may get their ovaries in a twist when a cute male intern is thrown into the mix but they're not going to do anything about it. They just aren't. If you're a woman and you're reading this and you're shaking your head and thinking to yourself that "yes, I would definitely hook up with a cute guy intern," you're just not telling the truth. Like it or not, we live in a world of double standards. A woman that hooks up with one dude in the office is considered slutty. The hookup could have been 20 years ago and she could now be married with 10 kids. It doesn't matter. She proved once that she was down with the office romance; every guy in the office is keeping her firmly in his "maybe" category.

But if a woman hooks up with an intern, she might as well just pack up the desk and move to another state. Interns, no matter how dreamy, are freakin' interns. They're dumb and poor. You take down an intern and every guy in the office with $5 in his pocket is going to be taking a run at you. You will be branded with a scarlet "I" for the rest of your time in that office and perhaps for the rest of your life.

Guy hooks up with the hot female intern? Fast track to upper management.

Nothing solidifies a guy's reputation faster than displaying the drive, determination and absolute lack of morality necessary to bag the hot intern. There's no downside to taking down the hot 'tern. None. Don't fall into the trap of worrying about who her dad is. He knows the score. It's his fault that he didn't send his daughter away to virginity camp for the summer.

But beyond the hot ones that you can mold into some sort of spreadsheet savvy sex-toy, interns are really only suited for mockery and psychological torture that would make the conditions at Guantanamo look like a trip to Whalom Park. They're in college (or high school, in which case you should tether them to the copy machine and give them a squeaky toy to play with) and have given up their summer to learn from you.

That's right. If there's one way to tell for sure that interns don't matter, it's that they're taking orders from you. And as you are all too aware, you are a nobody. Which makes the interns listening to you less than nobodies. Which further reinforces my hypothesis that it is legal to abuse interns. Which leads to my solution as to the proper way to use a summer intern: Take a page out of the Michael Vick playbook and train your interns to fight. Not in intern fights; that would wrong. Interns shouldn't fight other interns. That's just crazy talk.

 Interns should fight pit bulls. Think about it. Dog fights are illegal but they still happen. And innocent dogs die as a result. But intern-dog fights are probably, quasi-legal and there's a good chance that no dog would die or even be injured in an intern-dog fight. PETA would be happy about that and your interns would be exposed to a diverse group of people that they otherwise wouldn't meet in the buttoned-up, no rape stands allowed world of corporate America.

Intern-dog fights are an idea whose time has come, particularly in an American sports landscape awash in scandals. Interns are probably smarter than maltreated pit bulls. But pit bulls would have a clear bite power advantage over the average college intern. Pit bulls would have an edge in possessing the natural instinct to tear someone's throat out. But interns would have an edge if the ability to collate came into play.

Who wins from forcing interns and pit bulls to fight to the death?

America.