It felt like the first day of school. There I was, the youthful idealist, ready to get my hands dirty with another experience in unpaid employment.

The guy I work immediately under is named Todd. He explained how he came to work there: “I was working for Food Network at the time doing awful production assistant stuff, like taking out the trash. The HR guys here called me up to offer me a job, so I kicked over my trashcan and accepted.”

The work consists of a lot of photocopying. I’m proud to say that I’m something of a Zen photocopy master after my time at the Late Show. The photocopier there was full of demons and evil. This new one has its quirks, but it’s nothing I can’t unravel. I’m the Xerox Whisperer.

During a more major paper jam, I reached my delicate pianist’s fingers into the hollow depths of the machine to extract a problematic piece of paper.

“Look at that!” I exclaimed. “I’ve got some nimble fingers! I’d do great in a sweat shop.”

One of the more senior members of the staff overheard my comment. “You’re new here, aren’t you? What makes you think this isn’t a sweat shop?”

Once the photocopies are done, they need to be distributed, so I spent a good part of my day lost in the labyrinthian spaces surrounding the studio, ferrying scripts from person to person.

We sat in the studio during rehearsal. The air was a familiar temperature (freezing) while the man himself came out to deliver some jokes. I remembered the words I had shared with Todd beforehand:

“What do I do during rehearsal?” I asked.

“Just sit and listen to the jokes.”

“And laugh at what I think is funny?”

“No. Laugh at everything.”

My lunch was a hefty smattering of Chinese food. High quantity, low cost. Another intern sat next to me and munched happily on a single Fig Newton.

“Looks like a rather wholesome meal there,” I said.

“Well, I had a pretzel, too.”

We sit in the control room during the show, simply as an extra set of hands to do whatever needs doing. Everyone answers the phone by saying the name of the studio, so I heard the following several dozen times:

(phone rings, someone picks it up)

“6-A?”

I kept laughing to myself because every now and then it sounded like someone answered the phone by saying “SEX-AY!”

I’ll count this first working day as a success. I didn’t set anything on fire and I didn’t kill anyone accidentally (or on purpose).