The Internship (Stuart Twombly)

Chapter 9

"Good morning. Welcome to the Google Helpline." Chetty greeted aloud to the interns. Juliette sat nervously at her assigned computer desk cubicle. "You will man the phones for exactly one hour. Now, before you begin, please make sure you log into your account, and after the hour is up, click the blue icon, accessing your account so we can review your work later."

Juliette quickly logged in and glanced at her teammates around her. Stuart caught her eye and mouthed 'You got this'. She smiled bashfully back at him and mouthed 'Thank you'.

"The helpline... is open now."

Juliette immediately answered the phone on her headpiece.

"Google Helpline, my name is Juliette, how may I help you?" She said politely to the unknown caller. She listened intently to the woman calling about Google Earth. "No problem, I'm going to need you to go to Tools.. then Options.. and then Navigation. Now click Enable Controller and you should be good to go!"

The hour passed rather quickly, much to Stuart's contentment. He hadn't been counting how many callers he had helped but he knew it was at least twenty. Just as he was finishing up helping a man fix an issue with Google News,Chetty's voice sounded.

"Time's up!"

"So soon? Man, I was just getting warmed up here!" Billy exclaimed with a grin on his face before turning to his team and high-fiving everyone. Stuart caught Juliette's eye and the two smiled at each other, cheering.

"Please submit your log files so that I may review your work later."

Juliette turned back to her desk along with everyone else and successfully clicked the blue button. She was about to start talking to Stuart to her right before she heard Billy behind her.

"Mine's grey. Is anyone else's grey?" He asked, confused. Juliette started worrying.

"Did you not hear my opening remarks?" Chetty arraigned.

"Yeah, no, I heard most of your opening remarks, it's just, I was.. getting into the zone. I was pre-gaming it-"

"I was very clear that you had to log into your account so that I could review your work later."

"Well, the good news is that you reviewed my work now. You-You don't need the instant replay because you saw the touchdown live, in person."

Juliette glanced from Billy to Chetty, nervously.

"I don't really understand that analogy, but I do know that attention to detail is of paramount importance here and my instructions were explicit. Now, if there's no recording, then it's as if you didn't even show up today."

"Except I did show up, I-I'm sitting right here, Chetty."

"According to your log, you're not. And since every intern must complete the challenge in order for your team to bescored..."

Juliette's shoulders sagged and she winced at Chetty's piercing words, and Stuart pursed his lips and sighed, closing his eyes.

"...your team will unfortunately receive a score of zero."

"Zero?"

"Well done, Mr. McMahon. Perhaps more studying, less pudding."

The group sat, defeated, as Lyle tried to go after Chetty, insisting not to fail us because of a 'technical error', but everyone in the group knew well that Billy fucked up - badly.

Juliette, feeling not only humiliated but angry that her studying was for nothing, shoved her laptop and materials into her bag and got up and retired to the group's meeting room. A scowl came over her face. Usually, Julie was nice and didn't show her anger most of the time, but she was beyond angry at this point. Her lips pursed and her nostrils flared a bit, and anyone could tell she was pissed by the look in her eyes. She walked into the small computer room and grabbed a seat, and soon the rest of the team followed, giving off an identical pissed-off aura.