The topic of unpaid internships has been coming up a lot lately mostly because THEY ARE DUMB. Nobody should ever be asked to work for free. Period. But, you know, there are paid internships that are ... interesting.
I did one of those. In fact, I sort of regret one of those, though the learning experience was PHENOMENAL.
Disney World. I worked at Disney World as part of a college internship. I had the incredible opportunity to attend Disney University to get a honorary Ducktorette Degree in Human Resource Management. Seriously, it was a great learning opportunity.
The cost, and there is always a cost, was that I had to work in a retail job. I worked at Mickey's Character Shop (it's now World of Disney). I was guaranteed 30 hours per week, which is almost exactly what I was scheduled for. And my pay? It was $5.35 per hour. So I basically made $150 per week.
Buuuuut ... there was the matter of housing. That particular internship program included housing at a complex with the other 900 people doing the same program. We were assigned six people per apartment and each paid $65 per week for rent. Which, that's a pretty solid deal. Rent for a 3-bedroom apartment for under $1600 in Orlando? That's crazy! But it was Disney paying us and then us giving them the money back, so ... huh? If you math it just right, you realize we were actually getting paid $3.18 per hour. There was the hope that we'd get scheduled for more than 30 hours, which was a huge boon, but we were still sitting there making $100 per week.
I had a car payment and car insurance at the time. A person has to be able to get around, y'know? My car payment at the time was $165 per month, which was a great payment for a lowly college student. Insurance took up most of the rest of what I made. I ate a lot of ramen and cereal is what I'm saying.
And then came a few of life's inconveniences. First the tires on my car went bad and had to be replaced. That major expense went right on a credit card because what else was I going to do? And then one of my friendly neighbors hit my car while backing out of their space and didn't leave a note. It was more damage than you'd expect - I couldn't open the car door. So, I had to get that fixed.
I paid for it with a credit card.
And then came the big kicker. I got the call that my mom wasn't going to make it much longer. She had breast cancer and was in her final days, so I had to fly home. The ticket was $2000, even after the bereavement discount. I was there for a week, not making any money since of course I didn't have paid vacation, which means I got set waaaaaaaay back.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if I'm still paying on all the credit card debt that came from an internship at Disney World.
Which, DISNEY WORLD. I signed up for near financial ruin because DISNEY WORLD couldn't pay a living wage for an internship. ::blink::blink::
FWIW, the people who worked the same job but not through the internship, they also didn't make enough. They were paid around $10 per hour, which is still very so not a livable wage, but that's a whole other topic for another day.
Freakin Disney World doesn't pay enough for people to survive.