There is nothing better than a small workplace to see corporate realities sans make-up sans airbrush in its helpless nakedness. A place where no conversation is confined to the cubicle it happens in. Where people switch of their screens whenever they leave their desks where you might accidentally spend restroom queue times with the Director. Where an official communication is incomplete without the words "ideate" "revert back to" (?) and "ad-hoc commitement" (again(?)). Where unless you adjust your timing very carefully, you might happen to be the only intern in a lunch group of managers.

It’s been interesting so far. I can now gauge from the intensity and frequency of footsteps whether I should minimize my Hangman window or not and I’ve progressed to the extent that I can figure out whether a telephone ring is emanating from my instrument or one 3 cubicles away.
My “organization” is 30 employees strong. Everybody right from the founder to the youngest employee aboard (me) use the same kind of desk space. I don’t really resent the fact that laptops are given only to ranks of manager and above because my LCD screen is pretty easy on my cornea.
For a fairly flat organization (Founder= Director>Manager>Analyst> Office boy) the feudalistic rituals that exist beneath the first-names-only façade are chilling.

If you’re getting the idea that I’m not enjoying my stint here, you’re wrong. I’m glad I”ve been insulated to the maximum possible thickness from intern-bashing. These guys really understand and respect their interns and the desire to provide us with the maximum possible “exposure” is derived purely from good intentions (“We’re a people-oriented company”) than any malicious plans of grooming work horses.

Training sessions are voluntary (I’m quite shameless in admitting that I’ve skipped all of them.) and are conducted in a thoroughly informal potato-chip-munching setting. And add to all this the fact that only three people in the company are 35+ to make it feel positively utopian.
I’m in love with most of my colleagues (Seriously. I’ve never appreciated a group as much as this one.) that is the ones I’ve exchanged at least one sentence with. I love the managers for their fuss-free competence and desk-perched pep talks. I love the top two for their sharply purposeful strides. Merely hearing them walk into office and clicking their laptops open gets me to do twice as many slides. I love everybody else for working 12 hours a day and making my schoolkid sprint out of the office and my beatific freedom-at-dusk expression seem like something to be ashamed of. Honestly working more than 8 hours a day ought to be outlawed. I’m earliest to arrive at office and earliest to leave. More than fair.

I love the smell of new wood that steals into my lunchbag whenever I snap my drawers shut, a smell that speaks of four year wildernesses and desperately extended project deadlines.
I love the water bottle that bears my name with cellotaped dignity for forgiving me everyday for misplacing my attention along with its cap by filling up all by itself and greeting me tight and closed every morning.

I’ve got a time-lag problem. My experience of happiness lags my memory of it by 180 degrees. Maybe I’m doomed to savour only the memory of happiness, never the feeling itself. To realize that a place has made been infinitely happy only after leaving it for good. It’s not going to happen to PS-2. Most of all I love my workplace for telling me that while I may understand its rules I can never last out the entire game. I may be in this world, alive comfortable and well-adjusted. But I don't belong to it.