Not All Family Hires Suck

When I was still in college, I got a summer job through literal nepotism; my uncle was the publisher of the magazine I worked at. It was a small office and everyone knew and liked my uncle.

One day, after I’d been there for several weeks, some of the editors started talking about how happy they were that the other intern and I turned out to be such great people to work with and that it seemed like the intern they’d been dreading wasn’t going to show up after all. Apparently, the previous year, someone high on the food chain had hired their kid for the summer and she was horrible. This year, they’d heard that the publisher was hiring his kid and they were all extremely relieved that hadn’t happened.

I looked at them quite quizzically.

Me: “Um, no, it’s the publisher’s niece. And he did hire me!”

They were completely gobsmacked. They had all spent weeks dreading being forced to work with someone who would do nothing and make their lives miserable again, while also quite enjoying my presence. How they missed that I was the person they were dreading, I don’t know. We have an extremely unique last name. The only people who come up when you Google that last name are very close relatives of mine.