There is a good chance that you or a companion of yours has done an internship by this point in your life. If not, then you probably recognise the recommendation to do so. And yes, generally speaking, the promise of personal insights (into the workflow, colleague dynamics, technical knowhow, design logistics and so forth) is fortunate. Practical experience simply is a great bonus in the complex field we are attempting to master. If you’re really lucky, you might even get a chance to work with your favourite designers! But what seems like a lucky necessity to you is a gift to the employer. With high numbers of students competing for a place to work, firms usually pay no more than the minimum required wage in the country.

Fine. If this minimum wage job elevates me to higher ground, then money isn’t the problem. I’m sure that working with the best in the world teaches me enough to even start for myself soon enough! But what if the best in the world don’t want to work with a beginner? Someone who’s only experienced enough to cut models, make coffee and prepare lunch?

Well, it’s fine because that best-in-the-world architect knows I’m here to learn. We’ve agreed on some matters in the contract, and by the time I finish, I’ll have learned enough for them to want me in the team. But what if that best-in-the-world architect seems to forget about your contract, your background or even your well-being? When they realise you can do their work, and pretty good even. When they assign the entire project to you, because they were late on their own projects. So they ask to work unpaid overtime because you didn’t finish their project on time. Only to smack their name on your work. Or, in normal talk: what if that best-in-the-world architect sucks at basic human interaction?

Sadly, our faculty is littered with such stories of high hopes and great disappointment, as we at Bnieuws have come to know. Over the past few months, we reached out to you, asking for witness reports on real precarious events that have happened to you on the work floor. The truth seems to be that practical experience is greatly valued by employers and, as a result, sometimes greatly abused. The reasons, or rather excuses, are too varied to make conclusions about.

In this special issue of Bnieuws, we took these stories and sewed them together into a play, The Competition. In it, three firms varying in size and setup compete for an important project. Everyone knows about the project, and it is very important to win. In each firm, we follow the intern, who (spoiler ahead) usually gets the short end of the stick. At the end of the play, all competitors come together in a luxurious office tower to present their solutions. What will be left of them?

The three firms we follow range from small teams to starchitects. In Act 1: Scale 1/5, a small firm consisting of only two friends and a younger architect takes the stage. They are hard workers, but with the intern now accounting for 25% of the workforce and business going down, exploitation lurks around the corner. The cast from Act 2: The cool kids’ club is introduced at the end of Act 1 when Intern goes for a cigarette break. The cool kids are four other interns from a medium-sized office, in the same building. They work rather independently on The Competition for their firm. Being together and being part of a greater whole has some benefits, but as is shown, it also has disadvantages compared to Intern’s office. The third firm is introduced in Act 3: The Starchitect. This well-established office has a bottomless pit of interns to choose from, a toxic hierarchy, and of course, the almighty Starchitect, whose scarce appearance is treated as that of a messiah.

This special issue does not aim to solve any problems. We do not make conclusions. We do not appoint culprits. We do not know the answers, if there even are any. This issue merely reports on the precarious working conditions we are oftentimes greeted with. Some of these stories portray a simple annoyance, others portray outright criminal offences. Do you recognise the absurdity of the situation? Or are you perhaps part of the problem? All firms show precarity at its finest. Can you spot all the red flags?