Back in 2006, I was doing an internship at the International Herald Tribune, in Paris. The work was mostly menial. I would photocopy mock-ups of pages for the next day’s edition and sometimes enter short descriptions of articles into an internal management system. My biggest accomplishment was unscrewing a flickering neon light bulb that was making it hard for editors to concentrate—a simple act which earned me the undying hostility of the French janitor, who had refused to help since his shift was ending in fifteen minutes, and did not believe that anyone else should have the right to ameliorate the situation in his stead.
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