If you ever did an internship, you’ll know how weirdly peripheral it can feel. You’re employed, but not permanently. You’re part of a company, but are you really? You’re being trusted with jobs, but are they really important jobs or are they just tasks that no one else wants to do? And are you even being paid? Well it depends on the company, but if you are it’s not likely to be much at all.

However, as they say, internships could be your ticket to something much bigger. Maybe it’s a rite of passage, maybe it’s an underpaid role taking advantage of those privileged enough to even take them up – but at the very least, they give you some solid work experience for your resumé. So when the intern in this story landed a role in a bank office they were excited to get started, and with their future firmly ahead of them, they put everything into their work. Eventually the managers even took notice, but the hard work that they were doing? Well it might not have had such positive consequences after all.

Read on to find out what happened.

Embarrassing work experience

I am a temporary intern at a bank office.

After a month in, I kicked *** at my job and completed everything they wanted me to do, everything they hired me to do.

So one morning I showed up to work (fifteen minutes late) and I arrived to an empty office.

I meandered over to my desk and there was a sticky note on my monitor that told me there was a meeting going on in the conference room. Great.

Let’s see what happened when this intern arrived late to the meeting.

I went over to the conference room and entered just as the department boss was talking. I’m shy and everyone was looking at me: not the best thing to calm my nerves.

I was directed to walk across the room to sit, and all the while all eyes were on me.

I sat down and the boss continued his conversation.

Basically what he said was I made all my coworkers look bad because I outperformed and set the new office standard for work ethic. Hooray for me, right? Wrong.

Uh-oh. Read on to find out what happened next.

When the boss left, the supervisor put the spotlight on me in a room full of people.

My supervisor thanked me, and I was too scared to thank him or say anything. I was frozen with fear like a deer in headlights.

I ended up looking down at the ground without saying a word. I looked dumb and that was incredibly embarrassing.

I left that room and everything went back to normal… I just worry about what my coworkers thought.

It’s great that this intern has already made such an impression at the company.

However, it sucks that the boss put them on the spot like that, embarrassing them in front of everyone.

If the work culture isn’t great and full of kind people, this could also turn their colleagues against them.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who is told to work a holiday without overtime pay, and how they ended up getting their money.

This person thought that they’d done well, but their management had done terribly.

And others called out the manager for not considering the shy intern’s nature.

Meanwhile, this Redditor pointed out that doing a lot of work can sometimes be a negative thing.

If this intern is already showing up the full time permanent colleagues at the company, then they are clearly doing something right. It’s great for the intern’s resumé and future job prospects that they’ve already impressed – and even though they might not have enjoyed the feedback at the time, it’s at least a sign that they are valued, even if they just work there temporarily. That’s no bad thing, since there’s a good chance that if they are a good fit for the company, they might be offered a more permanent job down the line.

But the irony of walking in fifteen minutes late to this sort of praise is hilarious, albeit presumably mortifying for the intern. For introverts and shy folk, we don’t like being called out in front of everyone, even when it’s for a positive thing, and we certainly don’t like having a whole room full of eyes on us. It’s a shame that the manager chose to give the intern praise in this way though, rather than in a way that might have been more personally preferable, since a good manager would actually consider the employee first.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee whose dietary restrictions caused the whole office to turn against her.