Ah, interns

Weight: 249.1

The scale's up, but scales do that sometimes when you weigh in every day.

So, I work in DC as low-level economist. I'm 23, and only a little more than a year out of college. Now, there are plenty of lame things about my job (low pay, long hours) and about DC in general (it's built on a swamp), but one of the cooler things is that you get interns.

Now, I suppose, technically, I don't get interns. My boss gets interns. But here's a secret about DC: 90% of things that don't involve cameras or schmoozing gets delegated. This semester, my boss has two interns, both of whom have masters degrees and graduated from college in the 1990s. In practice, however, this means I'm managing two people who are 10 years older than me, including occasionally asking them to make photocopies.

However each semester, before my boss starts ignoring the interns (aside from occasional "go ask Hadley" instructions), we take them out to lunch. Technically, I suppose, he takes us all out to lunch, but the point is it's always a good big fun long expensive but free to me lunch. Today was our lunch.

Both of our interns are hoping to transfer into policy from other careers. One of them, before this, was doing real estate in NYC. I'm probably, at one point, going to talk about the NYC thing. (I grew up there, all sorts of associated hang ups.)

But anyway, so we went out to lunch, and she said as the waitress was handing out menus "oh no thanks I'm not going to be able to eat anything off it." I replied back, sort of not sure what was up, "They have all sorts of vegan and vegetarian and whatever else stuff, and I'm sure they could work around any allergies" or something along those lines, just trying to make her feel like included and allowed. "I'm on Jenny Craig," she said back.

I'm going to just go out and for the record say she's not fat. Not at all. Maybe a size 8 or 10, if I had to guess. Not a stick, but well within normal.

When I was emailing the interns yesterday, I mentioned that it was a twice a semester (once at the beginning, once at the end) tradition, and that they should prepare any questions they had for our boss, since this is one of the few times they'll have him as a captive audience. I don't say this to be snide or to brag, but our boss is a big shot. This is a special thing. And every ounce of me was so blown away by the fact that she would come to this lunch and not eat, not even order a dressing-less salad to pick at.

Appalled is too strong a word, but it's the one that comes to mind. I was put off, maybe? I don't know. Then I felt bad and like I was being judgmental: who says you have to eat at social events anyway, and shouldn't I be supportive of anyone who's dieting since, after all, I'm going through the same thing? Why was I so thrown off by this?

Now I just don't know what to think.

Is it bad that I'm not as dedicated to my diet as she is? That I ate the restaurant's fatty food, and not even a salad but a Bacon Tomato and Cheddar sandwich? Is the reason she's thin and I'm not (yet) because I'm not willing to loudly proclaim "I'm on a diet so I'm not going to eat here"?

Or maybe it's not that I've not gone far enough, but rather that she's gone past the mark? Not eating at an important lunch like this is, quite frankly, a huge mistake. For the rest of the program, my boss is probably going to call her "whatshername, the intern who wouldn't eat lunch." (Our summer intern, who spent three years as a consultant and was one year into a PhD program at the London School of Economics is still known as "whatshername, the pescetarian" when on our initial lunch out she voted against a steakhouse and explained that she was a vegetarian except for fish.) We can't give up our lives, our work, for diets. It just won't work, and even if it does, are those sacrifices worth making?

I just don't know.