Intern Caught Sleeping On Day 2 Of New Job, Sparks Off A Hilarious Meme War On Reddit [Photo]
From the archive: published Feb 7, 2016, 10 years ago. Details may have changed since.
Don’t try this at your office, though.
An intern fell asleep at his desk on the second day of his brand-new job and woke up to incipient fame.
This is how it happened. His colleagues noticed him sleeping at his desk but didn’t wake him up, nor did his boss breathe fire. What they did instead was they all silently gathered around the sleeping figure and clicked a surprise group photo with him.
The intern, identified only as TheOrangeDuke, sportingly put this photo up on the content-sharing site Reddit, and the photo quickly became the subject of a “PsBattle ” (Photoshop Battle), a weekly Reddit event where users come up with their own wild takes on a chosen image. In no time, a meme war was on, with one crazy version of the photo following another, beaming out all manner of references, from UFOs to Donald Trump to Leo DiCaprio’s Russian doppelgänger!
The media picked up the “story” soon enough, and the young man was an internet sensation in no time.
Speaking about the incident to the Huffington Post, the intern said, “One of the [office] associates noticed me sleeping… And it just went downhill from there!”
Which may not be entirely accurate. The intern’s boss did not fire him, he still has his job, and he is famous to boot (at least his image is). A good outcome for a good sleep, though not in the same league as this one.
Now the question is, how can an intern find himself in such a situation at the very beginning of his stint at a brand-new workplace? People are known to sleep in offices, but not on the second day of their jobs.
The intern has a valid explanation for this. And it actually is a health issue: he has been diagnosed with anaemia and it apparently causes him to be “ultra-sleepy.” A condition that can be quite problematic if you happen to work in an ultra-busy software firm.
Though the meme artists at Reddit would be thankful for exactly such a thing. Just take a look at these artworks created out of nothing but an unwanted snooze and some prankster colleagues.
This one shows a saintly Trump oozing charm, taking all the blame.
UPDATE: The intern’s real name is Eduard Paraschivescu, and he is from Montreal. He works at a software development firm called GSoft.
