At Workday's End, Interns Turn On the Schmooze

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 14, 2006

Ryan Holte, his starchy shirt still stiff after a day at the office, milled about Tortilla Coast early one summer evening. The beer was flowing, and the aroma of salsa filled the air. But Holte wasn't at the Capitol Hill happy hour hot spot for the $2.50 pints of Miller Lite or the 10-cent wings. He was there to shake hands.

"You know where you need to start?" asked Holte, 22, whipping out his Treo Smartphone. "Right here."

He scrolled down to a spreadsheet that listed what seemed like every happy hour in the Washington area. Organized by day and neighborhood, it reported the specials at about 75 bars and restaurants each weeknight.

This spreadsheet is the Washington intern's summer road map to cheap booze and greasy grub. For years, this list has been passed down through e-mail by friends and friends of friends, and now by universities to group e-mail lists of students in the city. Its accuracy is questionable. Still, to many interns, the listing is gospel.

And for the career-conscious types, it's a guide to that Washington specialty: networking.

Every summer, 20,000 collegiates flock to the capital to make connections with the nation's officialdom and gain a leg up in life. The networking doesn't stop at the office door.

Ground zero for schmoozers-in-training is the weekday happy hour. If it's the right bar on the right day, they can chat up a congressman and jump-start their careers. Ultimately, it's all about making as many lasting, positive impressions on as many important people as possible, right?

"They're just blown away by the fact that they grew up watching 'West Wing' and now are a part of it," said James Hoppes, 34, who interned at the World Bank and still throws back Coronas at the Front Page in Dupont Circle when he finishes work at the Aspen Institute, a think tank.

Known as the nation's intern capital, Washington could add another title: the happy hour capital. Interns say the D.C. scene reigns supreme. If you asked them, here's what they'd tell you:

New York? Nope, too many investment bankers crunching numbers through the wee hours.

Los Angeles? Nope, not enough of a walking city to pub hop.

In Washington, though, happy hours are part of the culture. On Capitol Hill alone, 4,000 interns head down the columned steps of their office buildings by 5:30 or 6 at night, many of them heading for bars. You can spot interns by their security badges, which some wear even after punching the clock.

To interns working for Uncle Sam for little or no pay, cheap food-and-drink specials are a magnet. At the Front Page, manager Mikias Abebayehu said Thursday's $2-a-beer special draws enough customers to sell about 4,800 bottles of Corona and Miller Lite.

In the barrooms of political Washington on a weekday evening, you can hear the names rolling off the tongues of the young and ambitious: Hillary! Obama! McCain!

"A lot of these kids from college come here and meet these big, high-profile people, and they have to go have a beer and tell their friends about it," Hoppes said.

They'll brag to anybody about their senator or their representative -- unless you're a reporter. Then they refuse to speak on the record about their networking practices; most of those who would comment for attribution did so under the condition that their bosses not be named. Another Washington specialty.

"You literally walk by all these representatives and senators all the time," said Zena Kalioundji, 21, a student at the University of California at Irvine who is working for a Republican congresswoman.

Back at Tortilla Coast, the side room filled with Republican interns eagerly awaiting a congressman. An appearance by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) was promised by the Leadership Institute, an organization that recruits young conservatives, trains them for public service and helps place them in government or policy jobs.

"Being able to set up a rapport with an influential Republican congressman like himself is valuable to me," said Holte, a second-year law student at the University of California at Davis and an intern at the U.S. Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals. "It'll hopefully set myself up for job opportunities or future career growth."

Another day, around the corner at Hawk 'n' Dove, the venerable Capitol Hill honky-tonk, draft pitchers were $5. A couple of interns and their co-workers from a human rights and government watchdog group gathered at a table in the back room. They bandied jokes around a pitcher of foamy brew and jumbo potato skins (no bacon), then started to rail about those interns, the relentless handshakers and name-droppers. You see, not every D.C. intern goes to happy hours merely to network. And when asked about the networkers, Daniel Werner, 22, and Michael Piccinelli, 21, just shrugged and laughed as if to say, That's Washington .

Werner, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, recalled attending a panel for interns this summer that featured Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and NBC News' Tim Russert. After the talk, audience members swarmed the headliners.

"All those interns want to do is get a picture with them and post it on their Facebook and say, 'Hey, look at me,' " Werner said, referring to the online networking site popular among college students. "That really turns me off about interns here."

"They might care about their work," Werner added, "but all they do is name-drop."

At some law firms, partners take summer associates out for drinks after work and pick up the tab. It's a way to test them in social settings.

"It's almost like an informal interview," said Nick Schiavi, a 27-year-old from Arlington who works at an educational software firm and whose friends have interned at law firms. "The law firms are trying to weed people out for full-time hiring."

But the mix of booze and schmooze can be costly. Drinking with the bosses can be hazardous. Staffers at the Aspen Institute joke about a female intern a few summers ago who went to a company picnic, had one too many cocktails and "danced her way out of her job."

"She was the talk of the party," Hoppes said. "If you get out of hand, you're not taken seriously."

And then there's Monica Lewinsky, who Hoppes said tarnished the reputation of D.C. interns. "To be an intern was a rather innocent, generic position, and she sort of killed it," he said, adding that since the Clinton administration scandal, interns are viewed as more calculating.

At Tortilla Coast, Kalioundji and her friend Colleen Riley, 21, a congressional intern from the University of California at Santa Barbara, summed up the reason for all the schmoozing.

"Some people are trying desperately to network, to go up the ladder," Riley said.

"It's definitely all about the ladder," Kalioundji added, before she and Riley turned to check out the specials at the bar: $2.50 pints of Miller Lite and 10-cent wings.