Be kind to those on the way up the career ladder - they’ll soon be gliding past you

Having a workie is a bit like holding a child's birthday party - constantly worrying about what to do next

(Flickr (juhansonin))

As traumatic learning encounters go, work experience is pretty tame compared to being mugged at knifepoint. Still, it remains something of an adolescent curve ball. Having gone through the first ordeal last week, my 16-year-old son is now obliged to cope with the second. In a proper, big office. At a proper, big newspaper. And he is quite nervous about it.

“What will I do at lunchtime?” he asks his older sister, who went through the ritual two years ago. She looks at him as if she had gone through an experience far, far out of his comfort zone. “You will eat alone,” she decrees. Really? I think. “Every day. I ate alone.” A terrible silence descends over the kitchen.

“I’m sure people will be nice to you,” I say brightly. I can almost see him squaring his shoulders, preparing for endless days of getting lost and solitary dining.

Still, at least they will be clad in a proper suit. The shoulders, that is. “I will wear this to work experience,” he solemnly announced a fortnight ago, unwrapping his birthday present.

Since 2013, the Department of Education has insisted that every secondary school student, typically in Year 10 or 11, must spend a week pretending to be an employed adult. They are meant to stop panicking about triple science and their German reading assessment and suddenly get their heads around something so daunting and distant that it hardly seems plausible – the prospect of a career.

As for finding a placement, there seems to be two options. First, there is pot luck, which can in fact be remarkable – I worked in a school for children with special needs during my work experience, and had an unforgettable week. Second, there is the age-old method of tapping up the parental friend, which can (but not always) result in hours of photocopying and a spot of walking the office dog.

My son is lucky; a lovely mate at a Sunday magazine has offered him a week involving real tasks. At this office, the so-called “workies” actually do more than measure out their life in coffee spoons.

Still, he is going to have to be resourceful. When at the BBC, I had a lot of workies with me, and quickly realised that if I had one who was smart enough to want to do something other than spot celebrities, they would get through the photocopying very quickly. Hosting a workie is a bit like holding a child’s birthday party; you think the games will take ages, but Pass the Parcel is over in a trice and you are constantly faced with the issue of what to do next.

Being the workie, however, is all about second-guessing your boss and coming up with new, ingenious ways of avoiding the coffee run. What it is not about, by the way, is smoking, SnapChatting, loudly laughing at what people in their fifties are wearing, reading or listening to, getting off with anyone, or joining in with office life so vigorously that you end up passing out in a drunken coma in the gents (to her horror, this was the work “experience” of the young progeny of a friend of mine).

Of course, if it’s you that’s facing a week with one of your friend’s children, the crucial thing is to remember to be kind. Be nice to them on the way up, as the saying goes, and hopefully they will do the same as they glide past you on the career elevator.

One of the best workies I ever had was a young man called Andrew Bailey. He had the fortune to be with me in the BBC’s newsroom when I was pregnant with this same teenage son, and suffering from morning sickness. It was a busy week in the arts world and I realised he had a brilliant nose for showbiz stories. Well, I considered, why look a gift work experience student in the mouth? It was work, and I was giving them an experience.

“I’m just going to have a biscuit. Why don’t you do all the interviewing?” I became accustomed to saying, weakly, as we went off to the Brit Awards, the opening of Mamma Mia, press conferences at the Arts Council of England, and so on. “Don’t mind if I do,” he would say, swiftly grabbing the microphone.

That was 17 years ago. I met him again yesterday morning when I was reviewing the papers at Sky News. He strolled in, one of the new senior news editors at the channel. I always knew he would go far.