Making the most of summer with Boss's daughter

It's summer and the office living should be easy. One would think.

While I've never been labeled a slacker, I do have a unique ability to uncover opportunities that allow me to, let's just say, fully appreciate the more laid back approach to work that summer brings.

After all, the warm temperatures and sunshine only graze New England for a few scant weeks each year.

These opportunities usually include al fresco dining (an extended bagged lunch on the Charles River), active participation in the company's wellness program (sunning on the balcony falls under my jurisdiction of mental health), and professional development (maintaining my salon visits ensures I am not distracted by a hangnail and can work to my full potential).

As long as the work gets done, nobody gets hurt. Right?

So why did I suddenly feel guilty about my summer work/life balance schedule when I was saddled with, ahem, asked to serve as a role model and "big sister," to the summer intern?

It's not that she wasn't bright (she was) or smart (attending a much better college than I did if you take those US News & World Report rankings seriously), or nice (she brought home-made muffins on her third day).

It was the fact that she was phonetically and/or genetically disadvantaged.

You see, she had the same last name as the boss, and it wasn't a coincidence; Dad thought she should learn some valuable office skills before she returned to her sorority in the fall.

Convinced that her vintage flower brooch was an elaborate spy cam and that each member of the department was being served up at dinner each evening, I did the only logical thing that a role model in survivor mode could do. I sucked up to her by essentially granting her a free pass for the summer.

As a communications major, she said, she was interested in getting hands-on public relations experience by rolling up her sleeves and was ready to do whatever it takes to earn those three credits.

Boss's daughter's first assignment was the painful yet necessary task of updating our media contacts list. I was amazed at how quickly she accomplished the assignment with little, if any, direction from me. Upon closer examination, however, I realized that the media list would probably rate as C+ work.

So when she asked for my feedback at the end of the day, I of course told her that the work was excellent and that she needn't hang around if she had better things to do.

I never let on that I stayed until 6:30 that night revising the list.

Once bitten, twice shy was my approach to the situation so it shouldn't come as a surprise when Boss's daughter came to me at the end of her second week begging for an assignment beyond organizing the magazines in the library -- which, by the way, she did an excellent job of.

So I loosened the reins a bit and assigned Boss's daughter to the unenviable yet highly visible task of cataloging our media clips, figuring that would allow her to look busy for at least another week. She finished the assignment in 2 1/2 days and if truth be told, Boss's daughter put my old record-keeping system to shame.

With very few low-risk projects left to assign to Boss's daughter, I turned a blind eye when she spent the rest of that week updating her MySpace page and re-re-organizing the periodicals in the library.

I figured this was a win/win in that she still gets the three credits and the experience on the resume while sailing through the summer.

I was wrong again. The following Monday, Boss's daughter came into my office with a briefcase and a no-nonsense, albeit sincere, request for more work.

Before I could think up more meaningless assignments, she opened her briefcase and began to show me her portfolio.

Boss's daughter had an impressive collection of marketing plans and press releases as well as articles published by the school newspaper.

Then she took me on a tour of her MySpace page that featured her advertising campaign that placed highly (though should have won) in a national collegiate competition.

While I didn't really need additional evidence that she was a crackerjack that inevitably would be offering me a job someday, Boss's daughter then pulled out the big guns.

She dropped a document on my desk and politely explained that she was carefully reading the magazines and newspapers while organizing the library and compiling the clip books.

Which, in turn, led her to completely revise and update the media contact list and would I mind giving it another look?

Through our impromptu meeting, she kept her composure as we agreed to make the most of her summer internship experience.

However, before she left my office, I half-laughed while I asked if she and her father would get a good chuckle out of this misunderstanding over dinner that night. She smiled as she told me about their family's strict "no shop talk" policy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for my pedicure.