BIZARRE RESPONSE FROM HIGH STREET FASHION CHAIN

The high street fashion retailer River Island has refused to answer our questions about whether they have any interns working within their company. In a bizarre thread of emails from their HR department, the chain has also asked that their company name be removed from our Pay Your Interns campaign website. We have denied this request, explaining that transparency is a key part of this campaign.

When asked whether River Island has any interns, what hours they work and how much they are paid, a company spokesperson told us: “We are privately owned and do not disclose any information regarding the company. The only information that you have access to is what is on our website”. Their website says:

River Island occasionally offers adhoc, short term work experience upon request. For further details please contact the HR Team by clicking on the link above.

Frankly, it is all rather odd — and their cryptic response to our straightforward has left us scratching our heads. What do you make of their emails?

From: River Island HR department
To: Graduate Fog
Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 1:27 PM
Re: Press Comment about internships at River Island

Further to your email to [name of River Island press officer removed], I wanted to advise you that we are not able to disclose any information regarding your query. I would also appreciate it if you can remove our company name from your website. Please confirm once this has been actioned.

Kind regards

[NAME REMOVED]
Recruitment Officer
River Island

Weird, no? Graduate Fog replied:

From: Graduate Fog
To: River Island
20 September 2011 14:41

Hi [name removed]

Thanks for your response – can you just clarify exactly why you are unable to answer these questions?

Then this arrived:

From: River Island
To: Graduate Fog
Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 2:47 PM

We are privately owned and do not disclose any information regarding the company. The only information that you have access to is what is on our website

Thanks

Suspecting that our users might find this response more than a little odd, we decided to give them one last chance behave like normal humans:

From: Graduate Fog
To: River Island
20 September 2011 14:53

Thanks for clarifying this. I understand that you have your reasons for not providing comment, but River Island is a popular brand among our users and I suspect they might find your response rather baffling! Are you quite sure you don’t want to elaborate at all?

…Unfortunately, they didn’t take it:

From: River Island
To: Graduate Fog
Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 2:56 PM

No, as I said we are privately owned therefore do not want to disclose any info. Please remove our company name from your website

Clearly, this was going nowhere. So we wrote back:

From: Graduate Fog
To: River Island
Wed, Sep 21 2011, 12.25pm

Hi [name removed]

Okay, thanks – let’s leave it there then. I’m afraid we won’t be removing River Island from our company list though. A vital part of our campaign is its transparency – it’s important that those following can see who we have contacted and what their response was.

Thanks again

Since contacting River Island, we have discovered an advertisement on Facebook for an internship at River Island, which appears to involve set tasks, including:

Similarly, we have also found this blog post written in August 2011 by somebody doing an internship at River Island. The intern seems to have set hours (their day starts at 9.30am) and it sounds like pretty hard work (putting together a daily press briefing and sourcing and sending out samples requested by magazines). Again, what is unclear is whether the role is paid or not. We have made enquiries and will keep you posted…

*Have you worked as an intern at River Island?
What did your job involve — and were you paid for your work? Are you disappointed that River Island has refused to answer questions about their policy on internships — or do you think it’s fair enough that they don’t want to comment?