Signing on experience may have been more appropriate
A few years ago I had the misfortune to be a department manager at a well known chain of stores that sells poor quality bikes and car accessories. They regularly took on work experience people as it meant they could subsidise the ridiculously low staffing levels without actually having to pay any wages out.
Since it is no-ones ambition to actually work in such a shop we didn’t exactly get the cream of the crop.
The one that sticks in my memory I first encountered when I went to open the shop on a monday morning after a weeks holiday drinking heavily in northern spain, there was a mentally challenged looking boy stood outside saluting - apparently he had been told this was normal protocol for greeting a department manager, he then told me how he had spent the previous week making sure my house was clean for me when I returned - in my absence the other staff had got him to polish one of those massive metal outside storage containers after telling him I lived in it. After failing to get him to do anything with any degree of competence the manager finally gave up and told him to “just follow epipsa-g about, you might learn something”. This instruction he managed to follow to the letter - quite literally staying about two feet behind me at all times - I eventually lost my rag with him when when he continued to follow me into the toilet, so I guess he my have learnt some more inventive swearing than he was used to if nothing else.

God knows what the poor kid must have suffered at school, but he declared it the best two weeks of his life and applied for a full time job about 6 times over the next year - he would probably have had more success if he had put more than his name, address and “I like bikes” on the application forms.
(epipsa-g, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:45, Reply)