#8 Personal TVs

There are a few of things you can expect to find on any Hill Person's desk:

1. A calendar, probably free and from a constituent, featuring some creepy art show back in the district.

2. A computer that takes 45 minutes to turn on, built circa 2004 by the now-defunct Gateway.

3. Pictures of important people in the Hill Person's life, like family, friends, or the Senator and his family and friends.

4. And the most important tool for getting through the day: the personal television.

In most jobs, you are probably not allowed to watch TV at work, because that would "get in the way" of "productivity." There are no such fascist regulations in the federal government. Most Hill People above the rank of staff assistant are given their own personal TV and are released into the wonderfully vapid and utterly mind-numbing world of daytime television.

Officially, personal TVs are supposed to keep Hill People apprised of breaking news and current events so that they can effectively carry out their duties Saving America as the country's lawmakers. And, to be fair, many Hill People do keep their TVs tuned to CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, or, if they are truly a moron/Brownback staffer, Fox News.

But let's be honest- the only time pertinent news comes from one of those sources is when somebody starts setting fire to Dirksen bathrooms (thanks USCP!) or a plane flies into Capitol airspace (thanks crazy pilot and Oxycontin!)

So, you may ask, what is the use for the personal TV? The internal network allows Hill People to watch hearings, briefings, and votes. Rather than absorbing the substance of these events, though, most Hill People are more interested in which of their fellow staffers make it on camera, who gets to sit behind the Senator, and how fat that committee's previously hot secretary has become. Such a shame, she really had a career ahead of her.

Hill People can also use their TVs to learn the tangible skills they didn't learn at their liberal arts college and probably won't learn on the Hill. Fantasy baseball season has started -- now they can watch EVERY baseball game and really dominate their friends with actual jobs. The Food Network is always good for new and interesting ways to cook beets. The Travel Channel reminds them of all the beautiful places they'll never get to visit on a government salary.

And if all else fails, there are always ever-present Law & Order reruns.

#7 Blackberries

For the Hill Person, the Holy Grail of metrics to career success is the mighty Blackberry. Not issued to entry-level staff assistant, these life-consuming gadgets are worn on the hip as a badge of honor of the seasoned Hill Person. If the demands of one's job dictate that they need be available outside of normal working hours, a Blackberry is bestowed upon that chosen one, and they are deemed irreplaceable and indispensable (at least among the population willing to work for under $50 thousand a year).

Unfortunately, this telling sign of a Hill Pro doesn't hold the validity that it once did, as younger, less experienced Hill People are now funding their own Blackberry use (with Their Parents' Money). Granted, they may only be able to access their Gmail on these personal Blackberries, as typical offices will not allow internal email to be forwarded to other devices. Still, nothing says importance like a stranger in a blazer, leaning against the bar, drink to the side because he is using both hands to type. Ask him for his business card!

And if you need an example of just how fluid the joys of a Hill Person are, Gchat is available on Blackberries. Trapped on the tunnel train with Chris Dodd? Now you can update your status message immediately ("OMG he coulda been president!") Slow pace of a tour group of senior citizens slowing you down? Take a break and let all your g-friends that you feel "Ugh."

Chatting with friends and checking your personal email never looked so professional. And unlike the damned iPhone, nobody will question your relevance and importance in Saving America with an Blackberry -- because a Blackberry is business up front, and a fun party in the back. Like a mullet.

#6 Their Parents' Money

Any respectable Hill Person is expected to maintain a certain standard of living in order to be accepted amongst his fellow elite Capitol Hill staff assistants. This requires the following material essentials:

1. Decent housing: Eastern Market, Georgetown, Dupont, U Street, and Adams Morgan are acceptable. Foggy Botttom? Too collegiate/geriatric. Arlington? Um only for divorcees with 8 cats. Columbia Heights? GHETTO (except for Target trips. Other than that, check back in 2 years).

2. Clothing: Banana Republic or J Crew is your threshold. Don't dip below. Gap is okay on Friday. Don't get confused by the Target reference above. Target is only okay for scented candles and kitchen appliances. Clothes, though? Bitch I'm not from the Indiana 8th.

3. Happy Hour/Drinking: A near-daily ritual. Happy hour deals may siphon off some of the expenses made here, but any Hill Person worth their Capitol ID badge has to put in a good couple blackout nights a week, in order to forget the six tours the prior week and the overall douchebaggery of their chosen profession.

4. Other: This includes food and general toiletries.

5. Brunch

The problem with this list is that the high cost of living in Washington, DC, juxtaposed with the possible illegality of of their menial annual salary, could create a negative net worth at year's end (especially after that post tax refund and stimulus check bender trip to Aruba aka Adult Spring Break 2008!). So how do Hill People avoid a life living in the red and fend off the hounds of the credit card companies? Easy. Mommy and Daddy's love, er, monthly allowance.

You see, Hill People, after studying a social science at an expensive elite four-year university, find it easy to convince their parents to help them out. After all, a grand or two a month is only half of what their parents were paying for them to attend a private school for the prior four years, and a Hill Person's parents are often so happy that their little tool of a son or daughter landed a job right out of college, with benefits (holla Blue Cross Blue Shield) and a monthly allowance of its own.

In addition, parents of a Hill Person get all kinds of perks: exclusive behind-the-scenes (read: open to any member of the public) tours of the Capitol Congress, official looking business cards to validate their son or daughter's existence, and the ability to gloss over the lack of importance of their offsprings' employment to unknowing family and friends in Topeka, KS.

Indeed, with a monthly subsidy from Mom and Dad, a Hill Person can increase his or her annual income by about 50 to 100 percent, bringing their yearly earnings to somewhere in the mid-40 thousands (or what others in the Beltway consider "lower-middle class." Ultimately, this can lead to an even higher standard of living, including Whole Foods, studio Yoga, and maybe even Bud Light in the fridge.

#5 Recess

When you were in grade school, you loved recess. It was that time during the day to take a break from work and run around the playground like a crazed pre-adderall maniac. Well, imagine that same situation at your job today, add alcohol which probably wasn't present at your childhood recess (assuming you're not from the South), and you normal people can begin to get a vague idea of how glorious recess is for Hill People.

Recess occurs between sessions of Congress, and is so celebrated by Hill People because there is literally nothing to do. There are no bills to be passed and fewer meetings to be taken. The boss rarely makes an appearance in the office. The official work day is shortened to 5 PM. Even constituents seem less crazy. Hill People have more time to do the things they really came to the Hill to do, like gchat with their friends and take long lunches over margaritas at Tortilla Coast.

Another great part about recess is the more relaxed dress code. For normal people, this means jeans, tshirts, and sneakers. For Hill People, this is their chance to break out the blazer/button-down/jeans combo. Anything less would just be vulgar. You might also be shocked to learn that the average number of blazers owned by a Hill Person is 7. Seriously, look into it.

The best part about recess, though, is that your own personal happy hour starts a full hour earlier, so you're able to actually take advantage of those 5-7 deals that you silently curse when you're still sitting at your desk circa 6:30 PM. Ten cent wings? With an extra hour I can eat 45. $6 Bud Ice pitchers? I don't care that it tastes like stale urine. Two hours means TWICE as many.

If you see a Hill Person in the next few days, and you notice they are a little down, it's probably because they aren't in recess again until May. Eight whole weeks of real work. WTF.

#4 Gchat

Given the utter lack of meaningful work to be done in most junior-level staffer jobs, Hill People have come to be more commonly known as "gchat whores." Gchat has become one of the main instruments for Hill people to spread propaganda about how fierce and important they are.

As gchat has phased out AIM for most of the population over 21, Hill People have taken to thinking they are smoother and more professional because of the camouflage provided by the popped-in chat box. If Hill people decide they want to relive their younger, more carefree years, they can even opt for the pop-out gchat box! Gchat gives Hill People a way to convince themselves that they are way classier than the trashy college students and teens who use AIM.

Because the high level of education most Hill People possess contradicts the mind-blowingly lame work they do every day, they will consistently put off their tasks in order to gchat various friends from college. They will justify their procrastination by occasionally gchatting coworkers about Obama's speech on how being black is awesome.

The politics of one's gchat status sometimes overrides the politics in the SCHIP bill. ("OMG how could Bush veto a bill about kids!?") Hill People are also very attentive to mentioning who they are supporting for president at least twice a day. ("Hillary's my girl y'all!")

One of the main goals of the day for a Hill Person is to say something so witty, yet still politically intuitive, to one of their "cooler" (ie high salaried) coworkers that it makes it to the receiving party's gchat status. Achieving this feat several times a week will solidify their position in the office as being hip and clever and totally justifying why they work on the Hill for some bullshit issue like women's rights. Another use of the Hill Person's gchat status is to post links to various bills they're working on to show their non-Hill friends how relevant their job is to saving America.

Also, the passive aggressive gchat status ("Some people just suck") will help to convey how dismayed a Hill Person is that their random Smith Point hookup from last night didn't call them back. Also, around 4 PM EST, look for most Hill People's statuses to switch to something that illustrates the exhaustion that comes from a tough day of taking constituent calls and giving under-medicated middle school children tours ("Ugh").

The unfortunate downside to being a Hill Person on gchat is that they often get blocked by their non-Hill friends for a variety of reasons, but usually for being a huge political douchebag. If this occurs to the poor soul, they will take out their boredom through any number of creative ways. They may yell at an intern, take a walk around campus to remember how important their job is, or leave the Hill early out of sheer boredom. They will most likely take out their feelings through drinking free alcohol at a reception or going to Tortilla Coast for 50 cent tacos.

#3 The West Wing

When performing menial tasks a chimp with Down's Syndrome could execute, for an annual salary that rings in at about half of what they paid yearly for their Ivy League or second-tier undergraduate education, it's helpful for Hill Person to escape from time to time into a dramatization of what their career could be (but won't) some day.

The hit television series "The West Wing" provides plenty of wet dream fodder for the downtrodden, indentured servitude-working staff assistant Hill Person, and helps him believe that if he just hangs out in the right bars and hands out business cards to the right people, he too can someday wear designer suits that no federal worker could ever possibly afford, while quickly rattling off impressive policy mumbo-jumbo, in the grand tradition of Josh Lyman, Sam Seaborne, and that ugly surely Jewish guy who may or may not have been on the verge of suicide for the entire series.

One of the most badass things about West Wing is the cool insider-DC knowledge that comes with watching an episode. Hill People like to tell their friends who live in other cities when their favorite restaurant or bar is mentioned on the show ("omigod I hang out at Hawk & Dove alll the time! And whenever my parents come to town, we eat at Old Ebbit!") or when the show's producers take creative license that doesn't reflect the geographical reality of Washington ("the National Cathedral is soooo not on the way to the State Department. That is so unrealistic. Ugh.")

The subtle crossovers between fiction and real life also excite Hill People. The final season of the show features a young, relatively inexperienced and (OMG) Hispanic congressman taking on an affable, yet haggard and fatally flawed Republican senator. Holy crap that's totally Obama vs. McCain!!! And Hill People can relate to this. They are on the front lines of history in this presidential election. Because if they weren't in Washington giving tours of the Capitol, nobody could go to Pennsylvania to campaign for Hillary or accompany McCain on Spring Break Iraq '08. Democracy would crumble.

The availability of the show on DVD has made frequent repeat watching a possibility for Hill People. However, be wary of prominently displaying your DVD collection when inviting one into your home. Absent of a part-time job or bankrolling parents, Hill People can't afford their own television box sets, and will be eager to "borrow" yours upon seeing it.

#2 Interns

It's hard to imagine that there is anybody on the Hill who has a more menial job than a Hill Person. Well, in fact, there are thousands of them, and they are known as Hill interns. An intern's "official" function is to do the mail, answer the phones, and give tours to constituents. When interns aren't around, these are all things Staff Assistants are made to do, so Hill People love interns because interns are essentially everyone's bitch. Plus, when you're fresh out of an Ivy League college and working a job a dyslexic six-year-old could probably do, you really need to degrade and humiliate an intern every few hours to remember how super awesome you are.

You can tell the difference between an intern and a Hill Person by looking at their badge (which both prominently display outside of work hours in order to look more important.) An intern's badge is red, while a Hill Person's badge is green. The stop-light imagery is not coincidental. The bright red warning is ostensibly to protect male Hill People from creeping on young college women. In reality, much like a lower back tattoo of a butterfly, it serves as a bullseye for horny staffers who prey on unassuming and naive interns who are turned on by proximity to power. This desire to make out with an authority figure is especially helpful, because nobody loves pretending to be powerful more than a Hill Person.

Staff Assistants and LC's are especially in luck when interns are around. These are the two categories of Hill People who are literally working the most mind-numbing and unimportant jobs you can imagine. For these Hill People, the only hope of scoring some ass is by finding somebody they can impress with stories about the time they literally ran into Nancy on the Capitol subway! Or the time they stumbled into the Senators Only Elevator and Hillary complimented their tie! Stories like this serve the dual purpose of both being hilarious and showing that the Hill Person is on a first name basis with celebrity. Fortunately, interns are usually pretty dumb, so this shit works.

Notably, intern hook-ups are not limited to junior staffers. Senior staff and even some Congressman have been known to live for intern season. Also, it goes without saying that this applies only to female interns. Male interns are pretty much ignored by staff and female interns alike. Unless they intern for Senator Craig.