Anthropologie’s visual display team has some serious competition in this town.

This week’s Inside Job features Meghan Lorenz, a 25-year-old superstar who is making a name for herself in the city as a window dresser. If you’ve been to Rainbo in the past week, that’s her work, created in collaboration with colleague Sarah McLaughlin, you’re seeing in the display case—a fanciful, fluffy, My-Little-Pony-meets-Care-Bears scenario. See the images above to get a closer look at the craziness. And if you like this team’s girly, boho aesthetic, look for their jewelry line, Aragon, launching this December. Stay tuned via her blog.

Still hungry for more inspiration? Head straight theindoprojects.com or to local shops Colori and Bess & Loie, where Linsey Burritt, whose kitchen we feature in this week’s Home Decor issue, has immaculately designed two displays with materials ranging from chicken wire to LIFE magazine pages to paint chips. Delicious.

Photos: Jeremy Bolen

Today, we’re featuring another confessional from a current Time Out Chicago employee who started out as an intern. Read on to find out more about going from unpaid to paid at Time Out Chicago.

“When I started my internship at Time Out Chicago, I didn’t know what to expect. It was going to be my first experience in a real office setting. Friends who interned elsewhere filled me with stories of screaming bosses, coffee runs and late nights with little or no pay. Yet from the very first day, I knew that my experience at Time Out would be nothing like that. My boss was friendly, understanding and helpful. I got to sit in on meetings and even share my input, and I learned new and useful skills each day. Although the idea of an unpaid internship was not the most appealing thing in the world, I came in only three days a week and left no later than 5pm every day, making the experience not only worthwhile but convenient. By the end of my three months, I could not have been sadder to leave, when suddenly I was offered a job; all of my hard work had paid off. To this day I am still employed at Time Out Chicago and love it just as much as my first day as an intern.“—Katie Salisbury, Office Assistant and former Consumer Marketing intern

If you like what you’ve read about our internships or know someone who would be a good applicant, visit We’re Hiring for descriptions of various Time Out internship opportunities.

Over the next few days we will be posting confessionals from current Time Out Chicago employees who were interns first. Read on to find out more about going from unpaid to paid at Time Out Chicago.

“I applied for an internship for Time Out Chicago (TOC), after a year of studying abroad in London and falling in love with our British sister-mag. In my interview, we talked about the music I was listening to, theater I had recently seen, and how great the shopping was in my new Chicago ‘hood. We brainstormed how to market to 22-year-olds who go to shows and see theater and shop at cute boutiques around town. I knew the internship was for me.

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Forget Craigslist, Monster.com and the Reader classifieds; Twitter, besides serving as a repository for elaborate fart jokes, is becoming a hot job-hunting spot—at least in the food world. A friend recently landed a job at a local bakery via the Twittersphere and even everyone’s favorite molecular gastronomist, Grant Achatz of Alinea, is recruiting cooks by tweet. Michael Nagrant has the exclusive story on the perfectionist chef’s hiring process, which includes scrutinizing spelling in cover letters and assigning candidates to plate tiny herbs with tweezers.

Underemployed and looking for a solid side gig? Our siblings at Time Out New York have rounded up a dozens of options worth exploring. Many are NYC-specific (and don’t worry–we’ll be putting together a similar package especially for Chicago readers soon), but some are opportunities we can take advantage of here, including the following 15:

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Ask Andy returns! Our HR guy Andy Katzman’s been having a rough week. First, the elevators broke, then his computer crashed, and then there was a weird smell in the lobby. But he was able to take time out of his busy schedule to answer a question from a reader about inappropriate workplace questions.

Keep sending your job and career questions to askandy at timeoutchicago.com. For more career tips, check out our "Need a job?" feature or TOC’s continuing education guide at timeoutchicago.com/careerguide.

Here’s the second episode of "Ask Andy," starrring Andy Katzman, TOC’s HR guru. In this week’s installment, Andy tackles the question of how to manage your former co-workers after you receive a promotion. 

Keep sending your job and career questions to askandy at timeoutchicago.com. For more career tips, check out our "Need a job?" feature or TOC’s continuing education guide at timeoutchicago.com/careerguide.

Last week, we offered you tips on what to do when you get laid off, and how to score your next great job. As part of our jobs package, Andy Katzman, TOC’s HR guru told you how to avoid making major mistakes during an interview (like "don’t act batshit crazy and get security called on your ass" for instance).

We asked you to send in your HR-related questions to askandy at timeoutchicago.com, and we got some great responses. Over the next few weeks, Andy will be answering these queries via the TOC blog. Here’s the first installment:

For more career tips, check out our "Need a job?" feature or TOC’s continuing education guide at timeoutchicago.com/careerguide.

This is a true story. I have an e-mail chain between me and a PR person—about getting together for lunch—that includes more than 50 replies back and forth. Apparently, we’re both very busy people. I wondered, as I sifted through my inbox yesterday (which is more crowded and annoying than an afternoon at Taste of Chicago), if my e-mail habit had gotten out of control. Researchers say it takes a whopping four minutes to recover from an interruption in your work day whether it be an e-mail, a phone call or a visit from a co-worker (for more expert insights, check out our Career Guide). So effectively, if the computer dings and you look 50 times a day, that’s 200 minutes of wasted time.

Wait, you mean I could go home three hours earlier every night?! “Yes,” says Marsha Egan, a life coach in Reading, Pennsylvania who specializes in inbox addictions. And here’s how:

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You’ve just spent two days kicking back, sleeping in, having fun….then—BAM!—it’s Monday. Back to reality: Time to go to work again. At TOC, Mondays are one of the busiest days of the week. Editors are scrambling to write up theater, restaurant, club and concert reviews from the weekend, there are copy deadlines galore and content needs to be planned for the next week’s issue.

I imagine it’s the same story no matter where you work (for more office insight, check out our Career Guide). Mondays are rough and there’s no time for weekend-lag—similar but different from the I’m-tired blahness you get after a long flight. I asked Joe Siegler, M.D., a life coach and psychiatrist at Full Life Center (773-529-1200, fulllifecenters.com), a career counseling hot spot in Lincoln Park, to share some tips on not just surviving, but kicking some majorly-productive Monday ass.

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