What it’s like to work for Rahm Emanuel

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  Emanuel's young staffers: Mike Simmons, from left, Ankur Thakkar, Caroline Weisser, Matt Fischler, Anna Valencia and Michael Faulman

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  Ankur Thakkar and Caroline Weisser talk in the press room at the mayor's office.

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  Ankur Thakkar and Caroline Weisser talk in the press room at the mayor's office.

   

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  Ankur Thakkar (from left), Anna Valencia and Caroline Weisser in the mayor's office

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  Staffers from the mayor's office exit through the front door.

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  Caroline Weisser (from left), Matt Fischler, Anna Valencia and Ankur Thakkar walk through Daley Plaza.

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  Matt Fischler (left) and Mike Simmons discuss city policies in Simmons's office in City Hall.

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  Michael Faulman (from left), Anna Valencia and Mike Simmons

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  Caroline Weisser (from left), Matt Fischler, Anna Valencia and Ankur Thakkar on a coffee break

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  Matt Fischler at an informal meeting with one of his colleagues at City Hall.

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  Mike Simmons (left) with Michael Faulman at City Hall

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  Mike Simmons (left) and Michael Faulman at City Hall

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  Mike Simmons (from left), Caroline Weisser, Matt Fischler and Michael Faulman 

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  A portrait of Mayor Rahm Emanuel hangs in a hallway at City Hall.

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  Ankur Thakkar (left) and Matt Fischler lend support while the mayor makes a major announcement about introducing Chicago's new Welcoming City Ordinance.

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  Ankur Thakkar checks the Twitter chatter as the mayor announces the upcoming introduction of the Welcoming City Ordinance.

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  Matt Fischler and Ankur Thakkar provide feedback to Chicago Office of New Americans Director Adolfo Hernandez post-event, where the mayor announced the new Welcoming Chicago Ordinance.

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  Anna Valencia waits while the mayor discusses an upcoming announcement on immigration with Chicago aldermen and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez.

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  Caroline Weisser works behind the scenes during a press announcement aimed at investing in infrastructure and rennovating CTA facilities.

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  Newspaper clipping of Rahm Emanuel hang on the wall in Caroline Weisser's office at City Hall.

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Emanuel's young staffers: Mike Simmons, from left, Ankur Thakkar, Caroline Weisser, Matt Fischler, Anna Valencia and Michael Faulman

Photo: Elizabeth Jochum

ON THE FIFTH FLOOR OF MAYOR RAHM Emanuel’s City Hall offices, there’s a room with dozens of printed screenshots and handwritten notes taped to one wall. Above the papers in small black letters, a hand-drawn sign reads: awesome shit wall.

Caroline Weisser, an assistant press secretary for the mayor, is leading me on a tour, and we’ve stopped in the office of 28-year-old Kevin Hauswirth, the mayor’s director of social media. “Everything in this room is off the record,” Weisser, 25, declares, “except for this wall.”

This wall is where Hauswirth and Ankur Thakkar, the deputy director of social media, post their inspirations. Some of them are ideas they’d like to implement for the mayor’s office. Others they simply find humorous. Posts range from a screenshot of a Muppet Facebook app that allows users to record themselves singing a few seconds of the movie’s theme song to a screenshot of a video player with a sidebar of rolling commentary that would enhance a live address. Nowhere in the mayor’s office is youth culture more prominently on display than here.

Despite Emanuel’s reputation of not being an easy man to work for (a Time magazine article famously described him as a “profane, hyperactive attack dog” with a “steamrolling personality”), several twentysomethings dropped their lives in cities such as Washington, D.C., New York and Springfield, Illinois, when they got offers to work for Chicago’s first new mayor in 22 years.

Some, like Thakkar, are helping build a social-media presence for the mayor’s office. Others, like Weisser, are handling the press and working damage control. Then there’s 28-year-old mayoral aide Michael Faulman, who once found himself eating salami and hummus with Emanuel in a Jewel parking lot. Here, six millennials tell their stories of what it’s like to work for one of the nation’s most intimidating politicians.