With the 46th pick in the House of Representatives office draft, Bobby Schilling of Illinois chose Cannon 507, an 890-square-foot space with low-hanging ceilings, a view of the Capitol Dome, and a cage for summer interns.
That’s right, a cage for interns. With so little space, the current occupants of the office, Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., and his staff, use the storage unit across the hall—which is filled with boxes, files, and a coffeemaker collecting dust on a shelf— as work space when they get extra help in the summer. The space, known as “the cage” for its chain-link fencing complete with a padlock, also doubles as a secondary meeting room for constituents and other visitors when the congressman’s own office is in use.
