Not asking for advice really, just a rant.
So, I completed an internship with a startup as part of my masters degree – I needed to complete the internship to graduate. At the end of the internship, I was offered a part time paid position with the company. After a few months of employment, I realised the job wasn't for me – my boss was extremely intense, the workload impossible, and tasks wildly out of my area of expertise (I was essentially operating as the head of several departments with no experience or guidance) – but I hoped to ride it out for the experience and because I really needed the extra money (she also made a big deal about my 'generous pay', when I make the same amount per week at my retail job at a chain store with less hours and barely above minimum wage hourly pay).
When I caught COVID last month, I was hit very hard despite being fully vaxxed, potentially because I am immunocompromised. I was very unwell, and am still sick several weeks later. I emailed my boss immediately, letting her know that I would be unable to work for the upcoming week/potentially more, depending on how long it took me to recover enough to think clearly. Despite me emphasising how unwell I was, she continued emailing and texting me with tasks to complete, also at strange hours (I received a particularly frantic string of messages at 11pm while I was awake but exhausted, struggling to breathe). When I reiterated that I was too sick to work, she told me that 'this work should have been completed last week anyway', which was not true/was not on my scheduled tasks. This was the final straw for me with this job, and after a talking to from a friend, I quit the following week. She never replied to my email.
She has now told my degree coordinator that she will not complete the form verifying that I completed my internship with her company. I need this internship to graduate. My coordinator had reached out to her several times during my employment at the company asking her to complete the necessary forms verifying that I had completed my internship – requests which she ignored, until the week I quit, at which point she replied saying she refused to verify or review any of my work.
My coordinator has assured me that I will still be able to pass this unit with some extra documentation from my end, but this experience has scared the shit out of me – I am scared to ever work for a startup again, I am turned off work in my industry (excellent news for someone at the end of a postgrad degree), I am now out of income that I was relying on to secure housing, and mostly, the psychological impact of knowing this woman has taken me out.
I suppose the moral here is: bosses do not give a fuck about you. Don't feel guilty for quitting a job. You are not doing anything wrong – it is not a sin, it is not a crime, always put yourself first. Rant over.