My boss is a contradictory, confrontational sort of person. Self-proclaimed Meryl Streep from Devil Wears Prada. I made an honest mistake that she fixed with a single phone call before I had even packed up my things and left the office. On my way out she demoted me to intern, told me “you were just an intern and your time with us was done this weekend anyway.” She said it so casually, practically in passing, like a stream of consciousness. Next week my 3 months probation was up and my benefits were about to kick in. The way she phrased it sounds premeditated to me, like she was planning to fire me. Does it sound that way to anyone else or am I making that up in my head? She also told me that “I’m careless, I’m not growing, I can’t be trusted, and I need to find a different industry because I won’t succeed in this one.” This is an industry I have a master’s degree in and was the top of my class for 5 years, the whole time I was earning my degrees. I think she demoted me to intern so she won’t have to pay my unemployment. I don’t fully understand how unemployment even works, I realize now that I don’t think I ever got an employment contract to sign that had my title on it. What can I do to make sure I get unemployment or some sort of financial or karmic compensation? To say those kinds of things to someone for whom this is their first job out of college feels cruel and unnecessary to me. She has a mean streak, I saw evidence of that in my 3 months numerous times. She’s impossible to please, constantly expected me to read her mind, and my colleagues told me that she gave me more heat than anyone else in the office and I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did to kiss her off. I wasn’t a great fit for that job but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot who needs to find a whole new industry to work in. I worked hard for my degrees and I know I can deliver tremendous value to a firm who will take the time to actually provide proper, effective training and not put me in a position where my scope of work is WILDLY unreasonable for my skill level. The firm is small, understaffed, and then over is wicked high. People stay an average of six months, I saw two people leave the firm in my 3 months there.
What should I do to make sure I’m not burning bridges but that I’m getting what I’m entitled to?