Alright so I joined this small company of 3 people 9 months ago as a graphic designer, They told me that I had to bring my own equipment for work which was a huge red flag but I was very naïve and I didn't know any better so I agreed.
At first everything seemed fine, the 2 of the people in the company were partners who were my bosses let's call them john and annie, at first i got the feeling john didn't like me (i still remember how he talked about using (“fresh graduates for a job for free as they are easily exploited” yeah that's right those were his words) but i shrugged it off and i got along just fine with annie and she wasn't really a bad person but she did some things which were very questionable.
So let's talk about the things that really drove me mad, One of the first thing was whenever i made a mistake they were extremely harsh towards me and they used to make fun of me and told me many times i wasn't really a good designer but i was churning out content like no tomorrow and i did many things way past my job description like animation, video editing, etc. I felt like i wasn't appreciated or compensated for the amount of work i was doing instead what i got was a condescending behavior towards me even though the work i did was performing really well on social media for the clients.
So when it came time for a raise they told me i wasn't performing as they were expecting and told me once they get new clients they would increase my pay more, So the raise i got was a joke but i still stuck around because i was really scared of not finding another job. In meantime we hired another person which had similar experience as me and she got hired for a similar position as me but she was paid more than me even though i did a lot of the work that was under her job description. So one day we were talking and i asked how much was she getting paid and her pay was 25% more than me which really shocked me and put me in a bad mood for rest of day as i an idiot was doing some of the work that should fall under her job description and she was getting paid more than me.
So the next time annie told me do a task which fell under my co worker's job description i straight up told her that i wasn't gonna do it as that wasn't under my job description. Since than i felt the air in the office changed. I wasn't included in any of the conceptual part of the job, My experience and knowledge of graphic design didn't matter as they decided how things should be done and i was just used as tool for them. I later found out that the company had a whatsapp group which i wasn't even the part of where all the discussion took place even the new employee was part of the group even though i have been working there for far longer than her.
Also for 6.5 months i used my own laptop and hard drive for work. Since i used it for such a long time some of the components of my laptop eventually got damaged and failed which included the laptop battery, 1 8gb stick of ram and a power dc jack.
I told this to the company and they told me i could work from home using my computer until they can get me a laptop for work, which they did as they got me used a laptop which was decent but still not ideal for graphic design work especially for video editing as i did that too. As time went on my frustration with the company grew and i started to dislike them even more.
So i planned something i decided to take a 9 day holiday and did all the planned content till 9th day holiday and told them i will resume the work once i get back, So when the 10th day finally came i told them i was gonna work from home and at that day they were supposed work on big launch for one their biggest client and i am the only graphic designer they had so they told me i had to be in the office but I ignored them and they were calling me, messaging me and I didn't reply, I ignored them the next day as well and on the third day i sent them a message telling them I quit.
john was like how it was unethical and unprofessional and how “i had burned the bridge with them” like hell i want a bridge to this shit fest and then he threatened me with a bad word of mouth can easily spread in the industry, i just straight up ignored him.
later that day he msged me telling me to return the company's laptop now here is the thing for 6.5 months i used my own laptop which now has many failed components in it and i used my own external hard drive to store all the work files which degraded the life of it as well. Now this is making me think about asking him to reimburse me for my equipment's usage and damage and only than i will return the company's laptop. So should I do it or will it be too much?