A bit of background, grew up in a red-ass small town. My first job was at McDick's when I was 15. Broke my collar bone biking to work, you could visibly see bone protrude through the skin when I would rotate my arm. My manager at the time said, “You can't take aisprin and clock-in?”. For a while I had nothing but abusive jobs. So, naturally all of the /r/antiwork rhetoric I subscribe to and you have my full support. I've always been very good at setting my foot down and telling garbage employers to pound sound. I've had a lot of jobs because of it. Mostly blue collar.
Fast-forward to now, 'bout to graduate with my engineering degree. 8 years of sleep deprivation, malnourishment, fight or flight, and paying tuition out of pocket. Started an internship at a company a year ago. I am hourly, I am remote. (This matters very soon.)
I have nothing but nice things to say about my new company. To paint a picture, I told my boss I think I'm ready for a puppy, and asked if he was OK with me taking a week off to help the pup get settled in.
Do you know what I got in return? He asked if I wanted to start working from home, if I need a new laptop to improve efficienty of my tools, and a 20% raise. Thanks to likely some form of PTSD from prior employers, it chokes me up everytime.
Now I don't know how to handle it. If I was salaried (and will be getting there) I wouldn't feel so bad. But some days, I'm at 80%, some days I”m 50%, most days I'm 90%+. But if I have an off-day, and admiteddly do some time theft, like walk my dog for 20m, it eats at me all night. I feel anxious and sick and like an absolute trash employee. I feel this way because my company has been so good to me. If this was any other ol' meat grinder I wouldn't give a flying fuck. But this company has been nothing but wonderful to me in contrast to prior employers. So when I have a less-productive day at work I feel like absolute dog shit about it until I overwork myself to feel “caught-up”, even though I never get behind. I always crush deadlines 2-3 days before the expected and catch dire mistakes before they happen. I know I am valuable to the company.
“I get paid to write well thought out code” is a functional justification for me. But I feel like if I'm not at my post for the full 8 hour swing, just pounding away some work, I am not being fair because they've been very fair to me. Are they any higher ups or some folks that can shed some light on a smiliar situation? It's very disorenting feeling guilty and ashamed of being treated well in the work place. and because of it makes me work `100x harder.
But I don't know when to quit and feel okay to take a breather or make a sandwich while on the clock. Even my boss has elluded to the fact that I could probably dial it back. But that doesn't mean I feel comfortable doing it in my head.
tl;dr Job actually treats me like a human, and I have no fucking clue how to react. Help?