I was previously pursuing a really competitive career path (no longer pursing that line of work). The only way to even have a chance of making it in that industry was to gain 100s of hours of unpaid experience, so I spent a summer doing an unpaid internship. Not only was the internship unpaid, but I was actually SPENDING a ton of money for the “opportunity” to do this work (housing, transportation, etc.).
One day during my first week I was assigned a job that required timers to be set for every 2 minutes to compete a task. I was between tasks, and it wasn’t possible to leave the room to get any other work done in that short amount of time without missing the next task, so I pulled out my phone to read a text from my mom.
At that moment a staff member happened to walk in, and completely tore me a new one for being on my phone. I got a full 5 minute lecture on professionalism, how much work there is to be done, how grateful I should be for the opportunity, etc. All because I glanced at my phone at a point when I literally couldn’t do anything but wait, at a “job” that I basically was paying to work fifty hours a week. I don’t know if these people are so out of touch with reality that they don’t hear themselves, or they know it’s insane and just don’t care.