I'm no longer happy working for my boss. I'm not good with words and I'm struggling to think of ways to tell her through messages. I'm (F21) a marketing intern at a small company (publishing). This company rely heavily on unpaid interns. I started off as an unpaid intern for three months before getting paid €600 for my work up to next month. I have no contracts with her. She is always late on my pay. Now I am getting paid €600 for 6 weeks. There are only two people getting paid in this company.
Issue 1: My boss might have gotten me involved in some legal issue. I did a marketing campaign for a voluntary organisation (funded by the government). The board and the organisation wants to clarify with us on the marketing campaign – what was done and etc. My boss has been avoiding the emails for months. The marketing proposal was written by a previous intern. This is the first time the company is running a marketing service. In the proposal, it says that the marketing campaign will be done by a team of professionals. I did inform my boss that I do not have any work experience in publishing or marketing industry. She told me to follow the marketing proposal and carry it out as it is. I will be honest with you. The marketing campaign did not went well at all. I tried my best running it with the other interns. The interns left shortly after the campaign started. I was the only one who continued it so I am held accountable now. We had a meeting with the client a few weeks ago. My boss told me that I should listen more than I talk in the meeting (which I did as she told). She has been avoiding the emails again. I don't know what's happening next.
Issue 2: I noticed that my boss gets mad if someone objects or disagree with her. If things don't go her way, she is unhappy with it. Some times, she takes out her anger on some of us. Last week, she brought up an idea and asked for my opinion on it (from marketing perspective). I disagreed with her and explained my reasons. I felt that it was irrelevant and we should be careful with what we say on the internet. My boss then asked a freelancer (F30s) for her opinion on my boss idea. She agreed with my boss (like she always do) and started talking about social media marketing despite not knowing how social media works. I warned my boss about the cancel culture on the internet. She became mad and annoyed with me. She told me that it would be good even if we get negative attention from the audience, “at least we are getting known”. Another intern spoke up and agreed with my point while providing her reasonings. My boss then asked the team if they understood what she was saying and said “Can someone explain to them? They don't seem to understand what I am saying. Am I not being clear?” It went on for 10 minutes or so. I was annoyed and embarrassed. I ended up agreeing with her ideas despite knowing that it was bad. Before she ended the meeting, she said to the team that we have to “fake it till we make it”.
Issue 3: My boss blamed everyone, especially me because she is not making any income. She pointed fingers at me saying that I am the marketing guru/expert. I should know what to do, how to market the company and get manuscripts submission. I was stressed out when she called me out like this. The past two weeks, I was sorting out her Google Drive,. Files were not in folders and multiple copies were laying around. I sorted out 50GB of files and documents in a week. After that, I updated bookkeeping sales for her. I made a new template and entered data accordingly from the older spreadsheet. To my surprise, some data were missing while others were wrongly filled. That was when I realised that my boss do not check any interns. Once the interns are completed, that is it. She does not double check or clarify anything.
Issue 4: She does not give inform us on when the Zoom meetings are held. Most of the Zoom meetings are really unproductive. Some times, I get called into meetings even though my existence is not needed. She often share screen her work such as replying to emails, looking up for events or partnerships and etc. There were several times when an intern (M21) did not attend the meetings. I don't blame him since it is always unannounced. She starts criticising him and badmouthing him to the team. I noticed that she has been bullying this intern since he started his work placement with this company as part of his university programme. Another thing is, she often shares her personal life with the team. She shared a few things with me which I considered as “too much info”. No, I mean seriously. I don't need to know about her going to a fertility clinic for the second time. I don't need to know about her friend being her sperm donor.