The only reason I do this everyday is because I need a living wage. My mom works as a cashier at a gas station and my dad works as a janitor at a motel. I joined this internship program thinking I'd be able to turn my life around completely.
And while I have been seeing some good results for the work I've been putting in, there are some definite downsides that they did not tell me about as a young adult entering the corporate workforce for the first time.
Right off the bat, I have had other girls in my field (tech) try to knock me out of the picture since week 3. And they try HARD. Excluding me from things, throwing shade at me in group chats, giggles and glares from across the room, etc. But because it is a more subtle form of “corporate bullying”, I have no concrete proof to go off of whenever I want to tell someone I am feeling uncomfortable.
There is definitely favoritism. I was once the “favorite” of a certain higher up staff member that the rest of my colleagues hated, and in turn it made all my colleagues turn on me as soon as they realized what was going on.
The most recent thing is that I got anonymous “feedback” from a colleague that I was being too aggressive and it made them uncomfortable because I said something vaguely more left-leaning or “radical” than I had originally anticipated and I got pulled into an office over it. Like,,, fully interviewed by a staff member about what I said and why I said it and all sorts of stuff that was way more serious than what the situation actually was.
I am very scared that I will get in trouble one day for not complying perfectly/being the perfect corporate girl that they want me to be. And that my workplace bullies will get away with better positions in corporate than me because they are better at lying/hiding what they do. I just don't have it in my heart to be like these nasty corporate bitches sometimes…