Hi! This happened years ago but every time I remember it I still get upset.
I was still in college and doing an internship (6 hours per day) to gain some work experience. This was a “paid” position if you consider what he paid an actual salary. The company imported sophisticated medical equipment, think entire PET scanners and the like. It didn't manufacture anything, it was just buy the thing in one country and sell it to a local hospital, that's it (managing transport of course).
At some point the boss/owner of the company, paid some foreign specialists to teach us all, the entire staff, about some new equipment for early cancer detection. I was the only person who understood the entire course, so the boss wanted me to go to a medical conference to explain the equipment to doctors and hospital directors that would attend. This was a 5 days conference, with stands, and I would be attending the stand and answer the questions from doctors about the equipment he was hoping to sell, as well as attend all the meetings with hospital staff the boss wanted to coordinate, and I'd also explain the equipment there.
The conference was happening at the most expensive and prestigious 5 stars hotel in my country. I agreed to attending but then my boss said: “Well but you can't go to that hotel dressed like this, like you normally come to the office. You need new clothes. Very elegant clothes. And since it's 5 days you can't go with the same clothes all 5 days so you need 5 outfits”. My reply was that yes, of course, if he gave me the money right that instant for the 5 outfits, I'd buy them, and I'd also take time from my normal work hours to go buy them because I didn't have time, he knew that after work I had to run to classes at my university.
He denied both requests and was adamant that I had to buy all those clothes with my own money and my own time, and just wrote me a list of stores I was expected to buy the clothes from. As you can imagine, of course he listed the craziest expensive stores there are (I'm a woman).
So I did attend the conference. All 5 days. I wore my very worst clothes: the oldest pieces, that were stained or broken and I just kept in case I needed to paint the house, I also asked friends if they could loan me some broken/stained/terrible clothes that they were about to put in the garbage bin and sure, they could. When my boss saw me wearing that he looked fuming but he couldn't say anything, since the doctors were all around him asking questions about the equipment.
At the end of the day not a singular doctor at the conference cared about my clothes, they wanted to know about the equipment, noticed that I did know about it, asked questions and took the brochures. Staff at the hotel didn't care either, they just wanted to see my invitation to the conference and I had that, and they asked for their invitation to all attendees.
For the happy endings: I was unable to leave that internship before the end of the contract (6 months) but the boss wanted me to renew the internship for more time and I said no, absolutely no. Also, some time later, he had to close the entire company because he wasn't properly paying all the taxes he should have. Don't worry, my old colleagues were able to find better jobs.