Been working a part time job (my first “real” job) for a couple years now while going through uni. I have always put 110% in, regularly stayed after hours to get work done and I have had glowing feedback from my managers and coworkers. I'm not perfect by any means, but I do my best to support the business and my coworkers where I can. Unfortunately, it is minimum wage position.
At 9,12 and 18 months I requested pay raises from the owners, citing my value and I was told things like “you aren't worth the extra money”, “you don't start being valuable till you have been here 2 years”, “we are making a loss having you on”, “we are upskilling you so you should be paying us” and “experience is more valuable than money at this stage of your career”. I have also had sick leave denied (because it's “not valid”) and been told to buy my own WFH equipment during covid restrictions (like a chair and headset) because it's “your responsibility to get to work”.
I have been pushing unchecked code changes to prod, as a junior, for ~12 months becuase they “trust me” and don't want to have to check it. I'm the only non-manager in my company with write access to our production deploy pipelines.
So, I decide to take some time off uni to work full time. I let my employer know this and they say they can offer full time at min wage. This is not enough for me to live in my current city, so I start applying for other jobs – sent my CV and portfolio to a company I wanted to work for and got a job offer within 4 days with a 80% raise.
Went to tell my current employer that I was leaving (and wanted to give ~8 weeks notice as a courtesy) and they suddenly made a huge fuss and offered to give me a 90% raise to stay. I said no.
Both owners spent a couple weeks drilling me on why I wouldn't accept their “very generous offer” and that they were “doing me a favour”. Then one of the owners spent the next 6 weeks showing up to the office during my graveyard shifts to call my decision to leave shit, trash talk the company I was leaving for, talk about how I was gonna get made redundant when they “realise how underqualified I am”, talk about how I “shouldn't care about the money becuase you can make it later in your career” (I need to live now thou??) and throw other tantrums.
In the last couple of weeks he has also been drilling me about how I'm “letting my team down” and “freeloading my work onto others”.
I had my last day yesterday, and I'm doing a last minute client production deployment (alone becuase the other owner who was meant to supervise me got drunk). That owner shows up as usual and just glares at me and goes “Its your last day eh? Don't get the door hit you on your dumb ass when you leave and don't come crawling back” and then storms off.
How does it make any business sense to nickel and dime your employees for years and make it clear they aren't valued when they actually are?? Why not just pay them a fair wage for their work? Why would you be angry at an employee for leaving? Is this how people are normally treated when leaving? Aita for leaving?