Sorry for this little rant but I had to let others know that you're worth it and learn from my experience.
About 2 weeks ago I started a full-time internship for 20 weeks at a pretty cool startup. Unfortunately my school was a bit slow with handing me the contract for me and the company to fill in. Therefore I already started unofficially, but would make it official once the contract was signed. At the job interview I made clear that I earned about 350 euro's a month which I thought was a fair compensation (still not enough, but that's an entire different discussion). When mentioned it seems he agreed, and that was the last thing we talked about the compensation.
Until today.
Today my school caught up with me, gave the contract for us to fill in and hand it in back to my university so they could confirm the internship. He filled it in and sent it back to me. I double checked everything and one thing caught my attention. A compensation of gross 100 euro's, which would've after tax likely been somewhere be in the 60/70 euro's range. For reference, my monthly tuition payment is about 90 euro's a month (180 usually, but due to Corona the tuition fee got halved). My healthcare costs me about 30 euro's net a month after health care allowances.
I can't even fucking afford a frikandelbroodje and can of Red Bull once a month from the compensation they offered me.
For this internship I would basically be the sole operations manager, salesperson (making cold calls), organize a huge 500-man sized VR event and overall just keep the business running. I basically had to do his entire fucking job. However in stead of seeing that, he came with a counter offer (get a small cut of every single I make, which comes down to 2.50 per person). Still peanuts. I pointed this out and the dude just completely switches. Before he was nice, direct but also very motivated into teaching me new things. After I declined it he just tries to guilt trip me into thinking I wasted his time, is shocked I only start about this now (remember, this is the first time me seeing the official numbers on paper) and how the experience itself should be a reward. I told him that it partially is my fault for not bringing it up sooner, but that he also should look into the mirror and see that he has some responsibility regarding this situation. I kindly thanked him for his time, but that I'll be looking for a new internship.
Am I dumb for walking away from this? Maybe. Do I feel good about it? Yes. Or am I totally wrong?