Hello everyone,
I’m currently doing an unpaid internship in the DMV area (so incredibly high COL). I’m staying with family members who I frankly have an awful relationship with because they allowed me to sleep on their couch as long as I work and help out around the house.
I’ve been interning for about a month and it ends the end of December. The issues I’m having are the standard ones related to an unreasonable boss, lack of interest, not doing any actual work, and being on a time crunch since I intend on doing my Masters in Belgium and need to raise the money for my visa and school. Additionally I simply have a lot of issues in my home life and am beginning to feel like I’m being stretched too thin.
My boss is the very passive aggressive type who hides it behind half-smiles. Last week, I was having several issues with different tasks due to not having access to certain programs or the tasks being so unreasonable that I’m not sure how they could have possibly expected me to complete them. I privately notified my boss with my issues regarding lack of access to materials last week but she left office and just now angrily responds in the office chat room about how they weren’t finished and she gave me access (I checked afterwards and still did not and she expects them done tomorrow morning). She then solely put a timer on my workspace to where she can track down to the second how long I’ve been on the space from the moment I touch anything.
She gave me a task that was to get the private contact information of CMOs for large companies (think Shein/Fashionova). Trying to figure out how in the hell I was supposed to get this information, but with my boss being unreachable, I asked the marketing team if they had any insights. They told me to show them the list of companies and told me that they don’t know why I was assigned this task because even they did not have access to this. I gathered as much as I could but of course couldn’t find everything. I had notified my boss that I needed assistance and for her to review my work, and she didn’t respond until today, once again calling me out in the office chat room and complaining about how they weren’t completed Friday.
The first week of my internship I think she was still trying to come off nice and put together, but the act quickly fell and now it’s just a hot mess. She does not act as a mentor and I’ve never even seen her working. I’m typically the first to show up at the office and she will show up about an hour and a half late and then will go to her desk and watch TikTok videos for 5 straight hours. I’ll go to her desk to ask for clarification for something and she seems exasperated by me taking time away from her scrolling. We will then have department meetings (because she insists I shadow her) and it’s clear than she has no idea what she is talking about.
I’m already working a second job (on top of school graduation projects) to try and get more money towards my studies but between this and my internship, I know I won’t be able to meet my goals by my deadlines. If it weren’t for the fact that I have to have this money going to certain things and my family I’m staying with wasn’t so ingratiating and demeaning, I would tough it out entirely. However, I genuinely feel like this internship is wasting my time and contributing nothing but stress to the rest of my environment. I’m seriously reconsidering this and needed advice.