A week ago I started working at a new company, with the employer telling me beforehand how much they are paying for this position. I didn't really care I just wanted a comfortable job for the time so I said yes. I was tasked with being outgoing and talking to the colleagues, and by doing that I of course also learned about their pay. A week later I found out that my colleague, who does exactly the same as me and just started 2 months earlier, makes 20% more than I do. They company also recently got bought up by a slightly bigger company and they promised me that it means higher wages than before. My colleague started before that happened and didn't get a raise in the meantime. So I felt uncomfortable with how unfair I was treated and right the next day I went to talk to my boss and told him about it. And honestly, maybe I was naive, but I wasn't prepared for what followed. I thought oh i guess I caught him trying to get away with it and he would just come up with an excuse and up me to the proper wage, since in my country there is a law that says that employees have to be payed the same for the same work.Nope. He first started to tell me some bullshit about how businesses work, to which I asked him how that matters. He said it didn't matter and instead started talking about how I could further improve myself so that he would raise my salary. I told him that it's not about raising my salary but about being treated fairly, to which he started again to trying to explain to me how businesses work. He did that because I am “quite young”, and he would always use phrases like “You will understand once you work a little more, bla bla” so I called bullshit. I wasn't born yesterday and I have worked in enough places to know that what he is doing is not the norm, but outdated work ethic. So I told him that if he thinks that if that is how his business should work then that is his choice but I feel betrayed and that I would quit. He really didn't take that well and started going off about how I am contractually not even allowed to discuss wages, he even showed me the alleged passage in the contract – something about secrecy in general, where wage is not even mentioned. I told him that it is illegal to ban your workers from discussing wages anyway and offered to send him the respective sources where he could read all about that. At that point he started again with belittling me about my age and telling me that I got all of those things confused and that I should not occupy myself with researching stuff like that myself for the sake of my own happiness. And that wages should not be discussed even if the law allows it because it “disturbs the peace in the work environment”. I asked him why he wouldn't just keep the peace in the work enviroment by treating his employees fairly instead. He didn't like that and, again, went off about how that's not how businesses work. I told him that if he thinks that is okay then I cannot change his mind and that we should instead discuss how we would arrange the termination period. He said to come back later to discuss that. When I came back he offered me slight raise (still not the same amount that my coworker is making) because “He does not want to leave a bad image”. lol, as if that would fix the way he treated me without any respect. I will be taking the raise, quit right after that anyway and look for a new job.I am of course aware that this company is far from being the only one that has a toxic work ethic like that and you can of course say that I should have initially just negotiated a higher pay, which is true, however I think that the audacity of getting unprofessionally mad, trying to gaslight me for being young and ignore the law on top of that is just unbelievable.
Edit: Oh, I almost forgot that in my contract there is written down that I can do home office if I want. However, they haven't even given me a device and when I asked about that, I got told that “they would decide when I will do home office, not me”.