Feeling Exploited During Our Internship: How Can We Stand Up for Ourselves?

I am a final year MBA student. I, along with my 5 friends, am doing our final year project at one of the leading retail companies. The problem is that they are treating us like laborers. They give us all sorts of work such as pasting posters around the city, distributing notices, standing in the road, loading and unloading, packaging, stacking, etc. They are asking us to work nearly 12-14 hours/day and even requesting night shifts. They are not allowing us to complete our project and keep dumping their work on us. When we ask about it, they threaten us by saying they won't provide a project completion certificate at the end. They are not even allowing us to go to college to attend the reviews. We are facing a lot of mental stress because of it. What should we do? Please give some suggestions and help us.

Thank you for your response. It seems like you are engaged in various office-related tasks. We have also been involved in a variety of tasks such as data entry, printing documents, and selling footwear. I am not complaining about these responsibilities. However, take a moment to consider the physical demands of tasks like carrying posters and affixing them to walls throughout the city, as well as loading and unloading 25 kg boxes. Additionally, applying barcodes to thousands of products, cross-referencing them with lists, repackaging, and working night shifts from 10 pm to 10 am can be quite challenging.

We have made the decision not to continue working for this company in the future as they have clearly stated that there are no job openings available. Our project is set to conclude in another 20 days, yet there seems to be a lack of concern or support for us. How are we expected to submit our project report? We initially went there with a specific purpose in mind, but it seems that our responsibilities have shifted elsewhere.

I see two different issues here: one is a set of deliverables that are considered lowly, and the other is the absence of learning.

To add to the experience sharing, beyond the internship, I have managed roles such as managing HR for an entire Business Unit. Yet, I had to carry around files and manage campaigns such as health week, so I precisely stick posters if required. Even if I had helping hands, office boys remained few compared to the tasks to be delivered. Waiting for them to finish up the entire workload would have cost me time. In fact, even employees from other verticals carried out similar tasks when required.

My consolation was that I had a huge designation, which did not weigh upon me when I had to deliver on these manual tasks. I knew I was adding far bigger value. We belong to an era where we have open offices and a seamless working culture to ensure a faster workflow.

My point remains, you are not the only one who has been singled out for such tasks. We are all cogs in the same wheel.

Stay focused on the value that you are adding and the learning that you gain about the bigger system while delivering on such tasks. Take my words, years from now, you will master the operations just because you are aware of every nut and bolt of the system. This learning is invaluable and won't come to you from any degree.

Please take pride in your work and connect with the seniors to draw your understanding of the system. You may or may not find everyone readily sharing information. I am sure you have mastered the art of learning from people even when they remain tight-lipped, or soon to be so.

Wish you all the best!

Already, a few senior members have expressed their views. Let me add two cents from my side.

When you do a particular job, only then do you understand the intricacies of that job. Have you conducted any time and motion studies? How many posters are you able to paste in one hour? Where should the posters be placed to be eye-catching? What is the use if a poster is in a remote location where nobody will see it?

All of these experiences will help you grow. When you become a senior marketing manager tomorrow, you will not have the wild idea of posting 10,000 posters in a day! Therefore, like others, let me also advise you to take this experience positively.

Ok...

Regards,
DVD

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being kind enough and for giving some suggestions, spending your valuable time. I do agree that whatever things we do, there will definitely be some learning, and we shouldn't stop that learning. Before starting the project, I had high hopes that I would have some excellent learning experiences, but I wasn't exposed to any high-level work and was only involved in these kinds of tasks. That's why I am disappointed. I need to collect data from customers to complete my project, but I was not allowed to do so. Instead, I was stuck doing the same routine work for nearly 12-14 hours a day, which left me feeling frustrated.

Anyways, I will take all your suggestions and view everything in a positive light. Once again, I thank each and every one of you for your valuable insights.

Regards

Others have given you sound advice on accepting the situation. As a retired academic who has taught and supervised MBA projects, let me raise some questions. Could you kindly state the aims and objectives of your projects? Have you conducted literature surveys on your topics? Have you decided on the methodology?

Are you being paid by the company for the time you spend there? Is this for your final project report or for your internship report? Was your project proposal approved by the organization? If so, who approved it? Do you have a mentor at the workplace? Who is threatening you when you complain? Have you raised your complaint about the lack of opportunity to work on the project (and not about the workload) with the manager, along with a copy to your academic tutor? Is your place of study an autonomous institution?

The more information you can provide, the better my suggestions will be to help you complete your project.

Finally, please maintain a log of all your activities, any correspondence, and your reflections on your work and how it relates to your studies in general, etc.

I am doing a project and not an internship. When I approached the company for the project, the manager, who is supposed to be my mentor, asked me to come up with some titles. I went with 15 titles, and he approved one topic from that list. I have prepared the questionnaire and received approval from him as well as from my faculty guide at the college within a week. I have also decided upon the statistical tests along with 10 literature reviews. Up until that point, everything was fine, but suddenly they (not my mentor, but other managers) started to overload us with lots of work. When I contacted my mentor, he remained tight-lipped and simply said to try to balance the situation, to do both the project work and organizational tasks. They are not compensating us. They are implying that these projects are of no use, and that only this kind of work will provide any valuable learning experience. There should be some benefits for us since we have been permitted to do our project. What's the benefit for them if I only focus on my project work?

I raised this issue with the HR manager, who stated that it is my duty to accomplish all the tasks during the project. If I take leave in between due to work or fail to complete tasks, they won't provide a project completion certificate. I have not yet brought this issue up with my college as I don't want to complicate matters. My college is under a university and not autonomous.

(Sorry, I am unable to provide details about my project in a public forum because people from the company may also view this forum. If they discover the details, they could easily identify me, leading to further issues.)

Regards.

Exploitation of Labor in Project Work

Prima facie, your case appears to be an exploitation of labor by the company staff. If you are working with people who do not respect your project agenda, it is clear they have no interest in your project. The second issue is the lack of remuneration; working for free means the company you have chosen practices no ethical or moral values.

In short, you are trapped in an opportunist-educated mafia that knows how to exploit your weaknesses. It would be better to change your company and spend time on your project with good people and a reasonable company.

Regards,
Mutlaq