The owner of the firm is so good at gaslighting it took me a year to realize what was happening. I would ask for additional support and he would tell me "You're doing great, you're a superhero!" etc, but I never actually received the support I asked for. I was repeatedly thrown into situations that I was unqualified for (and certainly not paid for), which would not have been as much of a problem if I wasn't thrown under the bus the very few times I made a mistake or wasn't able to keep up. (For example, during a meeting a client asked me a question that I didn't know the answer to. I responded that I thought [Owner] would be better able to answer than I would and waited for him to respond. It became clear that he hadn't been paying attention and he had to ask the client to repeat the question. After the meeting I received a message from owner letting me know that it was poor form to "put him on the spot like that"). The owner took advantage of my inexperience working in Chicago to underpay me, until I found out that someone with a lesser job title, less education, and much less professional experience was being paid 10k more than I was. In spite of all this (or maybe because of it?), I was one of his favorites. He gaslit me repeatedly but was rarely blatantly rude to me, and praised me often. However, I watched him mistreat other coworkers, disrespecting their privacy, berating them for not attending social events, accusing them of lying about being sick, etc.
