u/Different-Staff-4556

I'm not even sure this belongs here, but I need to get it out somewhere. I work at a car rental place. My grandfather, whom I was very close to, passed away late last night, and shortly afterward I messaged my manager to ask if he could take me off the afternoon shift so I could grieve and be with my family.

I was told no because "there isn't enough coverage." So now I'm standing at the counter, holding back tears and trying not to break down while I help customers return keys and argue about gas charges. Thankfully it's quieter than usual, so I'm taking little breaks between customers, but I feel completely broken.

If I didn't need this paycheck so badly right now, honestly, I think I would have packed up my bag and walked out immediately.

Something strange happened at work yesterday. I had to get a new personal phone at the start of this week after the old one got wrecked on Thursday.

I take my phone with me to work and use it during breaks to browse Reddit and download books on the Kobo app. We use the company Wi-Fi because we were all told that this is fine and allowed.

I live in shared accommodation in the UK, so my home internet is on a shared network. Because of that, I pay for a personal VPN subscription on my phone and laptop.

Yesterday I tried to log in to the Microsoft Authenticator app for multi-factor login on my work computer, and suddenly I was locked out of almost everything. A few hours later, I was called out in front of people in the kitchen area and spoken to because I had a VPN running while I was at work. One of the people speaking to me made some stupid and obvious insinuations, as if he was saying I was using the work Wi-Fi to look at NSFW stuff and covering it with a VPN, which is absolutely not true.

I honestly don't understand what the problem is supposed to be. If I had used my own mobile data to open the Authenticator app while the VPN was still running, would the same thing have happened? Work hasn't given me a company phone, so the app has to be on my personal phone or else I won't be able to log in or work at all.

I'm an adult and I pay for the VPN myself on my own personal device, and I'm not happy at all about being accused of something suspicious without any evidence.

Is there anything I should do about this? Because right now I'm sitting here embarrassed and honestly very upset.

Junior Marketing Associate position: 'Sorry, but we need 6 years of experience managing multi-million dollar ad campaigns to work at our small startup for $21 an hour.' That's the minimum, of course. We can't believe you don't have this experience when you just graduated from university. The audacity of young people these days...

This makes the whole job search process feel like a joke.

Anyway, I applied. Hahahaha

I'm [28M], and I've been working this 8-to-4 office job for a little over 3 years now, and honestly, it's starting to wear me down mentally. Sometimes I feel like when I get a migraine or a bad cold, it's like I've won, because at least I get to stay home instead of commuting just to go sit at a desk for a huge chunk of my waking hours.

I mean... I do my job. I show up, get through my emails, handle some random admin things that need to be done, and most days I'm done with the main work by 11:30. My manager reviews it and generally tells me it's fine. After that I have lunch, come back and follow up with him, and sometimes he has another task for me and sometimes it's just: "No, nothing right now." So I either do extra work just for the sake of staying busy, or browse Coursera or internal training modules, or chat with someone from another department just enough to seem friendly without looking like I'm wasting time. Those last two hours feel impossible, and then finally I can leave.

It's depressing. I feel like I'm pretending to be busy for 7.5 hours a day in the dumbest play ever written. Is this seriously what adult life is supposed to be? How do people do this without going insane? Am I just not built for this? I genuinely can't imagine doing any version of this for another 25 or 35 years.

A quick update on my career dilemma: The 'intense' job has finalized its offer, and it came in at 105k, not the 125k I was initially told. It's still a good increase from my current 85k, but I feel this difference is significant. How will this affect the decision?

I've only recently started my career. My current job is very relaxed - the atmosphere is great, and everyone is laid-back. As long as the work gets done, no one monitors your arrival or departure times. I work from home a few days a week, and on top of that, I can work remotely from anywhere in the world for about 80 days a year. Plus, I get 35 days of paid leave. For someone like me who loves exploring new places, these benefits are amazing and open up many travel opportunities. I am a Sales Development Rep here, and the career path is clear: I'll move into client relations, and then reach a leadership position.

Now, the second opportunity I mentioned earlier initially hinted at something around 125k, but the final offer is 105k. The hours there are very demanding: from 6:45 AM to 2:15 PM on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays; from 6:45 AM to 4:45 PM on Thursdays; and from 6:45 AM to 10:15 AM on Fridays. I will most likely clock in and out using a fingerprint scanner. The leave is also more limited, only 25 annual leave days (or about 30 days if you include public holidays). The culture there is very formal, strict, and much more intense - imagine it like a civil service job within a highly disciplined government agency. The career progression isn't very defined, as I will primarily be a language specialist, translating between English and Farsi.

What are your thoughts on this? Which choice makes more sense?