u/Electronic_Mix2590

I started working at a relatively big retail company this week. I have a lot of retail experience and they never gave me a proper interview, just had me come in store and basically showed me around. They asked at this point if I had any holidays and I had mentioned I would need one day off in June for my friends engagement party. Later that day, they gave me a job offer and this week has been my first week at the company. On my first shift they asked again about any holidays, and showed me how to put through a holiday request which I did. I’ve just received an email that this request has been rejected. I was fairly sure they couldn’t reject any preplanned holidays I had made them aware of before being hired? Not really sure how to go about this and I don’t want to make a scene this early on, but I need to travel for my friends engagement party. Any advice on how to bring this up to management would be great, I’m just a bit worried as I don’t have anything in writing to prove that this was brought up already.

Okay! So, my boyfriend and I moved in together at the start of the year. There’s been some issues, but we’ve worked through the majority of them. However, I’m internally struggling a little bit when he leaves me alone and I really don’t understand how to stop it.
We lived in different cities for over a year while i finished off my degree and I would only see him a few times a week, which wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be after two years of seeing each other every day (maybe because i was so busy with my dissertation and working). However, since we moved in together in his city, he cannot sleep in this flat (either because of my cats or the noise outside of our apartment which is above three bars and he’s an extremely light sleeper). This means every few days he’s going back home to his parent’s house just to sleep. I’m really struggling with this as it does make me feel quite abandoned especially if i’ve been working through the day and haven’t got to see him much before he heads off. I’m not the type to demand him to stay and he’s very compassionate about telling me when he’s leaving and making sure i’m okay with it, and even if i’m not, sleep is important and i’d much rather he was getting rest. We have each other on life360 and i know him leaving at night is nothing nefarious, he’s even asked me to come with him when i don’t have work the next day.
We’ve spoke about it, he knows I’m not the biggest fan of it, but that I want him to get rest. We’ve tried different earplugs, put white noise on at night and have decided we will move to a quieter area of the city when the lease here is up, but I would really appreciate any advice on how to deal with the feelings of overwhelming loneliness and abandonment after he leaves without making him feel guilty. If anyone also knows any cheap ways to cancel out noise in a rented apartment i’ll take any advice i can get!!

I feel so, so alone and useless. I’ve quit the last two jobs I had because I just couldn’t handle them emotionally (and physically for one). I’m about to go back to working in retail, where i’m comfortable but I cannot help but compare myself to people I was in University with. People who were able to finish their degrees before me, who had better University experiences in general because they didn’t spend over half of their time inside crying over relationships, trying to fix themselves and wallowing in their own self pity. I hate comparing myself to others, I know I shouldn’t do it but god sometimes it’s so hard to stop.

On top of that, I just feel like I have no direction in where my life is going, I sat looking at pictures from the start of University (2020) and I remember being so full of hope, feeling like everything was going to come together while getting good grades. Now, I just feel like I don’t even have a purpose. I managed to get my degree, but also ended up losing touch with so many people I once LIVED with, who I spent years thinking were my closest friends and now I see them, with new friends, new partners, in new cities, getting new jobs and promotions and I just can’t help but feel like I’ve only regressed since 2020. I feel like I’m back to being that sad 14 year old who is so consumed by her emotions she can’t appreciate what’s around her. It feels selfish, but I just wish I could go back to starting University and have those same people back before they grew away from me.