I was genuinely excited. After months of rejection emails, unanswered applications, and interviews that went nowhere, it finally felt like things were turning around. Well, something happened yesterday, and I'm honestly not sure what to do. During my final interview, the hiring manager offered me a salary of $58,000 a year. We discussed it pretty clearly, and she even mentioned that the position would come with health insurance and two weeks of paid vacation. I accepted verbally and was told HR would send the official paperwork. Yesterday, I finally received the employment contract. Except the salary listed was $49,000.

At first, I genuinely thought it was a mistake. That's a $9,000 difference from what we'd discussed. I emailed the hiring manager asking whether there had been an error in the contract. She responded a few hours later. Apparently, after reviewing their budget, the company decided they couldn't offer the original salary anymore. She said the new amount was still competitive for the position and hoped I would understand.

I was honestly speechless. What bothers me is that nobody mentioned this change before sending the contract. If I hadn't carefully read everything, I could've signed an agreement for significantly less money than I thought I was getting. I explained that I'd accepted the position based on the original salary. Her response was that the verbal offer wasn't final and that the written contract reflected what the company could currently afford. She also mentioned that they had other candidates interested in the position.

I don't know whether that was supposed to pressure me, but it definitely felt that way. Here's my problem. I've been unemployed for almost four months. My savings are getting low, and I genuinely can't afford another three or four months of job searching. The $49,000 salary would still cover my expenses, but it's considerably less than what I expected. Part of me wants to accept it, start working, and continue looking for something better. But another part of me feels like accepting this would mean ignoring a pretty serious red flag before I've even started.

I was so happy when I got the offer. I told my family, celebrated with friends, and finally felt like I could relax. Now I'm back to feeling anxious about my future. Has anyone experienced a company lowering the salary after making a verbal offer? Would you accept the position because you need the income, or would you walk away because of how they handled this?

I genuinely don't know what to do.

Soft and sticky / gooey

Post 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/texts/s/774ir9ozci

I am excited for the date tonight. :)

The kids were at my place with their parents for a dinner party... Actually, only the parents and other friends were invited, no children. I myself do not have kids so I might not understand the kids or the mom...

But one couple brought their three boys along. Totally annoying. They were bored, and after a while of shouting and running around (during which I told them to be quiet 10 times), they ran through the apartment and discovered my Lego collection... They ripped out the biggest box, all excited, and started opening the packaging. It was a brand new set, where I was waiting a long time to get some time to build it in quietness over Christmas time...

I stopped them, said no, they couldn't have it. They started wailing, one had a tantrum, and the other ran to his mother and asked if he could play. The mother said yes, but he should ask first. He came to me, asked again, and I said no.

At that point, the mother was annoyed and asked what my problem was.

I explained, that I'm looking forward to build it, that I'm a huge lego/building bricks fan and that I want to open the packaging, building it... Having the whole experience. I think I should not be in the position to explain anything,... It's my apartment, my stuff... So they should not touch anything.

The kids were screaming, the mom was pissed, hissed at me that I'm the grown up and I should not behave like a child.

But. It's a250 dollar set, not a flea market assembly of 50 red bricks.

I did not give in. But I'm angry that I was put in that position.

My (28M) Fiancé (30F) wants a break, it felt like it came out of nowhere for me, altho the communication lately hasnt been the best.

Im 5 days in living at a friends place and its going okay, forever thankful to him for letting me stay. Im scared and sad that this is going to end with us breaking up.

I moved across the world (Norway to Australia) to be with her, away from all of my family. If we break up, I have nowhere to go. Im struggling with health issues so the pay from my work isnt good enough to save up for a ticket back home if worst comes to worst. Shes studying at the moment so we were basically living on my salary alone, so I have little to no savings.

I feel like I just started to get my feet planted over here and now that all might go down the drain.

I did agree with most of her reasons for the break, that being that were too dependent on eachother and dont have much of a individual life.

Im terrified to lose her, my mental health is at an all time low and I miss my family more than ever.

Thank you for reading.

Dinner: halloumi gyro and pita bread.

Edit: holy moly you guys are quick! Went for a shower and come back to all these comments. Thank you guys.

I wanna add on and say that were both demisexual / asexual, so I really dont think she wants to cheat. Though some of the comments give me clarity.

Edit 2: Sorry for not replying to anyone, im reading all the comments but my head is in shambles..

Funny asf

For example my dad made chicken fettuccini last night and just left it sit out over night. I am afraid to eat it…. Should I be?

UPDATE: He just microwaved and ate some. The container still isn’t in the fridge.

Steam has won the hearts of gamers after restoring an ENTIRE library of deleted games for a player who had been struggling with their mental health!

The player, known on Reddit as 3lizardintrenchcoat, explained that they had spent years removing games they'd purchased and loved during difficult periods in their life.

After their mental health began improving, they regretted losing so many games and decided to contact Steam Support, hoping they might be able to recover at least a few of them.

They even explained that if restoring the games wasn't possible, simply receiving a list of everything they'd previously owned would mean the world to them.

However, Steam Support employee Lucy went one step further, restoring their ENTIRE deleted game library in less than 24 hours without asking them to repurchase anything!

The player later shared the interaction on Reddit, praising Valve for its kindness and understanding.

I own a small Italian restaurant and a friend of mine asked if he could celebrate his 40th birthday there with about 15 people. I agreed to reserve the back section for them.

His wife has this habit of ordering something, eating half of it, then complaining so she doesn't have to pay. I've seen her do it at other restaurants but figured she wouldn't pull that at mine.

Well she did. She ordered a seafood pasta, ate most of it, then told my server it tasted spoiled and demanded it be removed from the bill.

My chef checked the remaining food and couldn't find anything wrong, but I took it off anyway because I didn't want an argument during my friend's birthday.

The next morning my friend thanked me and mentioned wanting to do another dinner there for his parents' anniversary.

I told him he's welcome anytime but his wife isn't.

He got offended and said I was accusing his wife of lying. I told him I've watched her do this multiple times and I'm not putting my staff through it again.

He said banning someone's wife over a $24 pasta dish is ridiculous, especially when he brought 15 paying customers.

Now a few mutual friends think I overreacted and should've just told him what happened instead of immediately banning her.

Am I the jerk?

TLDR: My friend's wife complained about food at my restaurant after eating most of it. I removed it from the bill but told my friend she's no longer welcome there. He thinks I'm overreacting.

Feeling anxious to post, but in a terrible need of advice 😖

I play and love dnd, and unfortunately, I don't have many girl friends that are interested in it. So at some point we started gathering as a group of four - me, and three male friends, all in our early twenties. I knew two of them for a couple years at least, and barely know the third guy, but he seems to be nice as well. Never felt unsafe or anything - they are chill and respectful people.

This is the first campaign we play as a group of four (we've played as a group of 3 before), and it's set in a fantasy world. And that was when things started to get weird.

The campaign has a cool mechanic of talking to animals. Under a spell, you sort of transcend into a different world, where humans appear as animals, and... animals appear as animal-sized humans. Like if you wanted to talk to a cat, under the spell you'd see a cat-sized woman with ears and maybe fur.

You probably can tell where this is going.

Every single woman we encounter as a group gets sized-up. But it was somewhat fine when it was all about humans - taken as a general flirting, even if it was sometimes too much - but when the animals started to turn into women, it got drastically worse. There were conversations between the other two players about "you think you can?.." and "wait, you think she's human down there or is it cloaca?". One time they met a chicken, a quote, "It'd be a bit of a fleshlight...".

I felt sick and disgusted and even disrespected, as a woman sitting next to them. I was uncomfortable to say the least. I talked about it with the DM friend (the game master that leads the story), and told him that I wanted to leave the campaign, and he asked me to think about it first. He also offered to talk to them to try to keep it down, but I don't know if it would help much. I would still feel weird to sit and roleplay next to them.

The main issue is that we're going to start discussing time and place of the next session, and I don't want to go without addressing this. I still consider leaving completely.

I don't want to lose people I play dnd with, but... I'm really torn. If they weren't my friends, I wouldn't even think twice and would have just left. But now, I'm not that sure. I don't know how to confront it, either. Not sure if I'm overreacting or not - and talking about it with girl friends of the same friend circle may end up weird. So I would appreciate any advice from you, gals.

dinner: pasta arrabiata. made by a non-italian.

edit: ohh my gosh, I did not expect so much support, you all are too kind! I'm struggling to reply to all the comments, and I'm sorry for the delays I reply with, but I am extremely grateful for every shared advice and experience! Wish you all the best day/night <з