Ember

I'm a recent college graduate. Back in May, I interviewed for a position as a copywriter with a company that had advertised as hiring for the end of May. They ended up pushing back their hiring date, so I looked for other work to pay my bills. At the beginning of July, I began work at a retail store. Last week, I received a call from my contact at the company asking if I was still interested in the copywriting position. I interviewed last Tuesday, and received notification today that they want me to start on Monday. It's a full-time job, 8:30-5:30pm which would only allow me to continue working at the store on weekends.

Because I couldn't be sure that I would get the position, I wasn't able to inform my manager at the retail store. I can't give up an opportunity like this, but I don't want to completely leave everyone at my store hanging. Schedules are made 2 weeks in advance, but I don't have the one for next week. I am on tomorrow, Friday and Saturday.

How should I go about doing this? I've only quit one job before, and it was a food service job where there were tons of people to fill in my shifts. I don't want to disappoint or anger anyone, and I am terrified of confrontation with my manager since I know they're low on people. Can anyone with more experience offer me advice?

I was thinking about calling my manager today and asking to talk to her tomorrow after my shift, do you think that would be okay? Can I do such a thing over the phone, or should it be in person?

My former roommates and I just received our security deposit checks back from the apartment we lived in for the past two years, and we've got huge problems. The apartment was off-campus and the landlords have a rather bad reputation for treating tenants poorly (something we didn't know at the time we signed the least 3 years ago...)

During the time we lived there, numerous complaints for problems such as lack of heat in the winter and several other issues went ignored. At one point they sent a guy to look at the thermostat, who declared that we had broken it. He never came back to fix it, despite promising to return within a day or two, and we continued to go without heat for most of the winter. We were all determined to get our security deposits back in full upon moving out, so we spent THREE days doing nothing but cleaning the apartment spotlessly.

Two parents, my mother and one of the other girls' mother, helped us clean and we even took pictures. We went above and beyond in our cleaning--baseboards, scrubbing out cabinets, mopping, vacuuming, cleaning the walls, etc. It looked far better when we moved out than it did when we moved in.

And yet, today we get our checks for less than half of what we paid in security deposit. The deductions they state are for repainting the walls and cleaning services come to $600. (Each of us paid a $450 security deposit.)

I've done some research for New York state tenant's rights and the laws regarding security deposits, and from what I've read it seems that a landlord can only deduct for repairs beyond normal wear and tear. And according to this page: http://www.rentlaw.com/normalweartear.htm repainting does not constitute as "beyond normal wear and tear".

Now, if we cleaned spotlessly, have pictures of the fact that are dated, do you think we have a case to ask them for the rest of the deposit? I honestly think we do, and after the treatment we got from them coupled with the fact that we were very good tenants, I'm so beyond angry that they withheld so much.