I have become a forgotten employees for a few months at my job.

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/5psadr/i_have_become_a_forgotten_employees_for_a_few/

This is in Texas.

About a year ago I was "fired" for something I did not do. Basically they thought I was stealing from the company and had me fired in the system before they informed me in person.

When they caught the real thief, literally 5 minutes before I got the axe, I got called into HR where they apologized to me profusely and told me they would be working to reinstate me without losing my tenure or my vacation time. They asked me if there was anything they could do in the mean time. I asked for the vacation right then and there which made HR real happy because me being gone for 2 weeks made it easy for them to unfuck the situation.

While on vacation I broke my leg and was wheelchair bound for a month. When I informed HR of this they offered me the satellite office for temporary use since it was literally one block away and I could get there safely using my wheelchair.

The company had a satellite office close to my house that was basically just 2 rooms. One had a desk power socket and internet access and the other was the bathroom. The office was purchased for an exec who was wheelchair bound because of cancer. The office stayed empty for a few months when her cancer went terminal and eventually she passed on. When I was offered it they moved my PC and everything out there getting me set up.

That was the last time I have had any face to face with anyone in the company. Even after my leg healed I did not return to the normal building. I stayed in the office until HR wanted to move someone else in.

Well that never came. Five months ago my department was shuttered. My boss, several employees, and a few other management people were quietly let go. Some kind of thing happened at the top that caused a lot of people to be let go. By this time I was pretty much using the office as a second home and had not had any real contact with anyone outside of emails and the occasional phone call.

Once this happened I was just coming in to work everyday completing my tasks until they stopped coming. Then I just came in every day waiting until the hammer fell. It never did.

I have been coming in every single day, walking since its only a 5 minute walk unless its raining, hooking up my gaming laptop and hopping on discord with my friends to play. Sometimes I will bring my ps4 or xbone into the office and play that too.

I have been using this office and collecting a paycheck for the last 5ish months with no contact other than the company wide emails and former coworkers of mine calling me asking how things are going. To put it into context of how much I have stopped caring, when I told my girlfriend about my job situation she came to visit me at work. I will keep it G rated here for you guys and will let you use your imaginations as to the nature of her visit. I do not state this to brag but merely to pain the picture of how things are at my current "job"

All of this brings us to today. I have been using my free time to also study for several PC certs and have finally acquired them. I am getting job offers for a few places that will be a pretty big step up from my current position.

What are the pros and cons of taking the new jobs without "quitting" my first job? I know that technically I am currently in the clear legally. But I want to know if that changes if I start working at another job and collecting two paychecks? I am guessing very much yes but wanted to know more. Does the situation change if one of the companies allows me to work from home and I use my office to work at both jobs?

Yes I know I am being incredibly greedy but I am legitimately wondering here cause its like a very lucky situation I find myself in and it would be a complete waste to throw it away without a good reason. As in I could get in legal trouble is a very good reason to throw it all away and work at the new job.

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/8qmayg/update_i_am_a_forgotten_employee_who_has_been/

I post this a year ago.

https://np.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/5psadr/i_have_become_a_forgotten_employees_for_a_few/

Since that time I got denied for the second job and basically been coasting by until I landed another position and turned in my two weeks notice.

Recently I found a position at a tech firm that will allow me to work from home, is easier than what I used to do, and pays more. Basically tired of doing nothing even though Im getting paid for it.

The day after I mailed the keys to the satellite office back to the corporate office I got a phone call exactly at 8 AM. The head of HR for the former company wanted to speak with me in person. I asked her if there were any issues such as equipment that was not returned. She stated that there were no issues like that. They just had some questions about my job function over the last year.

I told her that they should have that information as head of HR and promptly disconnected stating I had to return back to work. She called back at 12:05 exactly.

I have been ducking her calls ever since. Her voicemails state that I am required to come into her office to discuss a few things. My emails with her have asked if there is anything that needs to be returned or issues with company property. Each time I am assured it is nothing like that, but that they need me to come into their office to discuss this with me in person. She calls at least once per day.

I am thinking I just need to ignore her until she either escalates or goes away.

How incredibly bad is that plan? Before anyone says it. I know... I know ok I should have quit a long time ago. I did not.

EDIT: Texas

Why claiming vegan diet is best is bullshit

https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1006363779351883776

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-taber-0103b827/

Lots of cultures have used low- or no-meat diets. The Ganges valley, ancient Egypt, China, much of eary Europ, etc.

Notice anything in common there?

They're all very, very wet. Plants that are edible for humans grow readily.

They also had intense hierarchies where elites could just tell the lower classes they weren't allowed to eat meat- whether via religious teachings, custom, or just straight-up economic exploitation to where animal protein was unattainable. But that's a whole different discussion.

On the other hand, lots of cultures have used mostly- or all-animal diets.

E.g. the Bedouin, Mongols, Maasai, Inuit, etc.

What do these have in common? They're in places that are either very dry or very cold. Either the plants that grow are very sparse & tough, or none at all.

Humans can only digest specific types of plant matter. We need tender stems, leaves, & fruit; enlarged seeds; or energy storing roots.

The entire rest of the plant is inedible for us. Stalk, branch, dry leaves, etc.

And without intense irrigation, the *only* plants that grow in dry areas are entirely made of things that humans can't digest. They're almost entirely cellulose. Tough stalks, fibrous leaves covered in wax and hair, thorns, etc.

That's why we call these areas "scrub." The only use humans can make of the natural vegetation is to scrub pots.

But... cows, sheep, goats, horses, bison, deer, camels, & other ruminants can digest all of it.

That's what those 3- and 4-chambered stomachs are for. These animals GI tracts are fermentation chambers full of microflora that break long, tough cellulose molecules down into sugars and fatty acids that the cow can use.

We can't do that. We eat straw, we just poop out straw.

That's why peoples living in deserts, scrub, & dry grasslands aren't vegetarian. They'd starve. They kept close to the animals that can digest what grows there: ruminants.

(the oceanic food chain that Inuit & other maritime peoples are looped into is a whole 'nother discussion.)

Traditional vegetarian societies are trotted out to showcase that low/no-meat diets are possible. But it's done w/o recognition as to why *those particular* societies did it, and others did not.

Paying attention to local environment is a huge part of sustainability, and yet sustainability movements don't always do so well at that.

We can also fall short by failing to recognize that for dry regions, the bottleneck in productivity isn't land. It's water.

As an absentee landowner, you may or may not be aware of how much irrigation water it takes to grow vegetables in a desert.

Math time.

Let's start w cows. Best figures for cow carrying capacity in landscape similar to Chihuahua are for dry part of CO. Double that for Chihuahua's longer growing season, and 10 cows would need about 73 acres to live on. (Wild scrub w no irrigation.)

Source: Land requirements for grass raised cattle

Cool, we don't have to irrigate to feed those cows. All we have to do is give them drinking water.

How much? A cow needs about 18.5 gal/day, so 10 of them for a year need about 67,000 gallons.

Source: Water requirements for cattle

67,000 gallons is a decent amount of water.

Now let's look at how much it takes to grow vegetables on that same land.

Most plant crops need about an acre-inch of water per week.

For the non-farmers and absentee landlords following along, an acre-inch is just how much water it takes to cover an acre of land 1" deep.

It's about 27,000 gallons.

An acre of crops needs that every single week

Chihuahua's got this amazing long growing season. So let's say a veggie, grain, soybean, or other plant protein farm in Chihuahua's got crops in the ground 40 weeks out of the year.

73 acres x 40 weeks x 27,000 gallons/week = 79 MILLION gallons of water.

That's a thousand times more water.

It takes a thousand times more water to grow an acre of crops for human consumption, than it takes to grow an acre of cow on wild range.

Again, as an absentee farm owner you may or may not be aware already. But for audience at home, most of Chihuahua's irrigation water comes from the Río Conchos.

This river's drying up so hard that it's the subject of a dedicated WWF preservation project.

Source: Saving water, saving the river: Chihuahua, Mexico

"But that's not a fair comparison. An acre of crops can feed 10x as many people as an acre of cattle."

Exactly. A crop-only diet can feed 10x as many people. But it takes 1000x as much water.

In places where there's limited land and a surplus of water, it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land. So there, grow & eat crops.

And in places where there's a lot of land and limited water, it makes sense to optimize for water. So there, grow & eat ruminants.

It's really interesting to me that the conversation around vegetarianism & the environment is so strongly centered on an assumptions that every place in the world is on the limited land/surplus plan.

You know what region that describes really well? Northwestern Europe.

In many ways, viewing low/no-meat diets as the One True Sustainable Way is very much a vestige of colonialism. It found a farmway that works really well in NW Europe, assumed it must be universal, and tries to apply it to places where it absolutely does not pencil out.

From a Canadian friend

There are two major problems with our people.

1. Hypocrisy- They want to be called Canadian, but would totally hate the ideas of freedom that Canadian culture promotes. They would do every single thing to be called Canadians, from adopting fake accents (which is given away when they use terms like' Kajijji' ) to hailing for Blue Jays, without even knowing the actual history of the game. I swear I see people trying so hard to blend in the actual Canadian culture, but when it comes to implementing sex education in the public school curriculums, or events like pride parade, all their farzi sanskars start acting out of nowhere.

I was just talking to some really old man from India, who probably came here as a refugee. His words, and I quote, " Aa Justin Trudeau ne gand paya hoya hai ethha. Galt Cheejan Pdhaan di ki lod hai jwaka nu"

He was so against the idea of creating awareness about topics like, reproduction, sex, contraception that currently you can see him promoting conservatives in Brampton very actively.

Man you are living in the Americas. Can we expect you to support the ideas of the land that actually 'gave you refuge'?

2. Denial- Indians will always stay in Denial mode.
You show them there mistakes, the reality. They always take it on their ego, or deshbhakti or religion or their sanskaars.

The thing here is, I feel so hopeless these days, that I literally escaped India, because it is unsafe, corrupt, people judge you for your clothes, people judge you for your career, for your life choices, and here I am. Where these things have started showing up gradually.

TN protest culture

Have you heard of a village called Sayalkudi? Chances are, you haven't. It's a small village on the East Coast road, from Ramnad to Tuticorin.

It's pretty much a stereotype of a poor Indian village, with less electricity, ladies trekking miles in the hot sun to fetch water, etc.

The village is so poor that the word poor itself will get an inferiority complex.

It was through this village that IOCL decided to lay a gas pipeline last year. The pipeline was to send Natural gas from Ramnad to tuticorin for export.

It was a project that could change lives

The pipeline was more than 100 kms long. The project promised good employment. Localites were going to be given jobs. The project would inject a lot of money, much needed at that, into the local economy.

It was a no brainer that the project had to be started ASAP

What happened?

Protests happened. Villagers started picketing the surveyors. Govt scheduled a meeting with the villagers to clarify all doubts, but localites ensured it didn't happen.

All their protests were based on specious reasons and totally devoid of scientific facts.

All the work on the pipeline has stopped. I can understand if you are protesting against an asbestos factory. But why on earth against a pipeline? You guys are living a miserable life now, why do you want to stop something that will make it better?

I really can't understand

Why I am saying this, because this protest culture is now becoming far more pronounced in TN. And that is the worst thing that can happen to the state. We have always taken pride in TN's industry, but all that work is coming to naught.

TN is going to s***, one protest at a time.

ஆனா வழுதூர் ப்ளான்ட்ல மட்டும் போராட்டம் நடக்கவே நடக்காதே..

ஏன் தெரியுமா?

அதுக்கு நிலம் கொடுத்து ஒப்பந்தம் பெற்று வாழ்ந்து கொண்டிருப்பது நாம் தமிழர் இயக்க முக்கிய புள்ளி.

இந்த மாதிரி ஆளுங்க தான் பல போராட்டங்களுக்கு பின்னனி.

தீமைனா சரி. ஆனால் அரசியலால்??


Someone there is financing to keep the poor poor. It's nothing but Politics