u/justtryingtowalkhere

I want real Mexican cuisine. I moved to the rural Northeast, and the food scene here is disappointing. I have a grill and a fully functioning oven but am a beginner in Mexican cuisine. My spice tolerance is medium Caucasian.

What are your favorite authentic slow cooked recipes for maximum deliciousness? Bonus points if they make enough for 1 person, extras can be frozen or eaten through the week, won’t make me buy huge amounts of food I can’t finish/use again. I try to eat well, but avoid food waste.

I honor and respect your cultures, please let me worship at the altar of your food. 😂

TLDR: Two years into employment, company changed conditions and now I owe them $25,000 or a year of work for formerly free development/supervision. Legal?

I’m a social worker in Location: Maryland. To “level up” after your Masters degree, you collect client contact hours, collect 100 supervision hours, and pass a test to receive the next social worker license. I did this and just received my license. Yay.

I chose my specific W-2 job in 2023 because when I was hired, they didn’t require reimbursement for the supervision hours AND didn’t ask for you to work for a year after getting your license. (These conditions are usually standard.) I did not want to be indebted. I did not sign a contract with my company for this supervision. The only contract I signed was with the state of Maryland that I was receiving supervision.

In 2025, apparently my job updated the employee handbook while distracting employees with something else. They required us to sign it with little notice. I didn’t realize that they updated it to require either 100% reimbursement of the supervision hours or working a year after receiving your license. They didn’t announce the changes. Shameful, unethical, clouded work practices in my mind.

I want to change jobs because I can get a $20-30 k pay bump from changing companies with my new license. But apparently my company would ask for 100% reimbursement for the 140 supervision hours I have at $180 per hour. (The market rate is $50 per hour. The handbook does not have the reimbursement rate listed, but they are providing an arbitrary number through email.) So highway robbery leads to me owing my company $25,000 if I leave within the next year. If this applies to me.

Is this legal? Is this enforceable? Do I have any options here? If I stay at this company, I will miss out on a major pay bump and I will likely severely burn out with my health and wellbeing as sacrifice.

I was going to buy a house this year. I was going to get out of an extremely stressful position to try to avoid the onset of lupus, which I’m testing positive for. This is life changing and tragic and infuriating.