Last Updated on January 18, 2018 by Dave Farquhar
I’ve read the stories this week about how fast-food chains like Jimmy John’s are forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements.
I’ve been asked to sign a non-compete exactly twice in my career, and signed one once, but neither of them was back in my teenage fast-food days.
The first was back in 2005. I was in between jobs and not happy about being in between jobs so I wanted to find something fast. I found an ad for a consulting company looking for IT generalists. It seemed like a nice short-term fit until I could find something permanent, so I applied. I immediately received a link to a web form that asked me questions like how many servers I’d built. I spent 15 minutes answering the questions and received an offer letter. That seemed a bit odd. Then I read the non-compete agreement that was attached. Basically I couldn’t work in IT for anyone else for two years.
A friend assured me it was unenforceable, but I decided to look for other opportunities. A better one materialized soon after. I know they were looking to keep companies from using them as a recruiter to find people, but trying to prevent me from working for non-clients was another problem.
The second was in 2012. I was looking to get a job closer to home, but it had a non-compete. It, too, seemed a bit overly broad, but it came from a human being rather than an automated system so I asked about it. The HR director assured me that they would release me from the non-compete under every circumstance I posed to her. So I took the job. And, true to their word, they released me from the agreement at the end of our contract. Along with four others. The non-compete was intended to keep us from going to a competitor and helping the competitor bid on our contract.
These were skilled jobs, in both cases. The first one required some experience; the latter required experience, certification, and documented continuing education.
They’re a far cry from making sandwiches.
Yes, there are things about how one sandwich shop works that differ from another. But I carry bigger secrets than those with me when I change jobs. Everyone knows that, and accepts it. That’s part of being a skilled worker, regardless of the color of the collar involved.
And trust me, having worked both in fast food and in information security, I know which kind of worker is harder to replace. The fast-food model is designed so that workers are interchangeable and easily replaceable. That’s part of the way they control costs–by replacing a short-order cook with an assembly line of minimum-wage labor.
The non-compete is just to give the company more leverage. They have plenty–a worker who’s working in a restaurant probably has only one other choice, which is retail, and sometimes retail isn’t an option. But even employees with limited options can get unhappy. Unhappy employees are a problem. Unhappy smart employees are a bigger problem. Especially the ones who are smarter than management. They’re rare, but they come along once in a while.
When I was working fast food, I could say no sometimes. And I did. Management knew I intended to go to college and not to schedule me to close on school nights. College was my leverage. And they put up with it because they knew when I came in to work, I’d show up on time, and if they gave me a list of things to do I’d get those things done and I’d make the manager’s life easier for those few hours I was there.
Slap a non-compete on me though, and I wouldn’t have been able to find another job, so managers could have threatened me all they wanted. “You’ll never work in this town again” gains a lot of credibility.
That’s all this is: a power play to keep wages down.
Who are low wages good for? Well, I’ll share an observation, and you can decide for yourself. When you give a white-collar worker like me a raise, I have a choice of what to do with it. But when a low-wage worker gets a raise, that worker has far fewer choices. A higher percentage of that money is going to get spent and end up in circulation.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.