My sister worked at Subway and had to sign a noncompete that she wouldn’t work at another sandwich shop for three years. Are they really afraid she’s going to steal their secrets of placing meat on bread?
The more cynical will certainly assume malice, that the company did this to keep you from leaving. It particularly at the time it was not hard at all to find new fast food workers, and I am a firm believer in Hanlon’s Razor and never assume malice when incompetence will do. I genuinely think the explanation could just be Subway’s lawyers were like “everyone else is doing noncompetes”.
I’m a firm believer in that. The clause was probably put in there so the lawyers could bill more hours.
I can easily imagine a legal firm noticing a drop in billable hours so they start reaching out to existing clients, throwing in a bit of fear, saying everyone is putting non-competes in their agreements you should too. Boom, all clients get billed extra that month, I wouldn’t call this incompetence, but greed
For businesses, which aim to make money, isnt that simply competence? Or greed when taken to an extreme.
Basically “companies will act in their best interest.”