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... assuming a sandwich shop worker had the legal acumen to realize that and the financial resources to get it in front of a judge and/or to carry it through to completion... especially because there's probably also an arbitration clause that at least initially puts you in front of an arbitrator very much biased in the sandwich shop's favor.

Just having the piece of paper to wave around is valuable even if it's totally unenforceable.

Which is why, at a minimum, any lawyer who participates in drafting something like that should be removed from the profession. And most likely there should be criminal penalties for the corporate management involved.

>>Hizonn+(OP)
Yeah, that’s what I meant by

> Many employers just use them as an empty threat to manipulate people, because they know few people are going to hire a lawyer over it.

These noncompetes do work well as an empty threat.

Although I suspect the majority of sandwich shop workers or managers aren’t paying any attention to the language in their onboarding paperwork, and are just going through the motions.

I would like to see limits on this, but I’m not sure there’s a way to penalize lawyers for this, because they often are not the ones deciding who to hand these contracts to. Usually businesses have a lawyer draft up a general agreement, and then lazy business management just hands the same one to everyone from the VP to the janitor. That’s not really the lawyer’s doing.