*weep*
Am I the only person who will read every word of a contract before signing it, to the great exasperation of the people who just want to get on with screwing me over??
No I read it as well, as I'm sure many in this forum do. I was making a humor joke given this particular sub forum and thread. I doubt the person who had a $20k loan @ 20% read it though. You don't get loans at 20% by being financially responsible and reading over your contracts.
I know. I know so hard.
I had that argument with my boss at work, recently... realized I'd never signed an employement contract (I had a 2-page detailed offer letter that suited my purposes, so I'd never followed up on it) and it was needed for paperwork purposes so he gave me the standard template, and I refused to sign it without one change... and he said no one had ever asked for it or read it before signing. Like, WHUT. How can you not read the details of your employement contract, WTF.
For the record, what I wanted changed was a clause stating that no employee was authorized to have a second job or to work freelance contracts without the written authorization of the boss. Um, NO. I'll sign a non-compete agreement, or an agreement that I won't do freelance work in the same field or with the company's clients, sure, that's fine. But I'm not signing away my right to run an etsy store/snow shoveling business/sell eggs from my chickens/sell gift baskets/etc without written authorization from the boss, what the everloving... And no one else, in 15 years, had even read that clause, let alone made a fuss about it.
(It got changed. I signed. The boss said he was suddenly very thankful that I was the person in charge of his contract negotiations. The end.)
I have a story..
About 1 month after I was hired, HR was in the process of implementing a new hiring policy on how they check employee references pre-hire. They were wanting to put all employees recently hired through it as well. They were going to use a single US firm and outsource the checks across the whole company (CANADA / US).
I read the waiver to allow them to conduct reference checks -- with former bosses, employers, schools, even with family and neighbors if they choose. Also the financial / credit checks.. I know a lot of US companies do this, (as I had recently returned from the US and my former company installed similar programs), but Canada is pretty protective of personal privacy / rights.
I refused to sign -- why? There was no limit on how long I was authorizing the company to investigate me.!! WTF. This wasn't a "once and done" type of check, and I felt that I should always be informed before/ when they check on me, and to approve it each time for a 30 day limit, that sort of thing. i had seen this abused to check out long term employees for possible theft from company, extended sick leave, and anything slightly suspected -- all without that employee realizing.
Apparently I was one of the only people to raise concerns about it, to refuse to sign it without discussion / modification (and I was told that most people just sign it).
End result -- after consideration as to my reason why, they dropped the outside checks program, and kept it traditional style -in house, at the time of hire only.
Win! for checking / reading contracts!
Topic: Overheard on Facebook (Read 6540672 times)