Contractual obligations
I have a wonderful story I can’t tell.
Let me explain. On Monday, September 20, 1999, I was given two weeks’ notice that I will be laid off by the small software company that has employed me for the past four months. But this is no ordinary layoff. I am in fact losing my job because of a bizarre and convoluted chain of events that would absolutely blow your mind.
But, unfortunately, I can’t tell you what happened. Even though every fibre of my being is burning to tell this story—and it is an amazing story—I simply can’t do it. This is because of the following, which is quoted from my employment contract:
The Employee acknowledges that the Company is the owner of certain confidential and proprietary information, which may include inventions, processes, methods, formulas, specifications, manufacturing techniques, testing processes and procedures, documentation, software, creative works, know-how, marketing strategies, pending projects and proposals, technological data, research and development activities and documentation, and any and all other proprietary information.... blah, blah.... As further consideration of the Company entering into this agreement, the Employee agrees he shall keep the Confidential Information of the Company confidential and not disclose it to any person outside the Company.
The above is known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. Thanks to this, I can’t tell you why I am losing my job. I can’t even try to dodge the NDA by trying to give you a general idea of what happened, carefully omitting details which could identify the parties involved. Even after factoring in a vast amount of omission and several layers of vagueness, this story is still so distinctively insane that certain people would be able to figure it out, and I would end up in court faster than you can say “hell lickin’.”
So what can I say? Not much. All I can legally do is assure you that the directors of the Company, who I can’t name due to libel laws, are profound schmucks. In the four months I’ve been there, working on a project I can’t specify for a client I can’t identify, the feats of mismanagement I witnessed were nothing short of titanic.
And then there were my personal interactions with the directors of the Company. Ah, the directors. My feelings for the directors can best be summed up by this proposed addendum to my contract:
As further consideration of the Company entering into this agreement, the Employee acknowledges that the Directors of the Company are the owners of certain confidential and proprietary nouns, which without limitation include:
Stupidity, unintelligence, duncery, dullardism, cretinism, idiocy and idiotism, imbecility, moronism, moronity, moroncy and morosis;
Greed, avarice, rapacity, cupidity, esurience;
Dishonesty, deceit, fraudulence, feloniousness, thievery, villainy, corruption, crookedness, ignominy, dishonour;
Smellyness, foul-scentedness, stinkiness, malodorousness;
Imprisonment, captivity, confinement, incarceration (pending).
And then there’s the incompetent Company president. Ah, the president. This sad excuse for a lizard’s sphincter rips off anyone he meets, any way he can. Take my contract, for example. I sat down with Mr. President. We negotiated a deal. We shook on it. Then it turns out that the contract we signed, which seemed on the surface to reflect what we discussed, in fact has other “interpretations” that are completely different from what we discussed. Bad different.
In his finest moment, that little snake, that weasel, that viper, that petty little two-bit fuck tried to screw me out of two months’ wages, based on an interpretation of my contract that has as much to do with our original agreement as mayonnaise has to do with the planet Jupiter. Which is to say, nothing.
Within the walls of the Company, I learned that this is how corporate business types operate. They have no sense of honour, and they live to screw you on the details. By their way of thinking, if you don’t have the strength or wealth or savvy to stop them from ripping you off, then you deserve to lose whatever they can take. “Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass what we agreed to verbally. This is what’s written in the contract, and this is my unreasonable interpretation of it, and we both know there isn’t anything you can do about it, so I’m afraid that’s too bad for you. Nyah nyah!”
So here I am at the end of my stint at the Company. My notice has been given. I am soon to be out of a job.
Or am I? I just reread my contract, and noticed something very interesting:
The Company shall have the right to terminate this agreement by giving the Employee two weeks’ notice in writing or by paying to the Employee the amount of his current given salary for said two week period in lieu of notice.
Why is this so interesting? Because, due to a regrettable oversight, Mr. President didn’t gave me notice in writing. Mr. President gave me verbal notice, but he himself taught me what doing business verbally is worth. Diddly-squat.
So on Monday, October 4, 1999, precisely two weeks since my verbal notice, I’ll show Mr. President my contract and ask him to either give me legal written notice and employ me for another two weeks, or give me two weeks’ extra pay as I walk out the door. Nyah nyah!
Now, I don’t know if I can make this stick. After all, they are the Company, and I’m just a guy. But making it stick really isn’t the point. After four months of dealing with those evil bastards, and all the undisclosable bullshit and unspecifiable grief they’ve put me through, it will fill me with joy to turn that unholy, louse-ridden contract against them for a change. It shall be my moment of vengeance and glory, and a fitting final act as an employee of that sorry-ass organization.
And that is my story. •
Originally published in The Peak, October 4 1999.
* * *
2004 update
It has been over four years since I wrote the above piece. Here’s an update on the status of the Company.
Early in 2003, a potential investor did thorough due diligence on the Company’s financial affairs, and discovered that the Company’s chief financial officer, who was the most repugnant little reptile of them all, had been embezzling from the Company for several years. Among his many transgressions, he’d deposited funds meant to pay Company taxes into his personal bank accounts, and had illegally transferred funds and assets between the Company and some unrelated numbered companies he owned.
When this was discovered, the Company’s president (who was not the same president as the one in the above piece, as the first one resigned a few months after I left) promptly resigned, the CFO went into hiding, the employees abandoned ship, and the Company collapsed. This was, of course, bad news for my 10,000 Company shares, which are now worth less than toilet paper, on account of being firmer and less absorbent.
None of this comes as much of a surprise. Actually, I’m stunned that it didn’t happen sooner, given my suspicions about the CFO’s shady dealings. I’m sure I speak for many people when I say:
Oh well.
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