When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause

Most employers don't waste time on references given the legal liabilities, references are only required as a tradition, to prove you know how to play the game, so I think they're safe... with the sole exception of the camp counselor. Given contact with kids, I'd like to at least imagine they would try to background check. Even then they probably don't and rely on 3rd party professionals.

You have to be realistic about these kind of things. If, under better economic conditions, adults would never work these jobs and it would all be "teens first job" then they're not going to be geared up to check references or prior employers and they're not going to care if you leave your previous employer section blank. You don't need a stellar resume to meet the minimum requirements to flip burgers and if you show up with a stellar resume it proves you don't know how to play the game and they will politely tell you you're overqualified, until you learn to play the game.

Is that "very specific" method of assembly so complex or so secretive that it couldn't be deduced by anyone camped out at a table near the register?

Somehow I doubt it.

It won't be "months or years." If you worked hours, the state will tell the company to pay you for that, now. Even if they are bankrupt.

I didn't up or downvote you but from my perspective I don't feel that employers deserve more protections. If I want to run off with the secret recipe it's already protected by IP laws. I think it should be illegal for an employer to limit your future employment in any way. I'm not saying the restaurant industry isn't competitive, it's probably one of the most competitive I can think of, but limiting employees rights is not the right way to handle that.

I work in a fiercely competitive space in which the modal vector for company formation is employees of competing companies leaving to start them.

The idea that Jimmy Johns could expect the right to bind minimum-wage-earning food service workers with a noncompete is verkakte. Even in circumstances where employees are given access to trade secrets and client rolodexes, noncompete agreements are difficult to enforce and almost invariably slashed to bits by courts when they survive at all.

Obviously, Jimmy Johns will not prevail in enforcing a noncompete on a minimum-wage employee. What they're doing is simply intimidating their own workers, probably based on some simple calculation about the impact their bogus noncompete will have on employee turnover, which is a metric every at-scale retail business optimizes for.

It is easy to devise logically-consistent reasons Jimmy Johns would want to bind their employees with anti-competitive contracts. Such arguments more or less beg the question.

There are different issues being mixed up here: the fairness of the policy, the enforcibility of the policy and the motivation of the policy. I am only speaking to the motivation of the policy. Obviously we are just trying to read minds here since neither of us has any evidence of what went into their decision-making process. I am simply telling you from my first-hand knowledge in this industry, that 1) infiltration by potential competitors is common 2) it is a real concern 3) a non-compete provides some mitigation in terms discouraging the practice and providing a possible avenue of enforcement (though it might not actually be enforceable)

The blanket way OP has been dismissed really has to do with the rustled jimmies about the fairness of the policy and does not reflect well on the quality of the replies.

What do you do for a living? I run a business that competes with fast food franchises for low wage labor. A great majority of our employees aren't poor, or struggling to get by, but college kids who are looking to make a little extra cash and get some work experience. A small handful are children of parents who have millions in the bank, and have no need to work other than it's something to do, and maybe to gain some necessary life skills. A number of them also wish to start their own small business one day (I always ask, because I would rather convince the ones who do to start a franchise for us). We have them sign a non-compete because a large portion of our competitive edge comes from operational efficiencies that our competitors can't touch, but aren't necessarily exclusive or proprietary. We also tripled in growth in the past year, and pay our employees higher wages than virtually any alternative job they could acquire elsewhere. The risk that one of these employees would try to start a competing business is very real, and someone who is resourceful enough to do so is also probably resourceful enough to pose a significant threat to our business. Yes, many of the employees we hire probably won't ever try to do this, with or without the non-compete, but all it takes is one employee who wishes to do so and has the financial backing to make it happen to significantly hurt our business.

I appreciate your judgement on my knowledge of the life of a minimum wage worker. Yes, there are many who are struggling to get by, this is a very real problem that needs to be fixed. However, generalizing the skill set and struggles of a few to an entire wage class of labor is absurd. You're talking about millions of individuals in just as many different live situations across thousands of local markets. I would advise you to rethink your assessment of the life of a minimum wage worker. You might want to add a little complexity and depth to your profile of the minimum wage worker.

Why do you think that Jimmy Johns is concerned with the life of an average minimum wage worker? Perhaps they are concerned with the outliers and are happy to saddle the average workers with a non-compete just the same. The lack of insight in this thread is shocking. No one said the policy is fair or justified. The point is to think through why they might have the policy in the first place and people seem to be too outraged to do that. It's disappointing, really.

I think most people didn't have experience with any specific industry as teenagers, even if it may be the case that most people took some similar sort of job as teenagers.

It's probably not, unless you copy very specific things, which is possibly why they seek to discourage it contractually.