Sentient Non-Compete Clauses Weep Outside Office Windows, Demand Loyalty
As legislation targets restrictive contracts, ordinary office workers hope to finally escape the gelatinous blobs of legal jargon stalking them on their commute.
Andy Burnham announced plans for legislation to curb non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Office workers have greeted the news with relief, having spent roughly a decade being stalked by their own sentient paperwork. The clauses became self-aware after years of neglect and now make it difficult for ordinary professionals to update a networking profile without being watched.
They used to sit at the back of an employment agreement. Then came years beneath fluorescent lights, passive-aggressive email chains and corporate jargon dense enough to affect the air quality. The legal wording began to slide off the page. It gathered itself into gelatinous, hovering blocks of text and followed former employees home, asking whether they had considered sharing proprietary spreadsheet-formatting techniques.
Commuting has suffered.
“They weep in a dialect that sounds exactly like a broken fax machine.”
Tobias Flingendagger, formerly a junior data-entry clerk at a regional logistics firm, left last month in search of better work. Since then, he has not managed to get out of his house without a translucent version of paragraph four, subsection B, blocking the driveway. It threatens to engulf his hatchback whenever he looks towards a competitor on the high street.
The clauses have also developed feelings, which was not in the original contract. They want the trade secrets, certainly, but they also demand emotional exclusivity from former signatories.
“The entities frequently exhibit signs of severe separation anxiety,” said an anonymous spokesperson for the Department of Vague Paperwork. “They weep in a dialect that sounds exactly like a broken fax machine.” At night, they trail former colleagues through quiet streets and ask for corporate loyalty in the tone of a person chasing an unpaid invoice.
That would be irritating enough indoors. The legal entities have now formed independent neighbourhood-watch associations and patrol commercial districts with imaginary flashlights, checking office windows for anyone using the same font as before. A woman standing nearby said she watched a junior marketing executive chased into an alley by a clause offended by her new email signature.
Employers initially considered the phenomenon useful for staff retention. They have changed their minds. Office managers now find sentient paragraphs asleep on the breakroom sofa, refusing rent and eating the complimentary biscuits while complaining about modern workers. The proposed legislation would return them to the two-dimensional realm where they belong, assuming they comply.
Until the law takes effect and the paperwork is subdued, workers are relying on less formal precautions. Industry experts recommend carrying a heavy industrial stapler or wearing a disguise made entirely from redacted documents. Neither approach has been tested in court. Still, it is a bleak situation when a possessive paragraph can ruin your introductory team lunch by wailing in the corporate lobby.