High Drama On The Job Front

Posted by Lorren on September 10, 2008

I’ve written in my blog before about how my husband is starting a new company with his former boss.

There’s only one problem… former boss has another former boss. And she’s not all that happy that he left to start his own company.

Dh’s former and now current boss signed a non-compete agreement with his former boss. However, non-compete agreements have basically been declared void in the state of Arizona, because if someone was to be held to the agreement, that means that the person would be unable to work for a year after leaving a company. After all, if you’re a banker and you lose your job, what industry are you going to try to find a new job in? Banking. Similarly, if you’ve worked in human resources for the past 6 years and you lose your job, where would the most logical place for you to work in be? Human resources. Non-compete agreements basically say you have to go be a janitor or work at Pizza Hut for a year after you leave your job, and judges have thrown them out as being unenforcible.

So dh’s boss’s former boss has been getting threatening letters from boss’s ex-boss. Which is to be expected. A whole bunch of saber-rattling, but in the end, when the dust settles, the case gets thrown out of court and everybody’s left with a few lawyer bills.

But a new, unexpected, development occurred today.

My husband was at work, and his car was parked outside the garage. Boss was walking around outside and catches a stranger parking their white car outside of the house, with dh’s car open, leaning into the car as if they were going to rifle through the stuff in our car. It didn’t look like they were trying to steal the car, or they would have done that without parking their car right outside ours, but it did look like they were trying to look through dh’s school papers, children’s toys, and fast food wrappers that seem to take residence in our car.

When boss caught the person going through our car, he yelled, and the guilty party got in the car and sped off. We did get the license plate number though, so we’ll be able to find out who did it.

Here’s my hypothesis on what happened: boss’s former boss hired someone to try to dig up dirt on boss after he started this company. Hireling was given boss’s address, and saw dh’s car parked outside the house. Thinking that dh’s car was boss’s car, they decided to rifle through the car to try to dig up dirt on boss. But they were caught… and they had the wrong car anyway. Woops.

If my hypothesis is true, boss’s former boss will have to drop the non-compete. Non-competes are pretty much unenforcible, but trespassing and going through another person’s car is clearly a criminal offense.