Saturday morning. Doug was out getting the car washed. Zoe was asleep until a time I have stopped having opinions about. Max left at 7:15 for a lacrosse tournament I can track in only the broadest terms, and I found myself with a quiet house and no plausible excuse.
So I Googled it.
“Non-solicitation agreement standard terms.” Just typed it, hit enter, the way you finally pull a bandage you’ve been preparing to pull for two weeks.
What I found was not what I expected. Which is not a sentence I say often about Google research, because Google research usually confirms what I already thought and I just need to see it written down by someone else. This time was different.
Non-solicitation clauses, the ones relevant to my situation, typically fall into two categories. The first is non-solicitation of employees, meaning you cannot go poach your former colleagues. That one is not my concern. I am not building a team, at least not yet, not out of anyone I currently work with. The second is non-solicitation of clients or customers, meaning you cannot go directly to companies you’ve been managing and pitch them competing services.
The key word is competing.
What I want to offer is not competing software. It is a consulting service that helps companies manage their own renewals, which is adjacent to what my employer does and is not the same thing as what my employer does. Whether my employment agreement would read it that way is a question the internet answered by repeating, in many different formulations, the same non-answer: it depends on the specific language in your agreement.
I have worked at this company for 24 years. At some point in 2002, I signed an employment agreement. I cannot immediately tell you where it is. I mean, I know where it is. It’s in the closet off the guest room in a box I labeled “professional records” in 2011 and have not opened since. Or HR has it, and they would send it to me if I asked, which is an email I could technically send on a Tuesday morning and frame as routine. I’m not sure I could send it and call it routine. I’m not sure I would be able to keep my tone completely neutral while typing it, and I am not sure that would matter, and I can’t stop thinking about whether it would matter.
The part I wasn’t prepared for: I went looking for a general answer and found out the answer is a specific document I already own. My name is on it. I signed it. It is probably forty-five minutes away if I get up and go through the box right now.
I did not get up to find the box.
When Doug came back from the car wash he brought me an egg and cheese on a croissant, which he does every time. I said thank you and told him I had done some research. He asked what I found.
I said I found out what I need to look at next.
He waited for more, the way Doug waits, which is patient without being particularly encouraging.
I told him I thought my employment agreement was probably in the guest room closet. He ate his breakfast. I ate mine. He said, “That closet’s going to be a project.”
He’s not wrong about the closet.
He might also not be wrong about what the closet represents, which is a thing I’m trying not to think about too directly. The bandage I finally pulled turned out to have another bandage under it. That is, probably, fine. That is probably just how this goes. You do the research and the research hands you a document, and the document hands you a question, and at some point you run out of the kind of avoidance that passes for preparation.
I did not run out of it today.
I know this about myself: I will spend another week not opening the box before I open the box. Or I will ask HR and spend a week composing a version of that email that sounds like it could be about anything. Both options exist. Both options have been available all morning and I have chosen neither.
The internet also notes, at the bottom of every article about non-solicitation agreements, that if you have questions about your specific situation you should consult an employment attorney. Which is what the internet says when it doesn’t actually know the answer either.
I have not consulted an employment attorney.
That is probably the next thing.