# can an employer stop you from shopping at a competitor **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 17, 2016, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802 "2016-10-17T01:23:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/21 "2016-10-17T20:32:39Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > When my father worked for GM he was told to get rid of his Ford. If he wanted to drive a Ford then he should go work for them. > The reason being, how would it look if somebody driving past the GM plant saw all Fords in the employee parking lot? There are numerous auto plants near me and I used to make it a habit to check out the cars in the lots. Both the Chevrolet and Ford plants near me had signs posted to the effect “Foreign cars to rear of this lot only”. That meant a quarter mile walk for those drivers. And there weren’t many cars back there. The choice spots near the front were almost always filled with company cars, or at least not competitors. There might be Pontiacs or Buicks in the Chevy front rows, but no Fords. Ditto for the Ford plant. However, the Jeep (Chrysler) plant had more of a mix of US cars. Today both the Ford and Chevy plants only use about 10-20% of the lot compared to the 1980s and '90s. The foreign car sign is rusted and swinging in the breeze. Dennis ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/22 "2016-10-17T20:56:09Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > I don’t know if I pointed it out in the comments, but that’s not universal. I work for a different car company, and only facilities with majority UAW representation seem to have that rule. the engineering and other facilities don’t. When I was at GM the mantra was, “drive what you build,” and there are good reasons for it. The linked article also has good reasons for driving competitor vehicles, too. However at GM no one ever told me that I wasn’t allowed to drive my competitor vehicle. The old Lansing Craft Center parking had non-GM restrictions, but the adjacent Fisher body did not (nor did any other facility that I visited). Here in Dearborn the only restriction is the hourly lot at the Rouge, which is heavily-UAW-dominant. If you have a drive-in badge, you can drive and park anything (and only salaried tend to get drive in access). The takeaway is this restriction only applies to hourly employees or to visitors who choose not to use one of the visitor lots. While I was at GM I eventually got a GM, and when I moved to Ford (I started at the Rouge) I eventually replaced it with a Ford. I wasn’t under any real pressure to do so; my manager often had his Corvette parked in his spot when the weather was nice. At my present office the only restrictions are for power stations; given that they’re free the company only allows Ford electrics and hybrids to park there, which is reasonable (they’re a private network and the public can’t use them anyway). ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/23 "2016-10-17T21:21:56Z")
Couldn’t it be viewed as anti-competitive behavior and thus be in violation of anti-trust laws? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/24 "2016-10-17T22:43:46Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > When my father worked for GM he was told to get rid of his Ford. If he wanted to drive a Ford then he should go work for them. > The reason being, how would it look if somebody driving past the GM plant saw all Fords in the employee parking lot? This is one of those policies that is fairly stupid when you think about it for very long. If the GM plant parking lot is full of Fords, GM has a _much_ bigger problem on its hands than optics. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2016, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/25 "2016-10-17T23:09:04Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Couldn’t it be viewed as anti-competitive behavior and thus be in violation of anti-trust laws? It certainly could if your workers represented a substantial amount of market share. I can’t imagine the OP’s daycare is big enough to matter. On the larger end, Wal-Mart has about 1% of American workers. That’s an enormous, mind-boggling number of employees, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to trigger anti-trust laws. By the time you count the non-working population, Wal-Mart would be costing their competitors less than half a percent. ---
**Author:** ![Taber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac91a4/32.png) [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/26 "2016-10-18T00:14:09Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Whether it can be enforced is a trivial ‘yes’ in most of the US, because in 49 states you’re an at-will employee, so being fired for any reason that is not specifically prohibited is fine. What do you mean by ‘the question that would be raised’, exactly? The firing process is that someone from the company (usually your manager) says ‘you don’t work here any more’, and maybe has some paperwork to fill out. There isn’t a referee that they have to get an OK from for it to happen, they just do it. You can try suing them, but you’re not going to come up with an example of someone successfully suing for that in a case remotely like this in the US. The reasonableness of your firing does effect whether you get unemployment. You can be fired for punching a hole in the wall, or for having an ugly haircut, but the ugly haircut guy is getting unemployment and the hole puncher won’t. ---
**Author:** ![Why\_Child](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b782af/32.png) [@Why\_Child](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Why_Child)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/27 "2016-10-18T00:41:25Z")
My mother was a substitute teacher for elementary schools, and refused to work in the school we attended. If it were an emergency, last-minute sort of thing, maybe… but **not** in our class. My mother’s reasoning was that she didn’t want any of the kids (or parents) making claims of favoritism. I think when you consider how easily excitable some parents are in regards to their “little darlings,” an argument could easily be made in support of demanding the children attend a _different_ daycare!! ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/28 "2016-10-18T00:47:19Z")
> [@Taber](#): > > The reasonableness of your firing does effect whether you get unemployment. You can be fired for punching a hole in the wall, or for having an ugly haircut, but the ugly haircut guy is getting unemployment and the hole puncher won’t. Not really, no. Deliberately breaking a company rule or instruction from management is insubodnination, and generally you don’t get UI if you deliberately break a company’s rules. There are exceptions, but they’re much more difficult than ‘people in this thread think they’re unreasonable’. For example, if the company has a dress code that covers haircuts and you violate it with an ugly haircut, you probably won’t get unemployment because you chose to violate their policy on haircuts. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/29 "2016-10-18T03:09:54Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > It certainly could if your workers represented a substantial amount of market share. I can’t imagine the OP’s daycare is big enough to matter. > > On the larger end, Wal-Mart has about 1% of American workers. That’s an enormous, mind-boggling number of employees, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to trigger anti-trust laws. By the time you count the non-working population, Wal-Mart would be costing their competitors less than half a percent. It’s a small town with 3-4 daycares. But I don’t think lack of market share is a defense to anti-competitive behavior. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/30 "2016-10-18T03:33:15Z")
> [@Sahirrnee](#): > > When my father worked for GM he was told to get rid of his Ford. If he wanted to drive a Ford then he should go work for them. > The reason being, how would it look if somebody driving past the GM plant saw all Fords in the employee parking lot? > > That said, he got a huge (13 - 33% discount) on GM vehicles. Also, he could drive a competitor’s car, he just couldn’t park it in the employee lot. Surprising though it might seem at first glance, the Nike shoe factory I toured in Indonesia many years ago had the OPPOSITE policy. Employees were not allowed to wear Nike shoes, and if they wanted to wear sports shoes they were encouraged to wear Reebok. The reason? Because the management did not want to ever be put in the position of accusing the employees of stealing shoes. By forbidding the wearing of their products, they were essentially taking that possibility off the table. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/31 "2016-10-18T03:58:22Z")
No, an employer can’t **stop** you from shopping at a competitor - nothing illegal about it and the court system doesn’t care about it. Yes, an employer can use all kinds of social/financial pressure tactics to **persuade** you from not shopping at a competitor… including firing you if they think (or imagine) you break almost any rule they can conjure up… or for no reason at all. The “conflict of interest” clause in their employment contract about having to send your kid to them for daycare is nothing more than a line a lawyer or HR-savy person suggested adding to decrease their already extremely low chances of losing a lawsuit (on the 1 in a thousand chance they’ll ever get one). Doesn’t grant them any additional power… it’s a shield not a sword. Send your kid wherever you want for daycare… and your wife can quit penalty-free if her employers piss her off too much about it. They’ll fire her penalty-free if her choice of daycare pisses them off too much. It’s not much more complicated than that if you live in an at-will work state or province. Just a bit of location-specific employment insurance or wages for notice stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/32 "2016-10-18T04:39:25Z")
I could imagine a state having some kind of family-related protected class that might possibly stretch to cover the daycare restriction. _I don’t know that any do_, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that firing someone for their parenting choices was problematic in at least one of the 49 at-will states. ---
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/33 "2016-10-18T14:25:21Z")
That is a pretty selfish attitude on the part of the daycare! I would suggest she find a job elsewhere. I would not want to work for people with such an attitude! ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/34 "2016-10-18T18:13:27Z")
My guess would be that this is a DIY contract drawn up by the owners based on contracts they or their partners have signed in significantly different and inapplicable contexts. I’m also guessing that the daycare is a small operation, Obviously OP can clarify. Unless America has fundamentally different principles of contract and children’s law, a clause that purports to limit the parental rights of a non-signatory would get absolutely no traction in a court of law. Far more likely it’s a coercive measure that few employees will question to ensure additional business (OP has yet to mention anything about a discount) and promotional purposes. I notice that no-one has provided an example of an employee obliged to use their employees’s products or services even without the additional complications of enforcing the provisions on a third person who is not party to the contract and minor children. Ill leave it to those more qualified the question as to whether the employer could fire OP’s wife for non-compliance under some other pre-text and the likelihood of such a situation arising. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/35 "2016-10-18T18:40:26Z")
In Japan it is or was common for employees to be expected to buy products of not only the direct large company employer, but its sister companies within the so called ‘keiretsu’ and other holdover relationships among companies which were in more tightly knit ‘zaibatsu’ pre WWII. So if you worked for Mitsui Bank say you’d be expected to drive a Toyota. But such relationships have broken down with mergers in recent decades, eg. Mitsui Bank merged a couple of times now being part of Sumitomo-Mistui, and that carried along different car preferences. Likewise in South Korea, you’d be expected to favor the products of other companies in your own employer’s ‘jaebeol’ (which is the same Chinese word as ‘zaibatsu’) if working for such a company, eg. engineers at Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard would probably prefer Samsung Electronics phones though those companies are separately incorporated. ---
**Author:** ![rainy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@rainy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rainy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/36 "2016-10-18T19:03:34Z")
A possibility is that the day care is worried that about the image it would project. The immediate reaction of clients who learned this might be: “She knows exactly how kids are treated here and won’t let her own kids stay here. It must be really bad!” This might be especially true in a small town where people know each other, and whether they have kids. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/37 "2016-10-18T20:12:17Z")
> [@WilyQuixote](#): > > Unless America has fundamentally different principles of contract and children’s law, a clause that purports to limit the parental rights of a non-signatory would get absolutely no traction in a court of law. This likely would not even be a contract, and the company wouldn’t try to sue for enforcement of the contract. It would be a company policy, and the company would enforce it by firing (probably after formal warning) the person violating it. That’s it, there’s no need for it to get traction in a court because the company would enforce by firing. I agree that writing a contract and trying to enforce it on a third party who didn’t sign it would not fly, but that’s not remotely the way this would play out in practice. ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/38 "2016-10-18T20:35:39Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > This likely would not even be a contract, and the company wouldn’t try to sue for enforcement of the contract. It would be a company policy, The OP stated it was contained in an “employment agreement” not company policy OP has stated he is living in a town small enough to justify only three -four daycares. Quite likely in that small a town people would talk if employee of daycare A has her child at daycare B and the provisions of the contract are a ham-fisted but not malicious attempt at the avoiding any reputational damage that may arise if this happens. (On preview, what **rainy** said.) ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/39 "2016-10-18T23:03:29Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Brokerage firms don’t want you making trades at other brokerage firms. There’s a good reason for that: you ight be trading on insider information, and they’d be the ones getting in trouble if you are. > > While it’s not expressly forbidden, **they do not charge their employees a fee when they buy or sell stock**. I think there are requirements that you disclose any trades made outside the brokerage. The SEC will back them up on that if challenged. Guess again. I worked @ a firm that was acquired by ShittyBank. Because of what division we were put into (we did money movement, not securities), we _had_ to bring our brokerage accounts in house (other places will let you have outside accounts but require that they get copies of statements to see what kind of trading you’re doing). We had to pay full-service commissions, $70-80 per _ticket charge_. IOW, if I bought 100 shares of a stock & it went up $1.40/share, I still lost money when factoring in my purchase/sales costs. E-Trade was, I believe $7.95 at the time so I would have made over $120 by using them to trade the same 100 shares. They also offered us optional “discounted” banking services; even with the employee discount, they were more expensive than the bank that I use. It’s amazing how many of us stated that we didn’t have _any_ investments. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802/40 "2016-10-19T04:12:11Z")
> [@WilyQuixote](#): > > The OP stated it was contained in an “employment agreement” not company policy If what’s contained in an employment agreement is not company policy, then the company needs to get some competent HR in place to make their employment agreements match company policy. In a company that’s not badly broken, though, any employment agreements will be company policy. The fact that something is in an ‘employment agreement’ doesn’t mean that it’s actually a contract, and people often call things ‘employment agreement’ that the company might not name that. Employment contracts are actually pretty uncommon in the US, though a lot of people think there’s a contract when there isn’t. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-employer-stop-you-from-shopping-at-a-competitor/768802.md?page=3)