Do you owe your soul to the company store?

Sometimes I wonder if corporate people have mirrors in their homes.

Considering some of the tricks they pull on young people, you have to wonder how they look at themselves in the morning. (Maybe they're vampires and have no reflection.)

I continue to shake my head in disgust every time I hear of a young news person signing a contract and then finding out there is some astronomical buyout clause buried in the fine print.

On one side of the coin, I can see the station's point. A company has to protect its investment, especially if the employee is an anchor. These "liquidated damages" a company will charge you to leave are supposed to compensate the company. Let's say you're an anchor and the station just bought five thousand dollars worth of billboards. If you break a contract shortly thereafter, the station would be within its right to recover those funds.

This would seem fair if the amounts were fair for rookie reporters, and no one is putting up billboards for anyone right out of school. Some companies I've worked for had buyout clauses in the contracts (usually a corporate decision,) but they were fair amounts. I didn't expect anyone leaving to have to fork over a pint of blood and their first born.

But in some cases entry level reporters have buyout clauses that amount to six months salary. I've known a few people who paid two or three thousand dollars to get out of contracts, but some of the amounts I'm hearing borders on the ridiculous. Take that back, it is ridiculous.

While you always want to honor a contract, and I will never advocate breaking one, there are some times when people feel that exercising the buyout clause makes sense. If you're making 18 thousand per year and someone offers you 35, then paying three thousand dollars to move on doesn't seem like a bad idea.

So, one more time, always have any contract reviewed by a lawyer before signing. Many of these buyout clauses are numbers pulled out of thin air, and are negotiable. The day you sign the contract you never think you're going to break it, but sometimes you get a great offer, or you just plain hate your job. I think that some NDs secretly make people miserable so they'll collect buyout clauses.

Lots of industries have non-compete clauses, but not too many charge people six months salary to quit.