Crudele on the Gardening Leave Clause

This is pretty hilarious if you ask me.  During the Black Days of 2008-2009, when Wall Street itself was hearing its own eulogy being read in the news each day, lotsa boys and girls down here signed some pretty unfavorable employment contracts.  You can’t blame them, The Street was like Pearl Harbor then; everywhere you looked were scuttled and sinking ships.  It made sense to accept these terms and conditions just to drag yourself aboard a floating firm in order to stay alive.

And now the employees are regretting these terms.  My favorite of these is the Gardening Leave Clause.  The NY Post’s John Crudele has the scoop:

Put simply, this gardening leave means workers who quit must stick around their old firm for up to three months — paid, but twiddling their thumbs — before they can move on. This cooling-off period — “go play in the garden,” in other words — was common in the contracts most executives were more than willing to sign.

Now that Wall Street’s job opportunities have improved a bit — and I do mean just a bit — these leaves are becoming a problem. Who would hire someone, after all, if they can’t show up for three whole months?

There’s already a mini-rebellion going on among Wall Street workers who feel mistreated. And while there is still a “robust applicant pool” for every job opening, there is a sense that much of Wall Street’s talent (that means the folks who bring in profits) will bolt at the first sign of an improvement in hiring.

I would say that those in the position of having to wait three whole months to take a new job at an even better salary should drink a big cup of STFU and just deal with it.  Can you imagine a single mother of two, waiting tables until her feet fall off, complaining about being paid for three months to do sudoku puzzles?

You’d think this crew would be smart enough to just go frolic in the garden and run out the clock.  But no.

I hope the Gift Horse whose mouth they’re peering into gnashes its teeth and takes a chunk out of one of ’em.

Source:

Trapped on Wall Street (NYP)